Al-Qaeda Leaders Want Iraq To Be Center of Islamic Empire
No, Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror.
U.S. Snags Al Qaeda No. 2’s Letter to Zarqawi – FOX News
The United States has intercepted a letter from the No. 2 Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (search) to the terror network’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Pentagon officials told FOX News. The letter says that Muslim terrorists have developed a detailed plan for creating an Islamic state centered on Iraq and including neighboring countries as well as the destruction of Israel.
But the following is the attitude of one of our nation’s supposed leaders about Iraq.
“Today was an opportunity for the President to be candid with the American people about the status of democracy in Iraq, and when he will bring our troops home. Instead, the President offered little more than empty rhetoric, claiming that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror — a position that is simply not supported by the facts.” — Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), would-be Speaker of the House.
A reminder of what the President said yesterday.
The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
[T]he militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.
The letter from al-Zawahiri shows that President Bush knows the stakes in this global war and has the facts on his side. Yet the “loyal opposition” would rather criticize and demean the war effort than outline a plan to protect Americans against the worldwide threat of Islamic fascism.
Again I ask, is the Democratic Party an “enabler” of our enemy, just as they were with the Communists during the Cold War? So far that is the only clear message the LibDems are giving to the public.
UPDATE: Third suspect in NYC subway terror plot arrested…. in Iraq – ABC News.com
Alarmed by the informant’s report of a plot to attack city subways with as many as 19 bombs in bags and possibly baby strollers, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested two suspected plotters who had been under close surveillance until Thursday morning, officials said. The third escaped until his arrest Friday.
Meantime, in Washington DC today, the Rayburn House office building was evacuated due to a suspected bomb threat, and the Washington Monument and streets around it were cleared due to a possible threat. Luckily nothing happened at either place.
UPDATE TWO:Omar at IraqTheModel reports that Zarqawi is defying the instruction in the letter from al-Zawahiri and will continue to target Iraqi civilians who work toward democracy.
Zarqawi said that Islam doesn’t distinguish between people on the basis of civilian vs. military but on the basis of Muslim vs. kaffir (infidel) and that “an infidel’s blood should be spilled regardless of his occupation or position unless he had a treaty or a promise of peace”.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
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I don’t think it’s quite fair to say that the Democratic Party enabled our enemies throughout the Cold War. True, you can find instances where some did. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, I think pro-American forces had the upper hand in the Democratic Party – as symbolized by Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy.
I think Democrats started shifting more to anti-Americanism in the late 1960s, when the generation of Pelosi / Kerry / Hillary type of “hippie Democrats” (for lack of a better term) first entered the political process. Kerry has been on the wrong side of every security question in his career (including his opposition to Reagan and support for “nuclear freeze” in the 1980s, etc.)
But even in the 1970s and 80s, you could still find many of the Scoop Jackson / Sam Nunn type of Democrat who did want Freedom to triumph over the Soviets.
Another huge shift toward anti-Americanism in the Democratic Party came in the 1990s and the past few years, when the Pelosi / Kerry / Hillary generation aged into the Democrats’ leadership positions.
What amazes me is that after 4 years, Pelosi and company still have offered no real alternative plan to win the war in Iraq, or for that matter, the War on Terror. Lots of carping about Bush’s plan; criticism and bitter complaints; lots of wild suggestions that don’t add up; but NO serious, coherent alternative.
I wish they would come up with one, so we could have a constructive opposition debate and conduct the war(s) in truly the best way.
Comment by joe — October 7, 2005 @ 12:13 pm - October 7, 2005
#1
Actually, Kerry made a few suggestions. Problem was, we were already did it or were in the process of doing it.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 7, 2005 @ 12:46 pm - October 7, 2005
Sorry, again, this is all after the war. Having terrorists there now doesn’t prove that fighting in Iraq was actually part of the war on terror.
Comment by Joey — October 7, 2005 @ 2:21 pm - October 7, 2005
Joey-
So long as the Middle East is a festering sore of brutal autocracies which cling to power by blaming the Jews and the Americans for everything wrong in the lives of their victims, there will be people from the Middle East willing to die to kill Jews and Americans. Nothing we say or do will make this better or worse — they don’t hate us for who we are and what we do, they hate who they’ve been told we are and what they’ve been told we do.
