That is a mostly absurd piece. Just to take a few points:
Thirty-six dead in a series of suicide bombings in Baghdad? The chump change of strategy. Cold-blooded, but true.
Aside from the facts that this is easy to say when its not you or your child being killed and 36 is only 1/10 of the number killed so far, it doesn't begin to address either the justice, the wisdom, or, to be "cold-blooded" about it, the effectiveness of this invasion to actually defeat our real enemies in this war.
* Another American soldier killed in a roadside bombing? Every lost service member matters, but at the present casualty rate it would take 15 years for our dead in Iraq to surpass the number of Americans butchered on 9/11. Better to fight like lions than to die like sheep.
So we're supposed to keep this up until nearly 3000 soldiers are dead? Better to fight intelligently rather than in a place where we don't know the culture, the language, or the customs, where we put our soldiers in a hopelessly confusing and dangerous position of not truly knowing who to arrest or kill, while our real enemies get a propaganda boost from our actions.
* Iraq another Vietnam? Hell, even Vietnam wasn't the Vietnam of left-wing baby-talk politics and campus political astrology. Our Vietnamese enemies represented a mass movement. The Iraqi terrorists represent a small, bloodthirsty movement to oppress the masses.
OK, fair enough that "our enemies" in Vietnam represented a true nationalist movement of freedom fighters (to use the term that the right wing loves so much) struggling to free their country from colonialists (first the French and then, from the Vietnamese POV, their proxies, the Americans and the maybe 10-15% of the Vietnamese who supported and benefitted from them). I question whether we have the wherewithal to actually kill or pacify our opponents in Iraq at an acceptable cost as well as conduct the war that we should be conducting against Al Qaeda.
* Did Operation Iraqi Freedom create terrorists? No. It terrorized the terrorists. Now it's flushing them out of their hiding places. We'll be killing and capturing them for years. But that's the only approach that works.
Nonsense. We won't only "be killing and capturing them for years," our approach guarantees that we'll be creating new ones as well. If we are "flushing them out of their hiding places," why can't we find them? It is mystifying how we are "terrorizing" them, as their attacks have just increased over the past 4 months. Our casualties in Vietnam until 1965 were pretty small too. And that was 4-12 years into the war, depending on how you count it. He is advocating a "kill the flea" approach--if it lands on you, swat it and kill it, get rid of it. This belief that this is "the only approach that works" is nonsense, it is a pretense, it won't work in the long run, because we won't and can't kill enough of "them".
* Has the War on Terror made Americans less safe? Despite the dishonest claims of Democratic presidential hopefuls, the answer is an unequivocal "No!" Where is the evidence that we're in greater danger now? Where are the terrorist attacks on our cities?
In this war, the only measurement that matters is the absence of attacks. Since 9/11, our government has taken the war to the terrorists and kept us remarkably safe.
The attacks of Al Qaeda have, so far at least, generally come years apart. It is certainly true that we have made some headway against them, jailing or killing many of their leaders. The problem is when their leaders are killed, others step in. It is the proverbial "hydra". Once could have said for a couple of years after the first WTC bombing in '93, gee there haven't been any bombings, we must be safe now, kudos for our government. At least until the embassy bombings of '97 (I may have the year wrong there, but it was years after the WTC truck bomb.) Sure, we've disrupted them. But we haven't eliminated them, and have depended on intelligence and aid from foreign sources to do as much as we have done. But our actions in Iraq has helped to alienate the very sources that have been required to make the headway we have made against Al Qaeda. This invasion has been counter productive, not helpful.
*The proof of our success in this war is the undisturbed routine of our daily lives.
That can always be said. Human beings are resilient. One could also say that the WTC destruction has been used by the admin to do things that they wanted to do anyway, the threat to our daily lives has been exaggerated for this purpose. It was one attack, albeit a spectacular one. OK, you could say it was four attacks, I suppose. But one plan, one day--the DC sniper didn't kill more people but caused more havoc to the daily routines of people in the DC area. Neither I nor other opponents of the Iraqi action are saying the Al Qaeda and extremist Islam doesn't represent a threat--we dispute the belief that the Iraqi invasion has served to lessen that threat.
