It's more than just about Iraq. It's about trying to create positive change in the region, even if we have to pummel every militant leader into submission in the process and make them frightened to confront us.
The problem is--who are the "militant leaders"? The military used to say that there were only about 5000 or so people who were actively opposing us. Just as they continue to say that we've made such great progress in capturing or killing about 2/3 of the the leaders of Al Qaeda (I just read a different quote to that effect saying that we've killed or captured about 2/3 of Al Qaeda). Do you believe what they are saying? Do you think that they believe what they are saying, even if they may have (foolishly) believed it once?
It is nonsense. And what many people who opposed this from the beginning surely has come to pass--that the number of "militant" leaders and followers has grown, shot off into many directions, and has become even more dangerous than it was before.
And it sure doesn't help when we have people like yourself, Hans Blix, and the intransigent French complicating the problem by claiming that the region was "safer" prior to the US overthrow of Saddam..
Because that's just BS.. The militancy has been there for years. All we've done is unveil and expose it. And since it's this militancy that is the source of Islamic terrorism against the US, then it's a legitimate target for a war on terror.
As you can tell, I don't believe it is BS. Yes, some militancy was there. But Saddam was waving his magic wand of illusions, fooling everyone into believing that he was strong when he was really the Wizard of Oz, but nonetheless achieving a strange sort of stability in Iraq. Yes, it is nice that he is gone; especially nice that his sons are gone. But we've complicated an already complicated situation. The degree of militancy has increased. We haven't just "exposed" it, we've increased it, fanned it. And there are all sorts of still unexploded bombs ready to go off in the area. The Shia bomb is only one. The Kurd bomb is laying in the distance--when the Shia confront the Kurds on the issue of who gets what and how the government will really be run--that will be a looloo of a fight. The Kurds will assert themselves, the Shia will assert themselves, the Iranians and Turks will likely get involved somehow to keep the Kurds down and protect the Shia and the Turkamen. This is realism, IMO, not the following:
We have to fight the militant movement, but at the same time, it's our responsibility to show the muslim world that we care enough about them to provide them an alternative solution that will provide hope for their futures.
You act like the "muslim world" is some monolith. "They" are a fiction, though many people including many muslims pretend otherwise. All politics are local. It is stunning to me that the Bush admin neglected that principle. |