The only way to fix the problem, in the long term, is to establish free societies in the place of those autocracies.
Iraq was a good second step (after Afghanistan) since we had (1) a substantial military presence there, stemming from the Cease Fire of the first Gulf War; (2) several obvious causes for legitimate war (violations of the cease fire, illegal attacks on our no-fly-zone planes, etc.); (3) an autocrat who was widely hated by his people; and (4) staunch allies (the Kurds) in the country who already had the beginnings of a free and pro-American society within Iraq. The fact that it borders Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia also makes it well located to spread the intoxicating idea of freedom to those nations, down the road.
That’s the big picture. That’s the “War on Terror”. Iraq isn’t just part of it, it’s the heart of it.
You can disagree with the strategy — but at least try to understand it, first. (The President’s most recent address on the war would be a good place to start. My favorite line: Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. This is a dangerous illusion, refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources?)
(As to the small picture, al-Zawahiri was an honored guest in Baghdad when he fled our forces in Afghanistan. AQ in Iraq was operating against the Kurds in northern Iraq with Saddam’s blessing throughout the nominal ceasefire between the wars. Saddam was directly funding the terrorists whose nominal enemy was Israel, but which also have routinely attacked American targets when those were available.)
Comment by Clint — October 7, 2005 @ 2:59 pm - October 7, 2005
#3
Sorry, Joey, you’re plain wrong. See http://www.husseinandterror.com. Go down to the bottom for the listing of Stephen Hayes articles on Iraq and terror. Follow the links.
Comment by joe — October 7, 2005 @ 3:05 pm - October 7, 2005
Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to let Iraq become Islamofascist Central. I mean, if they’re all in Iraq then it’ll make it a whole lot easier to know where to release the smallpox.
Comment by glisteny — October 7, 2005 @ 3:45 pm - October 7, 2005
You’ve got it backwards. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Now that Bush has marched into Iraq and turned it into a colony, he essentially fulfilled the prophecies of Osama bin Laden, so…yes, now it IS a central front on the war on terror, and we have no one to blame but Bush.
Comment by Andy — October 7, 2005 @ 4:29 pm - October 7, 2005
gotta agree with andy and joey. we created this iraq quagmire when un sanctions were working. wmd’s were non-existent after the first gulf war and we ignored the facts and proceeded to invade. NOW it’s a terrorist haven and we STILL have no plan to win or exit. bush has mucked up our country and now the entire world with his immoral and illegal war and the onus is on gwb for his actions. history will not be kind to this charlatan.
Comment by pete — October 7, 2005 @ 4:36 pm - October 7, 2005
Why on earth are they fighting for Iraq to be the center of Islamofascist terror when the United Nations is about to hand them Kosovo. The Saudis are building mosques fater in Kosovo than houses were in Leavitt Town. A central moslem terrorist clearing house under the guise of nationhood smack dab in the middle of southern Europe.
Wow, that sounds alot like Iraq. Wait and see.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 7, 2005 @ 5:43 pm - October 7, 2005
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Unfortunately, 9/11 was the end result of ignoring a war that should have been fought in 1998, when it first became clear that a) Osama bin Laden was a grave threat to the United States and b) that the brutal, repressive regime of the Taliban was not only sheltering him, but providing him the means and base from which he could carry attacks out against the United States.
If one looked at Taliban Afghanistan in 1998, you could make the same argument that liberals have about Iraq — “contained”, no threat, doesn’t matter that they’re brutalizing their citizenry, not our problem. Unfortunately, out of that “non-threat” came an attack that killed thousands of American citizens, caused billions of dollars in damage, and an untold amount of psychic damage.
Now, when one looks in Saddam in that context, he was hundreds of times worse than the Taliban — he HAD the means, capability, will, and track record to wage war on the United States, both directly and through terrorism. If the Taliban was a threat, as we now realize they were, Saddam Hussein was an even greater one.
Unfortunately, the clock has stopped for liberals on 9/10/2001. As a result, they’re still fighting — or more precisely, not fighting — a war of reaction, not proaction. It is not their concern whether or not actions in advance could prevent deaths; all they understand is finger-pointing after the dust clears, as they showed with 9/11 and with Hurricane Katrina.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 7, 2005 @ 6:23 pm - October 7, 2005
Colony? How so?
