Wall Street Opinion Journal August 11, 2006
A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.
Friday, 12:01 a.m. EDT
Americans went to work yesterday to news of another astonishing terror plot against U.S. airlines, only this time the response was grateful relief. British authorities had busted the “very sophisticated” plan “to commit mass murder” and arrested 20-plus British-Pakistani suspects. As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have protected us–and those in public life who have fought those policies nearly every step of the way.
It’s not as if the “Islamic fascists”–to borrow President Bush’s description yesterday–haven’t been trying to hit us. They took more than 50 lives last year in London with the “7/7” subway bombings. There was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before
. . . more
As much as I hate to admit it, the WSJ makes a valid point here. The “War on Terror” may be a misnomer, because it suggests that the conflict is a traditional “war” to be won by military means alone. However, the arrest of the London liquid bombers suggests something different.
Juan Cole, a consistent critic of the Bush administration, writes:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/pakistan-connection-pakistani-police.html
Counter-terrorism expert John Tirman similarly writes:
Six Lessons from the London Airline Bombing Plot
The WSJ is arguing that you can’t say that the work of stopping terrorism is a police task and then hamstring the police from doing their job. Does Scotland Yard operate with more freedom than the FBI, and if so does this allow them to better detect and uncover terrorist cells and plots? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s a legitimate question worth considering.
The WSJ article says that “We don’t yet know how the plot was foiled, but surely part of the explanation was crack surveillance work by British authorities.” So if they don’t know how the plot was foiled, why then assume that “A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.”
Never miss an opportunity to bash the liberals, I guess is the rule.
Unfortunately, CNN says that “The original information about the plan came from the Muslim community in Britain, according to a British intelligence official. . . .The tip was from a person who had been concerned about the activities of an acquaintance after the July 7, 2005, terror attacks in London, the official said.”
So before thinking up new ways of alienating Muslims, we should reflect on the fact that at least in these early reports, it was an individual in the Muslim community who blew the whistle on the scheme.
Note 1.
Yes, the Brits have a lower legal threshold for wire taps, surveillance, etc. It’s called “reasonable suspicion” vs. the US “pribable cause.” Missourian, weigh in here. You are the in house legal expert.
Note 3.
Probably not. More likely a reference to the public spat they had with the NYT a few weeks back.
Search warrants:
Some background
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/315/315lect06.htm
More on search warrants: Common myths
MYTH: The President can only carry out searches directly authorized by an Act of Congress and pre-approved by the judiciary.
Some people assume that the President can do nothing which is not authorized by Congres. Not so. The President derives his powers first from the Constitution, then from Congress.
The Constitution grants the President broad and considerable powers in his own right. The President may also be delegated duties and the power to carry out those duties by Congress. The President has extensive independent powers when it comes to national security: the actual physical defense of the country from its enemies. The President conducts foreign policy and he can control and direct foreign operations of agents of the United States on foreign soil. While it is true that the U.S. does have some treaties with allies concerning security matters, it is also true that the United States (like all countries) reserves the right to act in its own behalf anywhere in the world. In fact, most countries are attempting to spy on all other countries as we speak. France is attempting to spy on Germany and Germany is attempting to spy on Russia and the chain goes on around the world. All countries want as much “inside” information as they can get to protect their population.
During the discussion of the Swift program, most people lost sight of the fact that the phone calls in question originated in Europe and were directed to the United States. These are considered to be non-domestic phone calls and they are within the power of the President and U.S. agents to tap.
MYTH TWO: “Sneak a peak” searches are something new
The ACLU is promoting a deeply distorted and misleading view of “sneak and peak” searches. It basically means that when the government does an electronic search (i.e. taps your phone and/or your computer) it does not have to inform you that you are being tapped. Well, guess what ol’ Bobby Kennedy did to prosecute the mafia. Most of Bobby’s well known convictions were obtained through wiretapes. Now, for ten points, did the government tell the mafia they were being listened in on? Think not? You get the ten points.
It has been over 15 years since I belonged to the ACLU, it has gone off the deep end and it seems to think that anything that ties the hands of law enforcement is good. I don’t. I want to live.
Even conservative pundit George Will now believes the Bush administration is completely detached from reality.
Better law enforcement? Talk to Jamie Gorelick
Dean, it may surprise you but Bush is not responsible for everything. The 9/11 plot did not begin on January 20th, 2001 when Bush was sworn in. It began years before.
Jamie Gorelick was an Assistant Attorney General under Bill Clinton. She was responsible for instituting a policy which heavily discouraged the NSA and CIA from communicating with the FBI. She erected a very high institutional wall between the FBI and the CIA. This “wall” was procedural and the result of a policy decision, it was NOT, repeat NOT, the result of a legal opinion or ruling that it was required by the constitution. The 9/11 commission criticized this policy as had every responsible national security analyst.
Secondly, both Bush and Clinton pandered to the open border crowd in their respective parties. Both Bush and Clinton have left the borders wide open to jihadis. To be fair, one of the 1991 Twin Towers bombers had been given immigration amnesty under a plan backed by Reagan. We have been over this territory before.
Lastly, it was the NYT that dismantled two effective law enforcements tools quite recently through leaks that violated national security laws. A court just ordered NYT’s Judith Miller to testify about her sources. Apparently there is no exception in the laws against jeopardizing national security for so called journalists.
For a supporter of the Democratic party to ask for better “law enforcement” is truly rich. There is not a single enforcement policy or procedure that the ACLU and the Left has not attacked.
“Even conservative pundit George Will now believes the Bush administration is completely detached from reality.”
Dean, I appreciate your posts more when they actually connect to your criticism. Mr. Will’s criticism does not support “Bush…completely detached from reality”. It simply supports, to quote “better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. ” Mr. Bush agrees completely (thus support of Patriot Act, Homeland security, etc.). Now, Mr. Will may be critical of certain aspects of the effort so far, but he would not support your assertion of a man “detached from reality”. This smells of your “psychopath” post last week, which Fr. Jacobse said was born “out of frustration, nothing more”. You are beginning to disabuse us from this and reveal that you in fact believe Mr. Bush has a serious psycho / psychosomatic disease. This unfortunately would be a simple passion on your part…
Allright Christopher, how about this for sheer delusion? What did you think of that press conference yesterday when President Bush (with Cheney standing behind him like his ventriloquist) declared that (1) Hezbollah had been defeated in Lebanon, (2) Hezbollah is was a terrorist organization and that Lebanon had become a new front in the war on terror.
Did it have the same disturbing quality for you as did for me, almost like watching someone with mental illness going through one of their psychotic episodes?
First of all there is no one, especially among conservatives, who believes that the last few weeks of war in Lebanon produced anything even resembling a “victory”. Military experts unainomously agree agrees that this was the worst performance by the Israeli Defense Forces in 58 years. The Israeli action did not result in it’s goal of forcing the rest of Lebanon to expel Hezbollah, but instead backfired, ralliying the Lebanese people, and indeed Arabs throughout the region behind them. Although there will be UN peacekeepers south of the Litani river, in the rest of Lebanon Hezbollah is more entrenched than ever.
