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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (174019)	11/3/2005 9:58:14 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "And I like to think we're choosing our own battlefield, rather than letting them choose it for us." Just because you "like to think" something doesn't make it even remotely true. Bush chose the battlefield, but he failed to choose wisely. If he'd known in advance what he was getting in to he wouldn't have left the occupation so badly planned (as you yourself admitted at the time). Hope is not a plan. What you're trying to do is to fight fire with fire; that is, to fight violence with violence. Fighting fire with fire only works when you have good intelligence about exactly where the fire is, and about exactly what the effect of the fires you start will be. You have neither. Osama bin Laden is still running around loose, but even if he were not, his minions would still be multiplying. US military occupation stirs up the locals against us. The number of attacks on our troops continues to increase. Just a couple of weeks ago you were talking about the secret information you had about a great victory against the enemy. Now the month of October has ended. It was one of the worst ever. Now our guys are talking about having to INCREASE the number of targets we have in the country. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (174019)	11/3/2005 9:27:55 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Just because I happened to have dug up this article, here's a little counterpoint: HawkMoon howling: I don't want to wait.. And I like to think we're choosing our own battlefield, rather than letting them choose it for us... Bergen / Reynolds on that much flogged propaganda point: IN BAGHDAD AND IN BOSTON President George W. Bush and others have suggested that it is better for the United States to fight the terrorists in Baghdad than in Boston. It is a comforting notion, but it is wrong on two counts. First, it posits a finite number of terrorists who cI an be lured to one place and killed. But the Iraq war has expanded the terrorists’ ranks: the year 2003 saw the highest incidence of significant terrorist attacks in two decades, and then, in 2004, astonishingly, that number tripled. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously complained in October 2003 that “we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror.” An exponentially rising number of terrorist attacks is one metric that seems relevant.) Second, the Bush administration has not addressed the question of what the foreign fighters will do when the war in Iraq ends. It would be naive to expect them to return to civilian life in their home countries. More likely, they will become the new shock troops of the international jihadist movement. For these reasons, U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the United States itself, are vulnerable to blowback. Disturbingly, some European governments are already seeing some of their citizens and resident aliens answer the call to fight in Iraq. In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. troops in Iraq had detained three French militants—and that police in Paris had arrested ten associates who were planning to join them. In June, authorities in Spain arrested 16 men, mostly Moroccans, on charges of recruiting suicide bombers for Iraq. In September, prosecutors in the United States indicted a Dutch resident, Iraqi-born Wesam al-Delaema, for conspiring to bomb U.S. convoys in Fallujah. These incidents presage danger not only for European countries, but also for the United States, since European nationals benefit from the Visa Waiver Program, which aªords them relatively easy access to the United States. But it is Saudi Arabia that will bear the brunt of the blowback. Several studies attest to the significant role Saudi nationals have played in the conflict. Of the 154 Arab fighters killed in Iraq between September 2004 and March 2005, 61 percent were from Saudi Arabia. Another report concluded that of the 235 suicide bombers named on Web sites since mid-2004 as having perpetrated attacks in Iraq, more than 50 percent were Saudi nationals. Today, the Saudi government is exporting its jihadist problem instead of dealing with it, just as the Egyptians did during the Afghan war.