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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (155806)	1/10/2005 10:19:07 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I was going to post Clarke's article when I first read it, but I think it's sort of hysterical in general. Just to irritate, though, I'll post his conclusions, which seem to be somewhat diametrically opposed to what W's faithful have dedicated themselves to promulgating in the past 2 or 3 years. "Mission Accomplished" and all that. Could the global war on terror have played out differently? If the war had been restricted to eliminating al-Qaeda in the two years following 9/11, it is possible that the first generation might have been suppressed before al-Qaeda metastasized into a multi-group jihadi movement. In 2002 especially, we squandered opportunities to unite the global community in a successful counterterrorism effort. If we had initially sent a more substantial U.S. force to Afghanistan, bin Laden might have been killed in the first few weeks of the war, perhaps preventing many of the attacks that took place around the world in the following three years. Had we not invaded Iraq, many of the jihadis we know today would never have been recruited to the terrorists' cause. Not invading Iraq would also have freed up money for earlier investments in domestic security: for instance, upgrades for chemical plants, trains, container shipping, and computer networks. Because we developed most such protective measures too late, panicking under political pressure, we too often used brute-force methods that were costly, intrusive, and less effective than we hoped. With more time, money, and careful consideration, the body politic might have persuaded the private sector to join the federal government in a real partnership to enhance the security of critical infrastructure. More important, we would have been better able to carry on an open national dialogue about the tradeoffs between security and civil liberties, and about the ways in which strong civil liberties and strong domestic security can be mutually reinforcing. Perhaps, too, we could have followed the proposal of the 9/11 Commission and engaged the Islamic world in a true battle of ideas. Indeed, if we had not from the start adopted tactics and rhetoric that cast the war on terror as a new "Crusade," as a struggle of good versus evil, we might have been able to achieve more popular support in the Islamic world. Our attempts to change Islamic opinion with an Arabic-language satellite-television news station and an Arabic radio station carrying rock music were simply not enough. We talked about replacing the hate-fostering madrassahs with modern educational programs, but we never succeeded in making that happen. Nor did we successfully work behind the scenes with our Muslim friends to create an ideological counterweight to the jihadis. Although we talked hopefully about negotiated outcomes to the Palestinian conflict and the struggle in Chechnya, neither actually came to pass. Because we were afraid to "reward bad behavior," we let Iranian nuclear-weapons development get too far along, to the point where our only option was to attack Iran. This set back the Iranian democratic reform movement and added Hizbollah to our list of active enemies. Although we occasionally lectured Arab states about the need for democracy and reform, we never developed a country-by-country program, or provided practical steps for moving theocracies and autocracies in that direction. Moreover, our haranguing Arab governments to be nicer to their citizens ended up producing a backlash against us, because our exhortations were seen as hypocritical in view of our bombing, torture, and occupation tactics in Iraq. It can still be debated whether we accelerated the fall of the House of Saud with our arrogant tactics. The almost total lack of intelligence about what was going on in Saudi Arabia before the revolution did, however, make it hard for U.S. policymakers to develop sound strategies. Despite years of earnest-sounding talk about "energy independence" and weaning ourselves from our addiction to foreign oil, no president since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s has ever seemed serious about these goals. We never developed truly fuel-efficient vehicles, so our foreign energy imports drastically harm the economy when oil prices soar. As early as 2004 our nation's leaders were admitting that the war on terror would probably last a generation or more, even as they continued to argue among themselves about whether it could ever truly be won. If they had acted differently—sooner, smarter—we might have been able to contain what were at one time just a few radical jihadis, and to raise our defenses more effectively. Instead our leaders made the clash of cultures a self-fulfilling prophecy, turning the first part of the twenty-first century into an ongoing low-grade war between religions that made America less wealthy, less confident, and certainly less free.

To: carranza2 who wrote (155806)	1/10/2005 11:11:05 AM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You linked to a bunch of fictional projections of the WOT. Why? I do enjoy SciFi, but my post had zero to do with fiction. Literally more than a million people (1 with 6 zeros after it) die each year in the USA from numerous causes that could be drastically reduced. My argument is that many people are motivated to action or fear only if hit by the equivalent of a graphical 2x4 to the head. 9/11 and the recent tsunami are such graphical 2x4's. If instead, the deaths are isolated ones and twos spread out spatially and temporally, the aggregate suffering drops off the radar screen. Why this should be I don't know. I'm sure some shrink somewhere has an explanation. Look at all the inane chatter about 9/11 changing the world (an opinion you advocate). Well what about 2/26/93? How many people remember that date? Or 4/19/95? The embassy bombings in Africa as well. 9/11 was just the graphical 2x4 for most Americans. Regarding the overall future of the WOT, the fictional accounts you linked are not going to happen, unless the US is really stupid. Stop lying with dogs, end of flea problems. Some of the dogs in the ME are living, some are non-living, like oil.