In Israel right now, the architect of the Israeli campaign, General Dan Halusz, has resigned and their are calls for Prime Minister Olmert to step down as well. Indeed as we speak Hezbollah is spearheading the relief efforts in Beirut, and the shattered cities, earning the gratitude of it’s people, while the United States is being villfied throughout the middle east as an instigator of the war that caused the widespread destruction and misery.
Bush’s reckless comments, blatantly taking sides with Israel against the suffering Lebanese, will further reduce America’s ability to serve as a mediator and impartial broker in any future peace negotiation, and make America yet even fmore unpopular in the Arab world, if that’s possible. As one commentator wrote: “If anyone in the region had any doubts that the war on terrorism is actually a war against the Arab people on Israel’s behalf, Bush did a heckuva job of assuaging them.”
Bush called Lebanon a new front in the war on terror. Thats would only be true if trying to fight back against a foreign army destroying your country makes someone a terrorist. I doubt the Lebanese would agree.
By publically condemning Hezbollah as nothing more than a terrorist organization, despite the fact that it won 40% of the seats in the legislature in a free and fair election and is part of the Lebanese government we need to help implement the cease-fire, Bush reveals his support for peace and democracy in the middle-east to be total self-serving hypocrisy.
If the hardliners who wanted Hezbollah destoyed were correct why did we support a cease-fire, why not let the genocide of the Lebanese people continue until every last one of them was dead. If a cease-fire and peace settlement was the correct course, why endanger the peace with reckless comments attacking one of the key parties needed to maintain it? Apparently the muddled mind of the petulant, dry-drunk President is unable to comprehend these contradictions.
Dean, some of your points are valid. However, look at what you sprinkle it with:
(with Cheney standing behind him like his ventriloquist)
&
almost like watching someone with mental illness going through one of their psychotic episodes?
Your irrational Bush hatred does not bolster your sometimes valid criticism.
By the way, it does appear this campaign was stopped way to early. It needed another 2 to 4 months minimum. Also, I think it is a mistake to consider the barbarians a “party” or otherwise valid political entity. If the “Lebanese people” begin to support them in mass (or have already done so) that does justify them in any way – anymore than the German peoples support of fascism justified the Nazi party…
Christopher. You are right, I did let some emotion seep into my comments that detracted from the overall message.
It just never fails to outrage me that a man as intellectualy and tempermentally ill-suited to be President as George W Bush is somehow occupying the White House. It is damaging and harmful to our nation when the President reveals to the world through his pronouncements how badly misinformed and profoundly confused he is on critical world issues.
Intepreting every conflict through the simplistic and artificial “terrorists versus freedom-lovers” construct, blocks and diverts our attention away from important information about the specific nature of those conflicts needed for successful policy and decision making. Not very Islamic group has the same goals, and it is more likely that they are guided by their own sectarian or ethnic agendas.
When President Bush Tuesday expressed his surprise and disappointment that the 100,000 Shiites of Iraq rallied against the United States in support of Hezbollah he clearly did not understand the religious connection and solidarity between the two groups. That is, he didn’t realize how American support for Israeli aggression against the Shiite civilian population in Lebanon would have a negative fallout among the Shiites of Iraq.
When President Bush said that he hoped the UN Forces would intercept aid for Hezbollah coming through Syria it demonstated that he hadn’t even bothered to look at a map and see that the UN forces would be positioned on lebanon’s border with Israel, to the south and not it’s border with Syria, to the North and east. One can only wonder what goes through the minds of foreign leaders think when they see the leader of the most powerful nation in the world is so absolutely clueless.
It is particularly shocking and disheartening, when President Bush stubbornly clings to the notion that terrorism should be addressed chiefly by military action, as he did yesterday, because it demonstrates how deeply and fundamentally he misunderstands the nature of the conflict and what needs to be done to succeed.
President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism
The war for hearts and minds, whose victory is essential for overcoming terrorism, cannot be won with laser-guided missiles and cluster bombs. It can only be won through diplomacy and the building of trust and good-will. These are all things that George W. Bush has failed miserably at.
I suspect the Bush administration is in a worse state of crisis than most people suspect. The evidence for such a suspicion is that Bush family Consilglieri, and former Secretary of State, James Baker has been called to Washington, to develop a new policy for Iraq.
The situation in Iraq is clearly becoming even more violent and is deteriorating into civil war. Senator John Warner, a Republican from Virginia, shocked his colleagues recently by stating that if Iraqi civil war does occur, the 2002 Congressional resolution authorizing the President to send troops to Iraq would be inoperative. At home pollsters are predicting a democratic route in this November’s mid-term elections, with one or even both houses shifting to Democratic control.
Author Robert reyfus writes:
A Higher Power; James Baker puts Bush’s Iraq policy into rehab
Why would Bush agree? Dreyfus writes:
If this happens it will marke the return to power of the foreign policy realists who supported the president’s father, and the end of influence for the Neocons.
Dean,
note 12: “Intepreting every conflict through the simplistic and artificial “terrorists versus freedom-lovers” construct, blocks and diverts our attention away from important information about the specific nature of those conflicts needed for successful policy and decision making.”
Ah, but this is not “artificial” at all – it is moral. This is something the left misses because at the end of the day you are materialistic and deterministic about what man is, and how he relates to his fellow man. The “information” you would supply is of course material facts of their material existance (usaully poverty and the like) and of course their emotive reaction to said material conditions (their “feelings” of “oppresion” and the like). It’s not that Mr. Bush is unaware of these things, he just does not put the same weight on them that materialists do – and neither do I.
“That is, he didn’t realize how American support for Israeli aggression against the Shiite civilian population in Lebanon would have a negative fallout among the Shiites of Iraq.”
Nah, this is simple political posturing on the one hand, and a teaching moment: to let Americans know the scope of the Islamic threat and a reach out to those Islamic barbarians who do not rally behind evil.
“Bush stubbornly clings to the notion that terrorism should be addressed chiefly by military action, as he did yesterday, because it demonstrates how deeply and fundamentally he misunderstands the nature of the conflict and what needs to be done to succeed.”
Again, this is your fundamental materialism coming through. You think you understand the “nature of the conflict”, in that you view it in materialistic terms. When someone comes along who does not, like Mr. Bush or for that matter anyone who is not a leftist, you write this off as ignorance. In other words, anyone who does not agree with you “fundamentally misunderstands”. It is not that the rest of the world does not “understand” what the materialistic left is saying, it’s simply that we disagree. It’s not that the rest of the world does not see the same facts that the materialistic left sees, it’s that we disagree as to the relative importance of certain facts vs. other. In other words, we address the moral side of the equation. In other words, Isreal is a civlized country who would live at peace with it’s nieghbors if their wicked niegbors did not force conflict on them.
Note 13:
Since I and other sincere conservatives will be staying home this year, it would not suprise me
No doubt there is a vital moral component to all these conflicts. But before we can attain desired moral outcomes there are also practical considerations that need to be considered in to develop the correct policies and strategies to ensure success.