We are in Iraq for the reasons given in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Comment by syn — October 7, 2005 @ 6:23 pm - October 7, 2005
Pete-
Hard to know where to begin. Not a single reality-based clause, much less sentence.
(1) Iraq doesn’t resemble a quagmire in any way, shape or form. We have concrete goals (free elections, constitution, elections under the constitution; trained, Baathist-free Iraqi army capable of defending Iraq). We are achieving them. The enemy is getting steadily weaker, we (and more importantly the Iraqis) are getting steadily stronger.
(2) U.N. Sanctions were “working”? At what? Lining the pockets of corrupt U.N. bureaucrats? Giving Saddam an excuse to starve out opposition tribes and blame the U.S.? Providing France and Russia with millions in bribes to end the sanctions?
(3) W.M.D.’s were discovered in large quantities by U.N. inspectors in 1998 — seven years after the first gulf war, and despite seven years of U.N. sanctions and inspections. No one — no one — knew that we wouldn’t find similar stores of W.M.D.’s after this war.
(4) Before our invasion, Al Quaeda had an extensive presence in Iraq, ranging from a continuing military presence in the North (fighting against the Kurds) to AQ #2 Al-Zawahiri fleeing to a Baghdad hospital when he was wounded in Afghanistan.
(5) We have a very clear plan to win and then exit. It’s been stated over and over and over and over. Your inability to hear it says wonders about your ability to stick your hands over your ears and go “la-la-la”. It says little about anyone else.
(6) A war to remove a genocidal dictator and install a free state is not considered “immoral” by any decent human being.
(7) The war was legal under U.S. law because the U.S. Congress explicitly passed a law authorizing it. The war was legal under international law because Iraq repeatedly and explicitly violated the Cease-Fire (not peace treaty!) signed at the cessation of the first gulf war. To say that it was “illegal” expresses either gross ignorance or more “la-la-la” screaming.
Perhaps you’ve been getting your news about Iraq exclusively from the Daily Kos or from Maureen Dowd’s columns? Even Reuters could provide you with each and every one of these facts.
Comment by Clint — October 7, 2005 @ 6:38 pm - October 7, 2005
#7 – “Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11″ – A highly incomplete, misleading statement.
The 9-11 Commission said something like, “No proven connection between Saddam and the events of 9-11″.
Parse that very, very carefully. The Commission would have meant each word in its most exact sense.
Was there a proven connection between Saddam Hussein and the first World Trade Center attacks, in 1993? Yes. The Clinton Administration said so, in a 1990s indictment of a major figure of the first WTC attacks.
Was there a proven connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda as an organization? (Not saying, the specific 9-11 operation) Again yes. They found that Saddam was harboring an al Qaeda subgroup in northern Iraq – this is before the Coalition invaded – and had given sanctuary, meeting facilities, medical assistance, and financial assistance to major al Qaeda figures in the 1990s.
That’s the bipartisan 9-11 Commission talking, not me. Address further complaints to them.
And isn’t it odd that an Iraqi newspaper predicted the exact targets of the 9-11 attacks, about 6 weeks before the attacks happened? Fritz Holings read it into the Congressional Record; you can look it up.
Bottom line – even if Saddam didn’t leave any fingerprints on 9-11, he was a major international terrorist (that fact has been well proven)….and, for all the other reasons Clint gave as well, Iraq was a logical second step in clearing out terrorists and changing the Middle East – after Afghanistan, the first step.
Comment by joe — October 7, 2005 @ 7:20 pm - October 7, 2005
oh clint, how gullible you must be…tell me, do you watch the “fair and balanced” fox news? haha. what a fool you are to swallow the administration’s lies.
Comment by pete — October 7, 2005 @ 7:43 pm - October 7, 2005
#12 Clint -well said. On point.
#14 pete –learn to read, comprehend, and digest the truth… it’s easier than throwing around the smeary slop in your response. And I agree with many in this country when we hear the actors, the Left activists, and the wannabeleaders saying the WOT is immoral but they support the troops –the two positions are not compatible. Read, comprehend, digest the truth.
drop the partisan talking points and think for yourself… you don’t have to be a minion of the GayLeft… unless you choose to be such.
