who’s fault is that? Current president was hell bent on destroying everything that was accomplished and he succeeded in doing just that by not only pulling troops out, but announcing he was going to long before he actually did- Taliban simply went into hiding till we left- and now we are seeing the disastrous results of an inept president’s handling of the war- a president who naively things that ‘being nice’ to the enemy will win their hearts and souls- either that or he is ACTIVELY AIDING and ABBETTING the enemy by making things very easy for them- What else can explain his letting prisoners of war go so they can go back and murder more American soldiers? Sure Bush let some go as well however, they were NOT high level officers in the terrorist faction like the recent released prisoners were- Also, what else can explain his lifting sanctions on Iran? What else can explain his failure to act to save Coptic Christians?
President Bush and ALL of congress heard the cries from those Iraqi refugees- and they responded- many people think we went to war simply because Bush wanted a war- or simply because there were WMD’s (which EVERY memember of congress was convinced- via intel reports from all over the world, existed- and quite frankly HAVe been found, and WERE witnessed y our troops o nthe field)-
Saddam had repeatedly violated international laws against peacetime airspace, firing on, and killing our men and women in the forces- We gave him several chances to comply with un regulations and he refused- He also kept directly threatening us, and there was intel at the time of the tower attacks that the terrorists were aligned with Saddam-
We also went to war- per approval of EVERY member of congress- to stop a genocidal maniac that was the modern day hitler of our times- The world turned it’s back on such a brutal dictator once before, and millions of people were exterminated- until we finally recognized and reacted to the the horrors and stepped in to stop it-
Every member of congress heard and saw photos of the brutality that Saddam was doing against his own people- and when Saddam went in and used WMD on his own people, killing more than 10,000 of his own people- there was no longer any question that he had to be taken out- He was violating UN laws- He was committing mass atrocities, he was using WMD’s against his own people, He was murdering our soldiers long before we ever declared war on him- He had every opportunity to stop, but he thumbed his nose at us and continued right on with his psychotic and dangerous actions- He was repeatedly and directly threatening us, and based on his actions, and based on what had just happened to us Sept 11, it was very clear that saddam was in the process of carrying out his threats—
A miscalculation of such magnitude simply boggles the mind. This was not a secret conspiracy plotted in the shadowy caves of Afghanistan. To the contrary, Saddam Hussein had broadcast his ambitions and his intentions to the whole world. He amassed tens of thousands of men and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment on Kuwait’s border in full view of U.S. spy satellites and Western news reporters. Yet so few believed him. Why? How could people so smart, so well versed in ancient and modern history, and so well informed by the best classified intelligence money can buy have so badly misread the situation?
Again, the answer lies not in the failure of inteligence gathering per se but a failure of imagination. The experts simply refused to believe that Saddam was so evil that he would order the rape and pillaging of an Arab neighbor. They refused to believe that he was so evil that he would launch thirty-nine Scud missiles against Israel, and more Scuds against Saudi Arabia. What’s more, they refused to believe Saddam when he described himself as a “modern Nebuchadnezzar,” one of the most evil tyrants ever described in the Bible. And therin lies the problem.
Too many in Washington today have a modern, Western, secular mind-set that either discounts – or outright dismisses – the fact that evil is a real and active force in history. They insist on interpreting events only through the lenses of politics and economics. Yet to misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it, and that is precisely what happened on August 2, 1990, and September 11, 2001. Washington was blindsided by an evil it did not understand, just as it had been blindsided by Auschwitz, Dachau, and Pearl Harbor, and much as I believe it will be blindsided by future events (pp. 46-77).
Joel Rosenberg