Otherwise the results is, as Sydney Blumentahal writes in Salon.com today: mistaken means in pursuit of misconceived goals, producing misbegotten failure.
Israel’s debacle, courtesy of Bush: With U.S. support, Israeli unilateralism was unfurled. The nation’s security has never been so endangered, or its moral authority so tarnished.
Christopher writes: “Ah, but this is not “artificial” at all – it is moral.”
It’s also irrelevant with respect to providing any kind of guidance in policy or strategy. It’s a bunch of simplistic labels that get certain people in the right wing all excited.
Christopher: “This is something the left misses because at the end of the day you are materialistic and deterministic about what man is, and how he relates to his fellow man.”
More faux-Christian blather. Stuff like this is always presented as some great wisdom that the “left,” whatever that is, doesn’t have. By “left,” I assume you mean everyone who is not in bed with the neocons and with James Dobson.
Let me lay it out for you so you can understand it. We in the reality-based community are concerned with our future and our survival. We don’t really care if someone is identified as “evil,” because we don’t plan on going around the world attacking evil. We don’t do that because a) it costs too much, b) we don’t have enough soldiers, c) most of these situations are not any of our business, and d) most of these adventures in evil-bashing end up with tremendous negative consequences, both forseen and unforseen.
Christopher: ” . . . In other words, Israel is a civlized country who would live at peace with it’s nieghbors if their wicked niegbors did not force conflict on them.”
Sure they want to live in peace. After taking over someone else’s turf, who wouldn’t want to live in peace. Of course, those other people don’t count, because, in your sublime moral calculus, they are evil. But you know what, that’s the problem of the Israelis, and it’s the problem of the Palestinians, and whoever else is over there. It’s not our problem, except as it impacts our position in the world. We have interests in Israel, but those interests do not necessarily override all other interests in the region.
Now if you want in effect to make Israel the 51st state and consider all of their problems our problems, great, but we in the reality-based community oppose that. Or perhaps Israel would actually be the 52nd state, Iraq being in effect the 51st, at least as far as where the federal government is spending money.
Okay.. since I am a glutton for punishment, I’ll bite. 😉
While I am sure different groups of Islamic Extremist have differing personal agendas, in truth, I think that conservatives, in particular religious conservatives have a much better understanding of the wants of “Muslim Extremists” or “Islamic Facisist”, than the average liberal materialist. We know they want to kill us. They have reiterated this time and time again. How anyone could have missed this vital little tidbit by now is beyond me. And they don’t want to kill us just because Bush is in office. They killed us when Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton were in office too. This isn’t a Bush created problem. This is a problem between the freedom loving, religiously and otherwsie tolerant, and oft times very sexually permissive society of the West and the oppressive, backwards, religiously controlled society fostered by Islam.
Let me reiterate.. they want to kill all of us because we represent that which they neither understand nor want.. the very concept that humans have an inalienable freedom to choose not only his education, profession, and life mate but also his religion or lack there of. It is absolutely inconceivable to Islamic Extremists that people should actually be able to reject Islam and live a normal life free from religion based oppression as has been the Western custom of the past 200 years. In their world, you have 3 choices… convert to Islam and it’s many oppressions, live as a second class citizen and be subject to a life of constant trouble, or be murdered at the hands of one of Mohammed’s finest. This should be a clue to all those materialist liberals out there who enjoy sexual freedoms, women’s rights, and the freedom to NOT believe in God and keep your head firmly attached to your shoulders!!
Materialist see everything in terms of “stuff” and “power.” Whether you have it or not determines everything about you. You and all your falability is simply an accumulation of the “oppressions” those who have more “stuff” and “power” have heaped on you over the years and every crime a poor, “disadvantaged” person commits can be excused using this manner of thought. In the view of the materialist, the poor are somehow innobled by their very poverty when in reality the poor are no more noble than the rich.. they simply have less stuff. The terrorist is turned into “the freedom fighter” simply because he is at a disadvantage financially and politically in comparison to his “oppressors.” The jihadis don’t give a rats patoot about the perpetual poverty of their society. If they did, they would take their considerable financial backing from (fill in the corrupt Islamic dictatorship/kingdom of your choice here) and use it to relieve the suffering of their people. It is a silly idea to believe that they are fighting to improve their way of life. THEY LIKE THEIR WAY OF LIFE!! They want to make it YOUR way of life too… and that is why they fight. That liberal materialist flock to the “noble savage” as the truth of what man should be is laughable in that most true savages (Islamic Fascist included) would sooner lop off that liberal’s head for being a heretic, criminal, or a subversive.
Jim writes: “It’s also irrelevant with respect to providing any kind of guidance in policy or strategy. It’s a bunch of simplistic labels that get certain people in the right wing all excited.”
Why is it irrelevant to define a war in the same terms as the enemy one is fighting? This is and always has been a moral issue for Hezbollah/Muslim Extremists. Hezbollah did not start a war with Israel because it wants clean water or more hospitals. And however much bloviating it does, it is also not blatantly aggressive towards Israel because the Palastinians don’t have adequate housing and schools, both of which could easily be provided by the Islamic world if they really cared. It attacks Israel because it is full of Jews, Jews that take up a very small portion of the Middle East but whose very existance is offensive to Islam, at least from their perspective. Hezbollah, Muslin Extremists of all forms, and the majority of Muslims on this Earth HATE Jews. They hate Jews because they are Jews, period. They hated Jews before Israel in it’s present form ever existed and they will continue to hate Jews as long as there is one Jew breathing on this planet. This seems pretty basic to me since generations of Muslim Extremist have made this point very clear by blowing themselves to bits in Jewish crowds and murdering Jews whether in Israel or abroad every chance they are given.
Xenia – Apparently, in order to make your argument work have to rely on gross falsehoods. You say several times, for example, that Hezbollah attacked Israel. That is incorrect.
Hezbollah carried out a covert operation in which it snuck accross the border through secret tunnels and snatched two Israeli soldiers whom it intended to trade for four Hezbollah prisoners held by Israel. No other Israeli besides those two soldiers were threatened.
Israel responded by launching a series of devastating air attacks against Lebanon intended to severely damage Lebanon’s infrastructure, cripple it’s economy, and terrorize it’s population and in that way, pressure the Lebanese people to turn against Hezbollah. As we know this operation was a complete disaster which backfired completely and produced results that were the exact opposite to those it was intended for.
Okay.. now that I have stopped laughing, let me get this straight.
You are saying that Hezbollah merely captured and held a soveriegn nation’s citizens (military personel at that) hostage and was using them as a bargining tool to secure the release of prisoners believed by that soviegn nation’s government to be criminals and that this was not an attack? Then what was it? A garden party? A Saturday night revival? It was an act of aggression that should warrant military action in the hopes that Hezbollah will learn that actions like this will be met with a swift and deadly response. And if I remember correctly the swiftness and deadliness of the response did take some of those hopefully now dead terrorist by surprise. There is only one response to militant Islam that it understands.. the sword. That is all it offers to the world and all it comprehends.