Comment by Michigan-Matt — October 7, 2005 @ 8:05 pm - October 7, 2005
Pete-
Pick any one point you want to debate at length, and I’ll explain further and even provide you with citations. But, if your entire argument for each of my one or two paragraph responses is a fraction of a sentence, I don’t feel much need to respond further.
Comment by Clint — October 7, 2005 @ 8:30 pm - October 7, 2005
In passing, no, I don’t particularly like Fox News… for reasons I’ve frequently alluded to in other threads, here.
Comment by Clint — October 7, 2005 @ 8:33 pm - October 7, 2005
Hmmm.
The Iraq war was illegal. Why? Because Kofi Annan said so.
The same ass clown who maintained that neither he nor his son had anything to do with the Oil For Fools scandal.
Yeah. I trust that POS to look after my best interests.
Oh yeah. France, Germany, Russia etc. also said so. The same folks who were selling weapons to Saddam and making ass loads of money at the expense of the Iraqi people. The same folks who stabbed us in the back prior to the war.
Yeah. I trust them to look after my best interests too.
How on earth can Joey, Pete etc. still cling to the well established lies of the Neosocialist left?
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 8, 2005 @ 2:20 am - October 8, 2005
“How on earth can Joey, Pete etc. still cling to the well established lies of the Neosocialist left?”
Willful belief. They want it so badly to be true.
Lots of good information given by several people here, and you other guys… you don’t have to *agree* with it, but if you can’t at least see that it is rational and logical and respective of the real world events, situation and history, then you’re not thinking. Really. Certain things are simply factually true (if I must be redundant.)
To take one rather narrow issue… every time I hear someone say that the sanctions were working I know that they are operating under a willful delusion. Why? Because I have clear memories of the charges being made against the US during the years after Desert Storm. Sanctions work because they impact the lives of the population who, in turn, put pressure on the country leadership. In this respect I can only say that sanctions are immoral. They work only by causing misery. Expecting them to work in a situation where the country’s leader cares nothing for the misery of his people is rather braindead to begin with. But “sanctions” are what “good” people do so we did that… only we didn’t want the people to suffer, so we agreed to all those various Food for Oil sorts of things. So what happened next? Does anyone remember? Does anyone remember how every hardship of the Iraqi people was laid squarly on our doorstep? Does anyone remember how we were blamed for killing Iraqi children? In truth, it was Sadam who chose how to allocate his resources, but still the US got blamed. Why? Because even the people who pushed for sanctions who prefered sanctions, understood that to *enforce* sanctions is evil. When the US insisted on enforcing sanctions, everyone understood that it was evil.
The *sanctions* were working wonderfully… but not for us.
Pete and Andy and Joey… I want you to get your minds around this fact and then we can talk. Sanctions are intended to *change behavior* and that can only happen if the sanctions hurt someone. If you can explain to me how sanctions can put pressure on a government without causing economic hardship at the very least… but you can’t. And liberals are supposed to be all about protecting the downtrodden, all about economic justice, about social justice. But the weapon of choice is one that *depends* on causing hardship and inequity. And then people pat themselves on the back because they are being *civilized* by working diplomatically rather than militarily?
The Republicans need to realize this just as much as Democrats need to admit it. Sanctions are not the high road. Not even. They are another form of war and, like war, sometimes necessary. If you’re under the illusion that sanctions are “good” and war is “bad” it would do you good to give up that illusion.
Then we can talk.
(As for Kosovo… yet another reason NOT to work within the context of the United Nations.)
Comment by Synova — October 8, 2005 @ 3:31 am - October 8, 2005
(As for Kosovo… yet another reason NOT to work within the context of the United Nations.)
Comment by Synova
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Who had it lobbed to them from NATO, which under another fraudulent coalition was actually a unilateral action by the USA.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 8, 2005 @ 3:53 am - October 8, 2005
Would sombody please explain to me how freeing 25 million (that’s 25,000,000 for you liberals out there) is immoral?
If we are to believe the liberals’ claims, they should be all over this and supportive of it. Instead, their hypocrisy and blatant hatred of Bush shines through. They could really give a shit less about millions of people under control of a despotic regime. Rather, after spending years begging and demanding lord BJ to do something about it, they pretend like everything was just fine and dandy. Further, they fall over themselves to protect the dictator.
