Chuck, since you asked I'll tell you what I'm talking about. After 9/11 a three year old with a lisp could have made stirring speeches about the "bad terrorists" and the need to fight terrorism. In addition there were obvious things that needed doing and plenty of public and congressional support for spending the money to do them. So the means were there and the will was there. The question was how smart we would act to utilize that will and those resources. I don't look at "any previous administration," I start from there.
The most important factors in fighting terrorism are to garner the support of the governments and the PEOPLE of the world to help in the battle. The terrorists made a big mistake on 9/11 when they killed 3,000 people, many of them non-Americans and some of them Muslims. Those people were given a face by the world and the world didn't like the suffering it saw. We suddenly found Islamic countries that publicly condemned the acts, we saw real sympathy in groups of people in those countries, we saw real acts of anti-terrorism support from those countries and we capitalized on it very successfully. We were set to wage an assault on terrorism at the only level that really counts; that is the stage was set to attack the roots of terrorism and to erode its very lifelines.
Bush totally blew it. He spent a huge percentage of the resources and manpower that could have been used to protect the vulnerabilities here at home or to create good will and better relations in countries whose populations support terrorism. He spent it but he didn't spend it on the battle against the idea of terrorism or the pursuit of terrorists; he spent it invading and occupying a country that had only a MINISCULE role in promoting or fostering anti-American terrorism. Further he committed future funds and manpower to continue to fight that occupation in Iraq; an occupation that is, mark my words, doomed to failure.
In other words, he bet the farm on a sucker bet when he needed the money to pay for his families medical care. That's really, really stupid.
You should take another look at what you call appeasement and I call facing reality and attacking the idea of terror. It's all good to say we need to kill terrorists. Unfortunately they don't wear uniforms we can identify, they aren't afraid to die and there are a lot of them in the larvae stage just waiting for more of the "Bush doctrine" feeding to develop into flies.
If you tell me why I should believe that we're fighting people as opposed to ideas, I'll agree with you that we can kill the people. If we're fighting ideas, however, the ideas will keep living on in the minds and hearts of other people and the death of a few "terrorists" may actually just breed more terrorists who carry the same "idea disease."
History teaches us that the use of force to kill powerful ideas is a fools errand. Look at Vietnam, look at Christianity, look at democracy, look around. Anytime powerful ideas take hold the ideas must be addressed and killing a few of those that hold those ideas is useless. Do you even know what ideas we're fighting in the terrorists and in the billions of people that silently or actively support them? Where's that debate?
I don't dislike Bush as much as I dislike fools. The facts that he's a war wimp and a bully don't help him in my estimation. The really bad guy is Cheney. He's smart enough to know better. And that's all I have to say about that. |