As to the failure of said operation… we shall see. One war does not a history book make and those that discount Israel are usually proven wrong in the end. I don’t think Israel will ever really suceed in eliminating the threat to it’s borders from militant Islam as long as militant Islam and maybe even Islam itself survives OR as long as Israel survives if the barbarians have their way. Islam seems a very poor neighbor irregardless of who is in charge. I think a close look at the warring sides in a great deal of conflicts around the world of the late 20th and now 21st century supports this supposition. Taking the teeth out of Hezbollah, though at one time a UN supported mission, was only the beginning. Sadly those in charge were not up to even that task. US (aka Bush) pressure may have had something to do with it, maybe it was a lack of funding for the Israeli military… I don’t know and don’t think we may know for some time what exactly transpired. I will hold off judgement until we know more.
As to poor Lebanon… well I have to admit that if I had lived with the hornet’s nest that is Hezbollah all those years and had never sought to clean house or even segregate myself in any meaningful way from them, I would have expected to get stung quite badly at some point. Too many Lebanese did die.. no doubt. Killing innocent people is horrid but I have yet to see a war fought that did not involve the death of innocents. In the Middle East, it is simply the order of things. And while I do have pity for those who needlessly died, I also acknowledge that every civilian death (most especially children) was paraded around by Hezbollah as the evil of Israel while Hezbollah used those very children as human shields to CREATE those civilian deaths. Hey, nothing new here. Saddam did the same thing. Packing munitions storage facilities with moppets and old folks.. standard policy in the Middle East.
In Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, (1963) Richard Hofstader provides an insight into the minds of Mr. Bush and his supporters. He writes:
(page 135)
I’m really enjoying Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. If you read it you begin to understand that Rush Limbaugh and Anne Couter are nothing new but part of an American tradition of scorn and hatred for people of intellect going back to before the American revolution.
Imagine: Mexico bandits kidnap American soldiers
Imagine, that the government of Mexico allowed independent militias to operate within its borders. Further imagine that a militia crossed the border and kidnapped two American soliders. What you do think the American public would demand of Washington in response?
Dean, this paragraph is troubling. It seems to indicate that there is nothing that Hizb Allah can do that will cause you to condemn them. This is serious Hizb Allah is a terrorist/militia army which is the pawn of Syria and Iran. Iran is being allowed to attack Isreal through its proxy while at the same time the diplomatic world pretends that no one knows that Iran runs Hizb Allah (Party of Allah)
Xenia –
I assume that when Christian areas in the North were bombed – the Christians were at fault for not having separated themselves from Hezbollah?
Oh, wait, they were separate from Hezbollah. But they still got hit. Israel had a prime opportunity to mop the floor with Hezbollah, only Olmert stupidly waged an air war in the North when he should have been invading the South.
Result? He blew up a lot of people, and got nowhere. This was a stupid move on Israel’s part, not because they chose to respond to Hezbollah by using aggression, but the way in which they responded. Had they stuck to business in the South, they would have lost many more IDF soldiers than were killed, but the results would have been much better.
The Olmert government will likely fall over this. It deserves too, because using massive firepower on the North only drove opinion in Lebanon and around the world against Israel.
I have pointed this out several times, but it isn’t sticking. At the outset of the conflict, the G8 was on Israel’s side. The Arab capitals were denouncing Hezbollah. Israel had the opportunity and the means to carve out a buffer zone and to then turn it over to a robust force, preferably lead by NATO.
This did not happen. Instead of pursuing a reasonable goal (buffer zone), the Olmert government somehow seems to have believed that it could use bombs to change Lebanese public opinion against Hezbollah. Much like you seem to be alluding to in your post.
That is completely illogical. When you are getting bombed, you tend to rally against the person bombing you. Hence, Hezbollah actually emerged from this war with more support from Christians, Sunni, and Druze than should be warranted, given the fact that a mere 10 years ago militias of these three groups were actively fighting Hezbollah.
The air campaign was badly conceived. The ground campaign was too late in being launced, and was not powerful enough to be decisive.
Time to learn from this and move on. Defending the indefensible won’t help anyone.
Xenia, I’m beginning to think there is a more fundamental falsehood at work in the minds of Dean, Jim et. al. It is not that they are materialist, but egalitarians. They apparently lack the ability to perceive the fundamental hierarchy of creation and man’s place in it. For Jim this is not too surprisining given his background, but for Dean raised an Orthodox it is quite perplexing.
Of course egalitarianism and materialism are closely linked as both deny a created order in which all life flows from God into His creation. Or to paraphrase Jesus, unless it comes from above, it does no good.
Lacking an understanding of hierarchy, it is difficult for such people to make true moral distinctions or to realize that one’s faith (whatever that faith is) always motivates one’s actions, that belief will always control logic, and truth is more important that facts.
Xenia writes: “Why is it irrelevant to define a war in the same terms as the enemy one is fighting?”
You can make all the moral evaluations that you want, but the fact is that there are a lot of evil people and nations in the world. If you set about to “eliminate evil,” or whatever the idea is, that is an impossible task in this world. Evil is a trait of fallen human nature. It is not the exclusive domain of Hezbollah or any other organization. It is an existential fact.
What I’m saying is that “evil” and “good” cannot be the basis of foreign policy. With rare exceptions governments have to pursue actions that are in their own self-interest. That is another unfortunate fact of existence.
Jim, you don’t eliminate evil you control it
You can’t eliminate evil, you control it, you isolate it, you contain it
Jim, you craft a foreign policy with teeth that communicates to the evil that their misconduct will not be tolerated. Therefore you do not need to eliminate all evil regimes.
Evil has its own lifecycle and it will grow if unopposed, like weeds in a garden, until it chokes the life out of the good. That is why action against the most dangerous evil states and leaders is necessary.
Note 21. Dean, Hofstader is off the mark. He’s fighting against the political decline of liberalism (cultural Marxism, social/welfare state, etc) but refuses to confront the intellectual and moral bankruptcy in the movement even though he knows that is where the real problem lies.
How do we know this? Because he castigates his opponents in moral/theological terms. He tries to trump theology with theology (Manichean dualism, etc, which he misunderstands, btw — must have read the same article you cited upstream). Political conservatives are dualists, see the world only in black and white, you know the drill.
It’s not true of course. If it were, his defense of liberalism would not need to draw from theology. Mere moral posturing would do.
The real problem is the moral relativism infecting liberalism like an ineradicable cancer. It renders liberalism powerless in the face of Islamic revolution and other threats. This is what drives your frustration, BTW. Despite conservative misteps, even bungling, liberalism is still powerless.
Hofstader, is desperately trying to find a philosophical, and ultimately theological, rationale and justification for the liberal order. But the rot is within. You can’t abort babies and then claim you care for the poor, for example. It’s a moral contradiction that eventually brings the whole house down.
Further, there is a world of difference between moral hypocrisy and moral relativism. Hypocrisy still tips the hat to virtue. Relativism says moral standards don’t matter. Virtue disappears and man is defined by his appetites alone. Liberalism wants us to believe this reduction to appetite alone is the new virtue.