Save your “we hate Saddam and support the troops, but hate the mission” bullshit for your Moron.org bukake parties. The rest of us aren’t buying it.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 8, 2005 @ 7:20 am - October 8, 2005
clint,
here are the introductory words in your first comment to me:
“Not a single reality-based clause, much less sentence.”
it seems as if your grammar isn’t much better than mine, eh? (you should have written, perhaps: “there was not a single reality-based clause, much less sentence.”).
but to quibble over sentence structure is silly, and i’m too busy to respond fully to your arguments.
suffice it to say, we disagree over this war. fortunately, most of the nation has awakened to what’s really happening and now the majority of people think we were misled into this war. when colin powell declared to the un that we’re at risk of a threat in the “form of a mushroom cloud,” most people (including myself) supported invasion. yet, after weeks, months and finally years went by, and no wmds were found, people realized we were duped into going to war. hey, let’s face it, we want that black gold and this was an opening for us to establish a long-term military presence in iraq. if bush would have said we were invading iraq to establish a democracy, or to establish a way to ensure our oil supplies, i might still support it. but, no, we were sold on the “fact” that we were in immediate danger (tenet: “it’s a slam-dunk”….uh, i guess we must have hit that rim and had it bounce out of the hoop). we were duped into thinking iraq had stockpiles of nuclear weapons. we were scared into believing our lives were in danger. after stockpiles of wmds were nowhere to be found, the administration began changing the rationale for the war, and the public began to have doubts. now, the administration has little credibility on this issue, and imo, for good reason. let’s face it, we were duped.
now we’re spending $1 billion A MONTH on this war (albeit that total also includes the fight in afghanistan). we’re borrowing money from the chinese and other governments to fund it. lord help us if those governments ever call in their notes.
yes, saddam was an evil man. however, there are evil rulers everywhere. do you advocate we invade cuba, or north korea, or any other country where we deem the ruler to be evil?
finally, i don’t think we should “cut-and-run” in iraq. we have created a mess and we’re responsible to fix it. i’m not sure on how to accomplish that, but i do think we went into iraq with too few troops to do the job. i’m hopeful democracy will take root in iraq, but trying to shove it down the barrel of a gun is a difficult thing to do. time will tell whether it was a wise move to invade, but at this point, it’s still too bleak to have much hope.
i’m headed to israel tomorrow, so i won’t have much time to continue this discussion.
Comment by pete — October 8, 2005 @ 11:32 am - October 8, 2005
i’m headed to israel tomorrow, so i won’t have much time to continue this discussion.
You could have just said that you can’t continue the discussion. Frankly, it’s your throwing out tired liberal lies is hardly a discussion.
I did like your assertion that we went to Iraq with too few troops. I thought the arguement was that they are all over there. Want to ammend that before Moron.org comes to your house to kick you until you’re dead?
BTW, the reason for going to Iraq has NEVER changed. You can toss that little liberal lie around all you want, but it still doesn’t change the reality of it. You can spin your lies and hope like hell people are stupid enough to believe it, as liberals are wont to do, but folks aren’t going to buy it.
Oh, and please don’t blow yourself up in Israel. There’s not going to be any virgins waiting for you.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 8, 2005 @ 12:00 pm - October 8, 2005
Oh, and please don’t blow yourself up in Israel. There’s not going to be any virgins waiting for you.
Comment by ThatGayConservative
=======================
It would be so much better if you opened your mouth and a purse fell out than this litany of stupid.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 8, 2005 @ 1:24 pm - October 8, 2005
Chandy, don’t you have a major screenplay you’re supposed to be pretending to write? I can’t believe you’re leaving much time to ‘work’ on your various imaginary careers if you’re always posting here. At the very least, shouldn’t you be spending time developing your own blog instead of being a constant presence on this one? Or are you just trying to understand how its done properly?
Comment by monty — October 8, 2005 @ 2:11 pm - October 8, 2005
#25
Yes, believe it, no, I’ll know it when I see it.
Thanks for asking!
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 8, 2005 @ 3:26 pm - October 8, 2005
Also who’s cloning monty?
glisteny you l’il devil.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 8, 2005 @ 3:36 pm - October 8, 2005
Wisdom from Capt. Mal Reynolds, “…when someone tries to kill you, you go and try to kill them right back.”