* How long can the Iraqi terrorists maintain this pace of attacks? We don't know. The Iraqi terrorists themselves don't know. But we should be encouraged, not discouraged, that the best they can do is to ram a few suicide wagons into public buildings. They're not overrunning our troops. They're desperately scraping up all the suicide drivers they can. It's only surprising that they've been able to find so few.
Of course they're not "overrunning our troops." They couldn't even begin to do that, and that isn't their strategy. We are where they live. It is us that don't belong there. It is us who has somewhere else to go when we get tired of this BS. They don't. "It's only surprising that they've been able to find so few [suicide bombers]"--one of the more ridiculous statements he made, as if it is ever "easy" to find suicide bombers. "We should be encouraged, not discouraged"--a nice cheerleading thing to say, but gives the previous comment a run for the money for being ridiculous. It might have merit if the number and sophistication of the attacks were on a downward slope. But the opposite is true. And we continue to piss Iraqi's off. We show absolutely no insight into the real situation on the ground. If you needed any proof of this, just reflect a moment on the "troops in Turkey" fiasco. We go and bribe the Turks into sending troops, without for a moment realizing that almost no one in Iraq wanted them there. Even our own puppet govt told us so in advance, but we persisted. Then after the Turkish govt finally agreed to send 10,000 troops in (against the wishes the overwhelming majority of their own people!), the IRC voted unanimous against accepting them. The Bremer crew scratched their heads in disbelief. But somehow Bush supporters still believe that Bremer's crew and the Bush admin know what they're doing, know what's happening over there. Sure they know how to build schools and bridges--but they don't know have a clue what goes on in the schools or where the bridges are leading. The Turkey business is only the latest of fantasy gaffes which began by believing Chalabi, and believing that this guy could come back to Iraq after a 40 year absence and be coronated King, oops, I mean elected President. Sure he can do neocon speak ok, but what does that have to do with the Iraqi people?! Do the neocons think that they are as sheeplike as many Americans appear to be?
* Do the Iraqi people support the terrorists? No. The Iraqi people just want to live in peace - without Saddam. They don't want our troops to stay forever, but few want us to leave tomorrow. The terror attacks will keep reminding them why they don't want the old regime back. What should we expect in Iraq? Imperfect results. It's an imperfect world. But even a partial success in establishing basic human rights, the rule of law and some form of democracy would be an unprecedented triumph in the region.
Well, he's certainly right in saying that we will get "imperfect results." The question of course is, how imperfect? He thinks the situation can be made bearable. I think that we have set the country up for years of civil war at best. Sure, maybe it'll be off and on. Maybe it will simmer for awhile, then explode, then simmer again. But there is so much deepseated hatred there, so many long standing antipathies and conflicting agendas, it is nearly inevitable, just as our own Civil War over slavery was nearly inevitable. It's building now. If a lot of Iraqi people didn't support Saddam and the "terrorists," we would be catching more of them, they wouldn't be able to hide. As it is, most of them get away. Sure some get caught. But plenty don't. It's a big country, apparently with more weapons per capita than I ever dreamed. The anti-US crowd doesn't require majority support, just a good sized minority in that environment will do the trick.
* Why are so few nations willing to help us? Because many political leaders want us to fail. Because the United States has returned to its original ideals, supporting freedom, self-determination, the rights of the individual and simple human decency.
Why hasn't it struck those who make this argument as odd that, if indeed the US is in this for idealistic reasons, very few other countries agree. Do the proponents of this view really believe that if countries and peoples around the world thought that this was a just war, they would be criticizing the US? Was there criticism of the US after Afghanistan was bombed? Is the US so utterly inept in PR that they can't even make a strong case against an obvious dictator like Saddam?
Our example terrifies every one of Iraq's neighboring governments and infuriates the Europeans - who long profited from their political love affairs with dictators, even as they damned America for similar behavior.
The US has "long profited from their political love affairs with dictators" too. The only real reasons Saddam was chosen were because he pissed off Bush Jr., oil, his country is potentially extremely wealthy (generating those seductive neocon fantasies that the war would be self-financing), and he was threatening to use the Euro instead of the dollar to price his oil, thus attacking the US dollar. |