Don’t read this in Democrat vs. Republican terms. Read it in terms of moral relativism vs. moral conservativism, and understand that moral conservatism is gaining currency in the culture.
For example, look again Hofstader. He uses theological/moral concepts and terminology to stop the decline of the same left that has eschewed those concepts for years. Still not convinced? Take a look at the article on frozen embryos in this month’s “Nation”. It has a moral sensibility nothing less than Christian. Very unusual for a magazine hostile in large part to self-responsibility and serious moral reflection (they are reflexively moralistic instead).*
You ought to read Coulter’s book. (I read the “Nation”, you should read Coulter). I read the first five chapters just yesterday. Look past the polemics and read what havoc moral liberalism has wrought on the culture, especially in the judiciary. You underestimate her. This woman is bright.
Of course the rot of relativism is very deep, afflicting Democrats and Republicans alike. There is no guarantee this can be turned around. In that sense, the rise of Islam against the West can also be read as a judgment from God for our many sins.
______
*(I’m arguing that the framework in which these debates take place is changing. The volume and temper however, will get increasingly antagonistic as liberals are forced to confront the irrelevancy of their liberalism. That’s why you see the rush of books from Wallis, Edgar, etc. The left needs it’s theological wing more today than since WWII, perhaps.)
Dean,
LOL! Hezbollah did not attack Israel. So, if I come into your house tonight and take one of your family members (are you married? do you have children? Just answer the question because I will find out either way) this is not an attack on you and yours? LOL!
Also, your slipping into your passion again (note 21). Questioning the intelligence of all those who disagree with you (i.e. anyone who is not an American leftist – most of the world) is below you. You can do better. Since you read all this leftist philosophy, why not try some of the many things Fr. Jacobse posts here? You might learn enough not to call those who disagree with you stupid and dumb simply because you are a leftist/materialist and they aren’t…;)
Missourian writes: “Jim, you craft a foreign policy with teeth that communicates to the evil that their misconduct will not be tolerated. Therefore you do not need to eliminate all evil regimes.”
Well, what is evil? Not many years ago the U.S. backed the Salvadoran government against the FMLN guerillas. El Salvador was famous for their right-wing death squads, who killed and tortured many thousands of innocent civilians. I have a good friend who is from El Salvador. He was smuggled into the U.S. after both of his parents were killed by the death squads. His mother was the first to be killed; afterward his dad wouldn’t let him see his mother’s body because it had been so badly mutilated.
There was nothing that Saddam Hussein did in Iraq that was not done in El Salvador. In the infamous massacre at El Mozote in December 1981, soldiers from a U.S. funded and trained batallion killed around 800 people, mostly women and children. The irony is that they weren’t guerilla sympathizers, but mostly evangelical Christians. Here’s a few accounts of our tax dollars at work:
Yet other people were herded into buildingn and then burned to death. Many of the men were bound, tortured, and then either beheaded or shot. (Mass beheadings are “hard work” as president Bush would say.)
So this is what our good friends in the Salvadoran military were doing. Things such as this would have jeopardized our funding of that regime, so the U.S. government did a non-investigation including a non-visit to the area, and then concluded that nothing had happened. This, of course, is the same regime whose death squads murdered countless religious workers and who assassinated Archbishop Romero.
So help me out here. We opposed the evil Marxist guerillas by supporting a regime whose human rights record was hard to distinguish from Saddam Hussein’s — but these guys were good, and Saddam was evil. Or were they evil but we supported them anyway? Or they and the FMLN were evil, but the death squads were less evil?
Perhaps Christopher has some profound spiritual principle unknown to “leftists” that can explain all this.
Jim, try to stay on topic, Principle remains sound
Jim, I was asserting a principle. The core idea is that we live in an integrated world and what happens in other countries very well may affect us. We may not be able to eradicate all rogue regimes that threaten world peace and freedom, however, it is possible to enact a policy that demonstrates to those rogue regimes that they will pay a cost for challenging the vital interests of the United States. This is an abstract principle and its value or worth does not depend on evaluating some prior U.S. history.
In law enforcement, criminologists talk about the “suppression of crime.” This recognizes the reality that no policy will ever completely eradicate crime, but, that some policies are more successful than others in suppressing crime. Crime must be suppressed beneath a certain level in order for a free economy to work and for honest people to live peaceful and productive lives. Much the same in the international arena.
Hitler remains an example of the failure of free societies to recognize a growing evil and to confront it before it expanded. The people of Europe paid dearly for the refusal of France and Britain to take the steps necessary to contain, disarm or destroy Hitler.
As to San Salvador, I know that its history is complex. I don’t necessarily approve everything done there. HOWEVER, whatever was done there does not negate the principle that I am advancing. You have veered off on an emotional side issue rather than address my rather simple premise.
Real enemies are crafting an alliance, where are you Jim H.?
There are reports that both Pakistani and Iranian officials have been consulting with North Korea. There are reports that Cuba and Venezuela are joining forces in South America. There are reports that there are jihadi training camps deep in South American jungles. Do you think some of those jihadis just might be able to make it across the Mexican-American border? Maybe one of the “compassionate” groups that are leaving water for border violators will help them out.
When, Jim, do you think we should react? I am not suggesting that we should bluntly declare war, but, I am suggesting that we should react. If the world thinks we are ineffectual bumbling superpower we will be kicked hard by all who want what is inside our pinata, because they cannot create it themselves.
What do the Democrats offer as foreign policy? Since Viet Nam all they have done is denigrate our military and cut back on CIA. Well, we got 9/11, in part because of a reduced and weakened CIA and because of the constraints made up by Jamie Gorelick of the Clinton administration Department of Justice.
Okay Missiourian – what are the Republicans doing about any of the above? I know that there are quite a few Republicans (Tancredo, for example) who are attempting to do something, but where is the Republican power structure on any of those issues?
What is President Bush doing about North Korea? What is President Bush doing to shore up the pro-American government in Pakistan? Remember the nuke deal with India that cut our guy’s legs out from under him? What is the administration doing about Venezuala and now Bolivia? As for the border, do you really want me to go there?
But more importantly, what could the administration do about Venezuala or Pakistan? Can Washington control events in those countries, and if so, then how? It is easier to support friendly regimes than to punish the unfriendly. It is easier to send aid than deny it.
Which is why I favor support of friendly regimes, regardless of their internal policies. Anti-Americanism seems to be a winning ticket at the ballot box lately.
Father: I readily concede the points you made regarding the failures of liberalism, i.e moral indifference to abortion and support for welfare programs that encouraged a culture of dependency.
My purpose in providing that excerpt from Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was to highlight the difference in how the fundamantalist and non-fundamentalist approach matters of policy, which Hofstader does a good job of describing. The non-fundamentalist approach, what Hofstader calls the “political intelligence” recognizes nuance and degrees of difference, and is satisfied with accomodation and compromise that provide an acceptable outcome. The non-fundamentalist approach to policy analysis making is more empirical with decisions often being made on the basis of a careful weighting of variables and likely outcomes, with the outcome of a small net gain rather than total victory, acceptable.