Comment by Ted B. — October 8, 2005 @ 4:42 pm - October 8, 2005
#22, Pete, I started to reply before but I had a power hiccup that crashed my comp. (Yes, I do desperately need a new UPS.)
Just wanted to say that I’m glad to hear you say this…
“i’m hopeful democracy will take root in iraq, but trying to shove it down the barrel of a gun is a difficult thing to do. time will tell whether it was a wise move to invade, but at this point, it’s still too bleak to have much hope.”
The older I get, the more optimistic I get. People pretty much understand the reality of their own situations and by making individual choices we usually end up with something that works well enough.
Plus I’m old enough to have lived through several cycles of doom-saying… when I graduated from highschool I truely expected never to have anything because our economy was going irrevocably down the tubes. These days people whine and I wonder at their inability to put the economy into context, afterall, unemployment isn’t between 10-14%, but apparently the negativity doesn’t depend on facts. Mutually assured distruction never happened… how much of a shock was that? I watched the Berlin wall come down and the USSR crumble… something not even concievable when I was in school. Overpopulation and the o-zone was going to destroy the entire world. The generation between myself and my baby sister (I’m 41 and she will be 31) is a generation raised to believe that having children is the ultimate destruction of one’s life and aspirations, and selfish to boot. Her friends aren’t having babies. I look at Europe, with an across the board negative fertility rate, were it not for Moslem immegrants, and I see yet another destructive cycle beginning. But people are resilient. Preaching doom isn’t any more legit coming from a secular perspective than it is coming from a pulpit.
Which is another reason I continue to get more optimistic. I was told, since I was tiny, that the world was headed down the crapper. But only a little bit of History showed that, overall, things are better for people now than they were only a few years ago and much better than they were decades ago. The simple evidence is that despite strife and chaos, the world is improving.
Bruce has a link to Iraq the Model up there. Go to it. Omar and his brother don’t paint a rosy picture but they do paint a hopeful one. The Iraqi people are smart. They stumble along like the rest of us, but they aren’t children who can’t run their own lives. They have a different culture, but are we bound by our culture? There is evidence every day that they *get it*. Adapting to a representative government isn’t going to be all that hard. Integrating may be trickier, but you know how I said that Iraqis are smart? They realize it’s going to be difficult. Iraq is as multicultural as the US. We usually only hear about the Shiite, Sunni and Kurds. There’s lots more. I hadn’t realized that the Kurds were primarily Sunni. Most people don’t realize that the Shiite majority and the Shiites in Iran are completely different language and ethnic groups. This multi-ethnicity is the normal context of of life in Iraq.
Will it work out perfectly? Not a chance. Nothing ever does. But individuals will make decisions based on the truth of their lives and it will all work out well enough.
Part of optimism, an important part, is believing and working for that good outcome. Negativity is not, by any means, more intellectually noble. A person is not smarter by being sure to point out all the bad stuff that could happen. It’s not blinders or rose colored glasses that drives optimism. In a sense it’s taking the difficulties for granted. Problems simply *are*. They come up, you deal with them. You keep the goal in sight.
You mentioned “not enough troops.” When I hear that and my reaction is to dismiss it as an issue, I’m not pretending their were enough troops, I’m simply accepting the fact that there hasn’t been a war in History that was ever done right. I don’t have that expectation. If it weren’t “not enough troops” it would be “too many” or else it would be something else entirely. Trade speed for numbers… who’s to say which is best and quite frankly, from a military standpoint, it doesn’t matter. My optimism is based on the fact that it really, truely, *doesn’t* matter. The military is set up so that any number of things will work well enough. No plan survives contact with the enemy and we’re the best military in the world because we can adapt. The military, by design, is made to function in the absence of brilliant leadership.
Seeing failure in the lack of perfection is a choice that will always see failure because it will never see perfection. It’s depressing and defeatist. I gave it up, way back when, with all that other angst stuff.
Comment by Synova — October 8, 2005 @ 5:19 pm - October 8, 2005
Pete-
I’m sorry to hear that you won’t have time for a detailed discussion.