The fundamentalist approach, prefers not recognize the degrees of difference but to categorize people and ideas as either good or evil. Accomodation and compromise with evil is viewed as unsatisfactory (who would compromise with satan?) Empirical evidence is less important to fundamentalist than the architypes, imagery and symbolism. Instead of analysis, the fundamentalist applies a syllogism. Such and such doctrine is evil, people who believe in evil doctrines must be evil, evil people do evil things, therefore all people who believe in a such and such doctrine must be defeated.
We can see how these differences impact the decision making process. If your analysis of whether we should attack Iraq is based on the architype that Saddam Husesin is an evil insane dictator, evil insane dictators do evil things, therefore Saddam Hussein must be stopped, then the decision is, of course, to attack. If your decision is based on a rigorous analysis of the probability that Saddam Hussin has the means to do harm to the United States, and has the desire to do harm to the United States, given all of the gains and losses such a coarse of action would entail for him, your decision may be there is no threat that justifies an attack.
Vice President Richard Cheney, perhaps the most powerful Vice-President in US history is clearly a fundamentalist in his decision making process.
“The One Percent Doctrine,” refers to an operating principle that he says Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind’s words, ”if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” He quotes Mr. Cheney saying that it’s not about ”our analysis,” it’s about ”our response,” and argues that this conviction effectively sidelines the traditional policymaking process of analysis and debate, making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action. ”
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Personality, Ideology And Bush’s Terror Wars
The One Percent Doctrine
Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
By Ron Suskind
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DC1E31F933A15755C0A9609C8B63
Given the failures of US policy in Iraq and israeli policy in Lebanon, whiich the US Necocons helped craft, we have to ask whether the fundamentalist approach to decision making is serving our nation well or doing us harm.
Glen, Note 32
Where do we disagree? You know that I have joined you in many criticisms of Bush’s policies, however, I didn’t understand your position to be the “do-nothing” approach we seem to get from Jim.
You and I discussed the possibility of a “containment” policy for Islam. A containment policy could include quite vigorous steps taken to contain, block and punish countries that tolerated jihadi politics and violence within their borders. We have tremendous economic power: trade sanctions and intellectual sanctions can be powerful. We should withdraw aid, restrict trade perhaps to a very, very limited set of humanitarian goods such as medicine, limit the spread of our intellectual capital. We should block access to new interest services that we develop. Starve them out of the modern world, period.
Some professional societies have refused to admit scientists from rogue regimes such as Iran, the thought being that they did not want to promote technology for the use of the Iranian mullahs.
If we were consistent and tough we could have a powerful tool. I wouldn’t rule out selected military actions but I would prefer something more intelligent than what we are doing in Iraq. God bless our noble soldiers who are doing so much despite all the difficulties.
Natan Sharanksy remembers sitting in a Soviet jail and hearing the Reagan described Russia as “an evil empire” and taking heart from that. Most of the people of Iran want the regime to fail. It is going to happen, you know it, the Iranian mullahs are now power drunk and they are itching for a fight, it will happen, pray God that the battles are limited. Iran is a volcano that is rumbling and ready to explode. Don’t you perceive that also?
Missourian writes: “As to San Salvador, I know that its history is complex. I don’t necessarily approve everything done there. HOWEVER, whatever was done there does not negate the principle that I am advancing. You have veered off on an emotional side issue rather than address my rather simple premise.”
It is not emotional, and it does negate the principle you are advancing. The principle of “confronting evil” makes no sense at all in a foreign policy context. You can’t say that if Saddam kills a thousand innocent people he’s the paragon of evil, but if a government we’re friends with does that then, well, you know, it’s a complex situation, war is hell, etc.
We get in bed with all sorts of evil dudes all the time. The problem with our buddies in El Salvador was just that they were so bloody that they became an embarrassment. Maybe our involvement there was a good idea; maybe it was a bad idea. The point is that our policy then was based on what was perceived to be in the best interest of the country. People can disagree about what the best interest is and how it is best served. But the point is to advance the interest of the country, not to confront evil.
Missourian: “When, Jim, do you think we should react? I am not suggesting that we should bluntly declare war, but, I am suggesting that we should react. If the world thinks we are ineffectual bumbling superpower we will be kicked hard by all who want what is inside our pinata, because they cannot create it themselves.”
Here you are not talking about confronting evil, but about reacting to legitimate threats. You do that by diplomacy, agreements, treaties, and military force, if necessary.
But ask yourself this: going into this situation with all of these new or developing threats, wouldn’t it have been nice to have had the support of the world behind us that we had after 9/11? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an army that wasn’t worn out? Wouldn’t it be nice to have that $300 billion we’ve spent “fighting evil” in Iraq? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have screwed the pooch in Iraq, and not have things falling apart there? In other words, we go off to fight evil in Iraq, thus squandering our influence and other resources that should have been expended elsewhere.
Missourian: “Since Viet Nam all they [the Democrats] have done is denigrate our military . . .”
Look, it takes a number of years for an administration to leave a definitive mark on the U.S. military. What that means is that we kicked Taliban butt in Afghanistan with Bill Clinton’s army, and went through Iraq like a hot knife through butter with Bill Clinton’s army. So he must have done something right.
Note 33. It’s still a bogus model, Dean. Strip Cheney, Bush, any person out of the equation and what do you have left? Not much. As far as I can see it’s the model used to attack the religious right (“fundamentalist” is a perjorative, not an analytical term) applied to foreign policy. It’s flawed for these reasons: 1) there is no monolithic religious right in electoral terms (painting social conservatives as “fundamentalists” also includes Reagan Democrats for example and is thus not accurate); and 2) it purely a defensive attack (no positive principle stated), and 3) more people recognize that the war on terror has a moral dimension (Muslims are waking up at least some Americans it seems).
Hofstader’s attack will have some have some cultural currency because it echoes the attack used in the culture wars. But it’s influence is diminishing because all it really does is neutralize the moral critique from the conservative side without stating a counter-principle. This is why, as I said, Wallis, Edgar, et.al. are hard at work. Thy are trying to craft one to give the critique from the left on Iraq, Lebanon, etc. some moral bite. A counter principle is needed in order to launch a credible cultural counteroffensive regarding foreign policy.
Will the left succeed? There might be some short term electoral gains but the victories will be short lived. If the election were held today, I think Republicans would still win despite their bungling, although this is due more to Democratic weakness that Republican strength. This could change depending on what the next month holds.
In the larger picture, the moral relativism afflicting the left renders them powerless in the face of Islamic evil. Hofstader would say calling the threat evil is dualistic, fundamentalistic, all the usual perjoratives. I argue that the inability to recognize evil is the rotten fruit or moral relativism.
So, for example, the relativist can’t really argue that a beheading is wrong — oh, he might experience revulsion at the act, he might despise even thinking about it, but he cannot say with any certainty it is wrong — if he thinks, say, a partial birth abortion is right. Why? Because he has abandoned the precept “Thou shalt not kill.” (And yes, I think the dismembering children in the womb is evil too.)