Suffice it to say, I have strong disagreements with several of your points:
(a) that the rationale for the War has changed (it was the same in Bush’s first post-9/11 address, the incredibly detailed authorizing legislation passed by both houses of Congress, and every other address he’s given on the topic — though the oversimplified version presented if you only read the headlines of the articles in the paper has certainly shifted.) (longer answer — there are multiple legal justifications for the war, multiple moral justifications for the war, and multiple reasons why it’s in our national interest to have fought the war — there is no one single “reason” for the war, and never has been.)
(b) about the nature of Treasure bonds (China can’t “call those notes due” — though they can stop buying new ones, if they like — the interest schedule is preset, and already factored into our budget deficit.)
(c) about the relevance of Cuba and North Korea (yes, if we could remove those dictators without too much fuss or muss, of course we should — the question is whether the actual cost would be worth it. But neither country has that much to do with the root causes of Islamic Terrorism — so they really have very little relevance to the topic at hand.)
(d) that we went in with too few troops (we’re accomplishing our military objectives almost as quickly as we can think them up, and the pace of events is set by Iraqi political developments, not our troop numbers. More troops would result in more U.S. casualties, without speeding up the pace of Iraqi constitutional negotiations and elections at all.)
and (e) that we’re trying to “shove [democracy] down the barrel of a gun”. (You don’t force people to be free, you force their oppressors to stop preventing them from being free. That, you certainly can do at the barrel of a gun. Ask Saddam Hussein or Mullah Omar, to name two. What they’ll make of their freedom is a different question — but the signs look good so far.)
Have a nice time in Israel. I’m glad to hear that you aren’t a “cut-and-run”ner. If you’re interested in how to fix things in Iraq, you might try reading the President’s recent speech (the subject of the post we’re commenting on) or this recent address by Condoleeza Rice at Princeton or this one given the next day by General Petraeus (the officer in charge of training for the new Iraqi military) — both via tigerhawk.
Comment by Clint — October 9, 2005 @ 12:05 am - October 9, 2005
Synova-
Interesting comment: “The older I get, the more optimistic I get.”
Me too. I’ve been thinking recently about how this may be related to the stereotype of the teenage liberal who becomes the thirty-year-old conservative…
I’m not sure that “optimistic/pessimistic” captures it precisely, but the conservative/liberal divide in this country definitely seems to be a glass-half-full/glass-half-empty sort of a disagreement.
It’s interesting thinking back to when I was a liberal. My perception then was that liberalism was optimistic (“we don’t need to accept how awful things are” — though that usually meant making enormous, and unrealistic, revolutionary changes to things) while conservatism was very cynical and pragmatic.
It sounds like I was in High School about five years after you — my seriously believed fear was that one day, without warning, the greater New York area would simply be vaporized by Soviet hydrogen bombs, and that would be the end of it. And I certainly believed that Reagan was both stupid and making things worse.
Probably just enough older than your sister that I had my (political) world rocked by the events in Europe in the summer of ‘89 (made personal by a foreign-exchange with students from Moscow in ‘88 and ‘89). Give her time — eventually, at time will come when even the New York Times will have to admit that a free Iraq is flourishing, and a staunch and essential ally in the war against Islamic Radicalism (or Caliphatism or Islamofascism… or whatever we eventually settle on). Hard to say what the one defining event will be — I was convinced the purple fingers in January would be it. Perhaps it will be something more dramatic, like the first free elections in Iran — after that country is liberated by the Iraqi military next year, with some U.S. air support (tongue half-in-cheek). In any case, quite a few of this generation of young liberals will eventually wake up to discover, as we did, that the dire predictions of the doom-sayers look ludicrous with hindsight.
Anyway, rambling way to say — I agree with what you wrote.
Comment by Clint — October 9, 2005 @ 12:36 am - October 9, 2005
#20 (late on this I know)
I was opposed to the actions in Yugoslavia for two reasons. 1- I didn’t have a clear idea of why we were getting involved. and 2- Clinton’s “no risk” military involvement struck me as fundamentally immoral. In combination the two issues led me to believe that the situation there didn’t actually merit our involvement. No, we shouldn’t risk our people if we can help it, but if a cause is not *worth* American deaths then it sure as heck isn’t worth anyone elses deaths either. Dropping bombs kills people. The rhetoric at the time seemed rather clear that our involvement would only be tolerated if it could be accomplished without risk. (Shades of Mogadishu.)
Yes, that changed over time as we became involved.
Yes, the area was turned over to UN peacekeepers. Which is what I often hear we should do in Iraq because the UN, by definition, is legitimate.
Often enough, definitions are simply wrong.
Comment by Synova — October 9, 2005 @ 2:27 am - October 9, 2005
#26
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?”
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 9, 2005 @ 2:49 am - October 9, 2005
#33
TGCon,
Sweep on greasy citizen.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 9, 2005 @ 3:24 am - October 9, 2005
#34
I’m villifying you for God’s sake. Pay attention!
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 9, 2005 @ 6:26 am - October 9, 2005
#35
I AM paying attention but for a conservative republican I would have thought that you’d have villification down pat by now. Isn’t that in Republican 101?
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 9, 2005 @ 6:39 pm - October 9, 2005
Just to remind you, GWBush’s war against Saddam was nothing more than a war against the man that tried to kill his daddy. He said as much too many times for it not to have been a factor–a primary factory. The US may not have installed Saddam in power, but it certainly helped Saddam in his war against Iran in the 1980s.
Comment by raj — October 10, 2005 @ 10:52 am - October 10, 2005
Just to remind you, GWBush’s war against Saddam was nothing more than a war against the man that tried to kill his daddy. He said as much too many times for it not to have been a factor–a primary factory.
I think that assessment is based on the Michael Moore and DNC version of history, which shows Saddam as a benevolent and beloved ruler presiding over a kite-flying paradise.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 10, 2005 @ 11:39 am - October 10, 2005
#38
No, it is based on Hussein being a great customer of American weapons who was turned a blind eye to. The kite flying paradise was the Reagan Administration.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 10, 2005 @ 12:46 pm - October 10, 2005
If that was the case and Saddam was so awful, Chandler, why did nothing happen to him between 1992 and 2000? Indeed, why was the oil-for-food program created for him to exploit, why were weapons inspectors removed at his insistence in 1998, why did Congressional Democrats like John Kerry and Barbara Boxer vote against military action against him for invading Kuwait?
Saddam should never have been supported in the first place. However, blaming the fact that Dems left him in power and proactively worked to keep him there on Reagan is nonsensical.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 10, 2005 @ 1:33 pm - October 10, 2005
#40
He was contained.
Just like North Korea.
Comment by chandler in jollywood — October 10, 2005 @ 8:48 pm - October 10, 2005
North Dallas Thirty — October 10, 2005 @ 11:39 am -
No, it was based on what GWBush said, and a report from the NYDaily News from March 9, 2002. I’m sure that you know how to do a Google search.
Comment by raj — October 15, 2005 @ 8:43 am - October 15, 2005
chandler in jollywood — October 10, 2005
He was contained.
Just like North Korea.
I’ll admit that I haven’t been following this thread. North Korea is being contained by the PRC and SKorea, both of which apparently want the US to butt out. They believe that they can contain the NKorean regime, and the beligerence from the Bushies is only causing them problems in trying to do so. Kim Jung Il isn’t going to live forever.
Comment by raj — October 15, 2005 @ 8:48 am - October 15, 2005
#43
A policy of containment works.
It is a pity the preemptive Bush Doctrine is wasting so much of our resources.
I’m glad my house is paid for.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 15, 2005 @ 6:03 pm - October 15, 2005
No, it was based on what GWBush said, and a report from the NYDaily News from March 9, 2002. I’m sure that you know how to do a Google search.
Look up Resolution 1441, Raj, if you can, and read the fact of what Saddam’s noncompliance was. Since you insist that there was no other reason whatsoever to remove Saddam, you might as well see the whole truth.
And actually, Raj and Chandler, containment is the liberal’s way of avoiding responsibility for the death of millions of people. “Containing” Saddam and Kim Jong-il means that you expect them to act rationally and not starve/torture/mutilate/maim/destroy their people and their countries to carry out their insane designs. It doesn’t work.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 16, 2005 @ 1:35 am - October 16, 2005
#45
NoDick30mm,
You mean avoiding responsibility from dictators we no longer train, arm, and support. How convenient. Two words: Palavi and SAVAK.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — October 16, 2005 @ 3:35 am - October 16, 2005
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