So here we stand Dean. You in a party that has abandoned its once noble heritage for a bowl of pottage. I left the party after Carter. But still, here I stand without a morally informed and committed party needed to keep the other one in line.
These are perilous times and the peril we face is largely our own doing. We have abandoned the faith of our fathers and face an enemy that seeks to bury that faith and subject us not as citizens, but dhimmis, to finally make the abandonment complete. Yes, this conflict is nuanced. Yes it will take great analytical skill to understand it properly and comprehensively and take appropriate actions. But don’t be fooled. This is an implacable and determined enemy. Wishful thinking of the kind Hofstader provides, no matter how elegantly stated, is still wishful thinking.
RE: Numbers 22 & 28. Sorry, but your double standard is showing. When Israel sends Mossad agents to other countries, not to kidnap, but to assasinate leaders of terrorist organizations is that an act of war?
When the CIA kidnapped Khaled Masri, a German of Lebanese ancestry, took him to a secret prison under the policy of ” extraordinary rendition” and beat starved and tortured him for 5 months before realizing he was not the man they were looking for, and then dumped him without any money on a hilltop in Albania, was that an act of war?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678155.shtml
Jim, define “world” define “support”
Naive in the extreme here.
Define “world.”
You can’t mean the United Nations when you use the term “world.” The United Nations has been proven corrupt to the core so you can’t possibly mean we should court the United Nations.
You can’t mean “the majority of countries” when you use the term “world.” Most other countries are NOT democracies which respect the rights of their citizens as we attempt imperfectly to do here. Most countries are dictatorships with restricted press freedoms, etc. Trying to obtain the approval of “the world” means trying to obtain the approval of a group of countries the guding principles of which are antithetical to our own.
Define “support”
Other countries have their own interests. Other countries will persue their own interests. Some of the support that you saw after 9/11 was genuine and it arose from various individuals or organizations. The “support” consisted of sending a condolence note. At the very same time that you believe the “world” supported us, there were many voices claiming that we deserved to have random citizens incinerated. Support which consists of a few condolence notes and a few candlelight vigils (that powerful tool) does virtually nothing when the rubber hits the road.
France is actively working with Hizbollah and if you can’t see that you have no idea what an ally is or what support is.
Missourian writes: “Define ‘support.’”
You can get the kind of support that followed the 9/11 attacks:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/defense/enduringfreedom.html
The list goes on for a long time. Check it out — it’s on the White House web site.
This was back when the administration actually tried to do things the right way.
So you can do things with support, or you can go without and bear virtually all the casualties and expense on your own.
So now we are quoting the White House are we?
Pledges versus performance
Jim, most of the pledges have not been fulfilled. The situation was bad enough that Karzai had to return to Europe to beg that the original pledges actually be fullfilled by real cash. The same is true with Iraq.
Compliance with international terror tracking has been mixed. In some cases, individual French judges (who combine the role of judge and prosecutor as we know them in the U.S.) have been very brave and aggressive in tracking terror subjects. In other cases, local judges have blocked extradition to the U.S. for prosecution AND have thrown out charges lodged by local prosecutors. See Germany for some egregious cases.
With reference to NATO, most of those planes came from the United States. France does not participate in the military aspect of NATO and hasn’t for decades. In point of fact, Canada now LACKS an effective and modern combat helicopter which limits the usefulness of Canadian troops.
One of the most important tools, tracking international banking transaction, has been compromised by the New York Times in the interest of some vague concept of human rights, probably the concrete concept that Pinch Sulzberger (who individually controls a big mouthpiece by inheritance) wants Bush to fail more than he wants America to succeed.
Now you think all these things are good and should be promoted? That is not what the ACLU and the Dems say. Nothing Bush has done to protect us has been acceptable, every protective and proactive attempt to interdict terror has been described as fascistic overreach by the Presidency. Go figure the Left.
Jim H. Back when the White House tried to do things the right way?
Ahah, mon amie, you admit zhat zhere existed a time when BushChimpiHitler actually did sumpzing zee “right way.”
Pray tell when did he lose his way? When he acted along to enforce a U.N. resolution?
What would the level of success be in Iraq if Europe had thrown its full support into the project?
What would the level of success be in Lebanon if France were not a de facto Hizb Allah (Army of Allah) ally?
So tell me zhat, mon ami cher
Reality 101, Find the “ally” in this list, Jim Holman
France has thrown its lot in with the Muslim world, for reasons of its own, and it believes that sticking it to Jews and the United States is worth the suicide of its own cultural tradition. Make no mistake about it, liberte, equality and fraternity is not the way of sharia. There are about forty years to go before Notre Dame will look like Hagia Sophia. France has developed over 300 “no-go” zones where legitimate French police, fire and government officials cannot enter without the consent of the Muslim gangs that form a de-factor alternative government within the territories they control. Those territories are growing in size, number and population. The post-Christian, secularized French are reproducing at a lackadaisical pace that cannot begin to match the 6 to 8 children produced by nearly every Muslim family. Do the math, it is called exponential expansion.
Belgium is much like France in domestic and foreign policy.
Scandanavia, home of my ancestors, is virtually lost to the West. Sweden cannot or will not stop the influx of unassimilatable Muslims. Indigenous Swedes with high eduation levels are actually exiting the country in larger and larger numbers every year. The centers of most major Swedish cities are similar “no-go” zones for non-Muslims.
Germany has an impacted Turkish population that is nearly ungovernable in public schools. Female Christian teachers are abused and harassed by Muslim students because they do not wear head covers. Turkish students refuse to study the Holocaust or the thinkers of the Enlightenment. They refuse to participate in swim class or various sports.
In England, Muslims are similarly building up densely populated neighborhoods tht they virtually control to the exclusion of the police. Just recently Muslim leaders, who have been feted and petted by the English government, have stated that England should institute Sharia law for Muslim families. The reasoning is that by giving Muslim “equal rights” young Muslim men would be less likely to blow up their fellow English citizens. In other words, they are openly asking for Sharia.
I ask you Jim, do you think that these countries are really are allies? They contribute very little to NATO and a huge percentage of their population is working in conjunction with the Muslim world against the United States and Israel. Time to wake up and discard illusions about all these allies who would have helped us if only John Kerry were President.
Missourian writes: “Ahah, mon amie, you admit zhat zhere existed a time when BushChimpiHitler actually did sumpzing zee “right way.” Pray tell when did he lose his way? When he acted along to enforce a U.N. resolution?
As I have mentioned several times in this forum, I thought Bush did exactly the right things with Afghanistan. The mission wasn’t perfect, but then nothing is. But he had overwhelming support, even among my very liberal friends. I’m not hesitant to give credit where credit is due, and frankly, had the administration’s policies been as sound post-Afghanistan, I would be a Bush supporter today. For me, this is not about politics, but about performance.
Where did the administration go wrong? I fear from the very start. We know from many sources that they were interested in an invasion of Iraq from the start. Cooler heads might have prevailed, but alas, they did not. In fact, cooler heads ended up being decapitated, so to speak.
The tragedy is that Bush could have been a great president, even one of the greatest.
“RE: Numbers 22 & 28. Sorry, but your double standard is showing. When Israel sends Mossad agents to other countries, not to kidnap, but to assasinate leaders of terrorist organizations is that an act of war?”
No, your moral relativism is showing. Israel’s civilization is not a terrorist barbarism. It’s that simple. See Fr. Jacobse note 36. Moral relativism is no more a guide to foreign policy than it is to internal policy, thus your empty name calling “Cheney the fundamentalist” and the like is, well empty (morally and intellectually)…
Note 43, Jim Holman, Interested in invading Iraq from the very start
The premise of your note is that it is unquestionable that the invasion of Iraq had to be a debacle. This is unpatently untrue for the following reasons.
I suggest that the proper framework of analysis for the Iraq war is that the invasion of 2003 is simply a continuation and completion of the 1991 action to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Christopher Hitchens argues this quite powerfully in many writings.
There were and are substantial policy reasons to remove Saddam from power; included among those policies was the enforcement of United Nations arms control resolutions. Saddam was seeking WMD. The sanctions regime was actually enriching Saddam and giving him greater opportunity to acquire or develop WMD. Pakistan had plenty of rogue scientists willing to promote the technology world wide. He had to be removed. He was a rogue with the capacity and will to do great damage. The world is better place now that he is gone EVEN with the violence in Iraq.
What question that remains is what to do in the control once you have removed Saddam? There were many different policies which could have been persued in Iraq. Some would have been better than others.
I have two critiques of Bush’s policies. First, his administration displays a lack of appreciation for the nature of Islamic culture and how it differs from our world view. Islam and the West look at the world from a very, very different perspective. Dean suggests that we need to see what we have in common with Islam. I suggest that Americans are suffering from the delusion that Islam is a religion somewhat comparable to Judaism or Christianity. Not so. Second, Bush did not seem to have a plan to deal with the inevitable influx of fighters from Syria and Iran. I don’t like playing defense on a fixed piece of territory. Iran can send batallion after batallion of fighters into Iraq to disrupt the post-Saddam era. Al-Sadr is a total Iranian tool and agent and he appears to be operating with almost complete impunity. Our failing was to allow Sadr to continue to work against us. We have taught Iraqis that they are free to work against America quite openly, including maintaining their own mini-army, and America does nothing. Sadr is clearly the murderer of many yet he remains free. He needs to be disposed of for his crimes and as an example. Iraq is wilder than the Wild West and America has assumed that the population would be as docile as the conquered Japanese. Not so.
As I have discussed with Glen, I think I would have preferred a very tough and meaningful policy of containment of Islam, combined with a very tough and meaningful policy of requiring our so-called European “allies” to get with the program and stop playing their double game with the Arabs. Look at our immigration system, jihadis can get into the United States with little or no effort, it is a total joke.
So, many people state that they fear another 9/11. The smart jihadi strategy would be to wear us down psychologically, economically and culturally rather than to create another 9/11. Our internal strife is so high, our culture is so weakened that they can win without war as they are in Europe.
Questions for Jim Holman
Do you acknowledge that a process of Islamization is occurring in Europe?
Do you scknowledge that Muslims are effective political players in European domestic polictics?
How would you respond to a request by American Muslims for the application of sharia law to American Muslims?
Missourian writes: “I suggest that the proper framework of analysis for the Iraq war is that the invasion of 2003 is simply a continuation and completion of the 1991 action to evict Iraq from Kuwait.”
Even if that is true, the question is why that had to be a priority, especially when we were already involved in Afghanistan.
But I have a more fundamental problem with it. As we know from a number of sources, Bush was interested in an invasion of Iraq the first month he was in office, long before 9/11 and the GWOT. But all during the presidential campaign, there was never any hint that that was his intention. In fact, he indicated the opposite — denouncing Clinton’s “nation-building” and so on. So I believe that Bush and others knew exactly what their intentions were, but intentionally withheld that during the campaign, which means that people reallyl didn’t know what they were voting for.
Missourian: “He was a rogue with the capacity and will to do great damage. The world is better place now that he is gone EVEN with the violence in Iraq.”
But the issue there is one of priority. To the extent that Saddam was on the threat list, he surely was several entries down the list, not at the top. Now we have Iran and North Korea actively pursuing nuclear technology — not potentially but actually — and we are tied down elsewhere. We have continuing problems in Afghanistan and a tremendous amount of unfinished business there, and resources are taken from there to be used in Iraq.
Missourian: “Iraq is wilder than the Wild West and America has assumed that the population would be as docile as the conquered Japanese. Not so.”
“America” never assumed that; Bush & Co. did. There was no surprise. Many knew exactly what would happen. The problem is that the administration had to sell the war on the cheap. Had they said that it was going to take 400,000 or more troops, several years, and hundreds of billions of dollars to intervene in Iraq, imagine the reaction. Instead they sold it on the cheap — 150,000 troops, welcomed with candy and flowers, snip out the bad guys, graft in the good guys (who would also be friendly to us), within six months we start to pull out, and the oil revenues pay for reconstruction. It was a total fantasy, but that’s how they had to sell it.
It you wanted to shut down the insurgents and terrorists, control all the weapons caches, and control the borders, that’s fine, but you can’t do that with the people we have there. And they were told that up front. The dissenting opinions were shut down or ignored. And we in the reality-based community are rightly outraged. As far as I’m concerned, at this point, anyone who supports Bush deserves him.
Note 47, The Democratic Party was clueless.
A party which chooses John Kerry as its presidential candidate is and was clueless.
Jim, the sanctions were unraveling and Saddam was getting wilder and wilder every day. Remember we had all those “allies” that could have joined us in enforcing the United Nations resolution to disarm Saddam. They did because with only a few exception they are faux allies. They still would have been faux allies if John Kerry had been elected.
As to “planning to invade Iraq” all along I don’t think there is enough definite proof from reliable sources to confirm that. The United States maintains attack plans on every country in the world. The idea of chasing around trying to pin down Bush’s internal mental state is a waste of time.
There is not a single Democrat in an leadership position in any place in this country that stated that Iraq was headed for disaster because of thenature of Islamic society because they have already sold out to the Islamic vote in America. Dingle said that he didn’t condemn Hizballah and his wasn’t taking sides between Israel and Hizballah. He said that to please his Detroit Muslim constituents.
By the way, an Executive is elected to decide. He may choose to listen to advisers but he is under no compunction to follow their advise. He was elected they weren’t. At any given time in government there are people who are arguing for each of all possible positions. It is always possible to find someone in government who will say “if they had only listened to me.” Grumbling bureaucrats are a dime a dozen and they mean nothing. The buck stops with the executive, period.
Things seem much better in Iraq right now. They’re mandating that you put diapers on your goat or be killed for indecency. Too tempting for local shepherds apparently.
Jim H. wrote:
So Jim I would love to see the WH press release as evidence that everything would be accomplished in a few months?