Posted on 10/29/2003 7:13:43 AM PST by churchillbuff
It is no small irony that the neocons who denounced this magazine as “isolationist” when we argued against invading and occupying Iraq have left America more isolated than ever before in its history.
We are virtually friendless in Baghdad. Our NATO allies, Brits and Poles excepted, have left us to stew in our own juice. Russia will not help. Japan will not help. The president’s UN address, sandwiched as it was between speeches by Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac, earned perfunctory applause, while they received ovations.
Were it not for our contributions that subsidize the salaries, expense accounts, and pensions of UN employees, America would be as isolated in the “international community” as Ariel Sharon.
Congressional Democrats and their national candidates have begun to scourge the president for Iraq and will extract a pound of flesh before granting his request for $20 billion to rebuild it.
Why are they doing this? First, because voters do not want to spend billions rebuilding Iraq when our states are cutting services and raising taxes. Second, because Democrats are full of bitterness toward President Bush for stampeding them into voting for a war in which they never truly believed. Ashamed of their own cowardice, they intend to punish him for having “misled” them.
Yet, how do they answer this question: if Senators Kennedy and Byrd and Representative Kucinich and Governor Dean could stand up to the heat and say no to war in October 2002, why couldn’t you?
The isolation of America, brought on by Bush’s succumbing to the whispers of neocon tempters about Churchillian immortality has narrowed his choices now to the same three that were left to LBJ and Nixon, once we had committed ourselves to Vietnam.
He can opt for the Aiken Solution, “Declare victory and get out.” He can pursue his “Bring ’em on!” policy and fight the Iraqi guerrillas into a second term. Or he can escalate, attacking what the neocons call the “terror masters” in their privileged sanctuaries: Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Each option entails great risks.
If he follows the mood and mindset of his countrymen and pulls U.S. troops out too rapidly, he risks a collapse into chaos and civil war, which could leave Iraq a haven of terrorists that it never was under Saddam and invite intervention by Turkey or Iran.
If he commits to winning the war and building a democracy, no matter the cost in blood and money, he imperils his presidency. For America never signed on for a postwar war. Moreover, Bush risks ultimate defeat. For there is no sign of a slackening of interest among the Islamic young for a jihad to drive the Americans from Iraq.
What of the third option: escalate and expand the war? If the president intends to pacify the Sunni Triangle and seal the roads to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, he will need far more than the 130,000 U.S. troops currently in country. A U.S. war on Syria would also inflame the Arab world and be supported by no nation save Israel. And what would the overthrow of President Assad’s regime accomplish, other than to give us 17 million sullen Syrian adoptees to go with our 50 million Iraqis and Afghans, the cost of whose day care is constantly rising?
Faced with the three options, each of which entails risks, the president appears to have decided—not to decide.
While understandable, this does not solve his problem, which is this: his present policy is unsustainable. Public support is declining, congressional support is declining, and his poll ratings are declining. If the president intends to fight this war to victory, he must begin to speak and act like a war leader, demanding sacrifices of us all, telling us how and when we can look forward to a triumphal end to the conflict. This President Bush has conspicuously failed to do.
Indeed, his actions—going back, hat in hand, to a UN he called “irrelevant” to ask for help in reconstituting Iraq, going to allies he and Rumsfeld dismissed as “Old Europe” to ask for troops, telling the nation we will transfer power to Iraqis as soon as possible—all point to the Nixonian solution of Iraqization and withdrawal. Back out of the bar with both guns blazing.
In Kevin Costner’s “Thirteen Days” about the Cuban missile crisis, Gen. Curtis LeMay says to JFK, as word comes the missiles are going operational, “Mr. President, you’ve got a problem.”
“No, General,” Kennedy retorts, “We have a problem.”
The president’s problem in Iraq is the result of an unnecessary war. But it is our problem now. Solution: admit the mistake, turn around, get out with all deliberate speed. We liberated Iraq from Saddam, but the future of Iraq is for them to decide, not us.
Young Americans sent to die in Iraq today because there were WMDs in past years? Not a very good bargain.
Sorry, but Blix couldn't find WMDs, and now we can't find them.
The left always asks us to look for causes as to why we were targeted on 9-11. Okay, why?
Every shred of evidence says that OBL's campaign against the U.S. began when we intervened in the Gulf War and kept troops in the holy land of Saudi Arabia after the war was over. No U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, no 9-11.
Why were troops in Saudi Arabia? Because Hussein invaded S.A. in clear violation of international law.
Why did our troops remain in S.A. after the war? Because Iraq refused to comply with its ceasefire obligations, forcing us to maintain a military presence in Saudi Arabia as a deterrent and as a potential hammer to enforce the terms of the ceasefire.
Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with the terms of he ceasefire required us to keep troops in Saudi Arabia, which in turn increased anti-U.S. sentiment, and was the specific motivation for the 9-11 attacks. The only way to eliminate the anti-U.S. sentiment caused by the presence of our troops in S.A. was to eliminate Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq as a military threat.
Quot erat demonstratum.
Did Pat think it was a mistake ?
They are all up to their eyeballs in terror and to even suggest, as Pat does, that there is no link is to dismiss the overwhelming evidence that states otherwise.
U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located. Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.This was also reported months previously by DEBKA and World Net Daily who cited US and Israeli intelligence as sources. To add fuel to the fire, so to speak...Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in tomorrow's new weekly edition.
U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebaon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time.
The powerful blast that reverberated across eastern and central Lebanon Sunday, December 29, was caused by the explosion of a big surface missile in Hizballah hands and of Iraqi origin. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and Lebanese sources reveal that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has recently taken delivery of a shipment of surface missiles, presumed to be medium-range, from the Iraqi army. The blast occurred at a Hizballah training camp near a village called Janta in the northeastern section of the Beqaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. This camp is also used by the group as a testing ground for new weapons, short range missiles and explosive devices. The blast was heard at a distance of 20 km indicating a warhead of one ton at least. According to our sources, the missile exploded suddenly, catching the Hizballah team handling it unawares and causing a large number of casualties, as indicated by the long line of ambulances and rescue teams reported by witnesses to be racing to the blast scene from northern and central Lebanon. Among them were Syrian military rescue vehicles. The Hizballah quickly sealed off the ravaged area, allowing no one through but the rescue teams, their own operatives and Syrian officers.In addition, I have been looking for a story that I heard on talk radio this morning...about a topographer who has stated that after studying hundreds of satellite images pre-war and post war, that he has confirmed the presence of convoys of trucks to the Bekaa Valley area prior to the war beginning and he believes that is where the WMD is. I will post it if I can find it, not sure what source the radio host was using.
I'll put you down in the "no cars and no licenses" camp.
Wherever you send young Americans they can die. They are fighting in a noble cause against terrorism. Some of us have not forgotten September 11th. Our armed forces are taking the fight to the enemy. I want them to go after the sponsoring regimes in Syria and Iran as well because those regimes have American blood on their hands.
Somehow, Pat also strikes me as the sort to eventually earn himself a Darwin Award. He came pretty close the time he started that fight with the cops.
As I have been posting since 9/01, what is required is the occupation and subjection of Arabia and SW Asia.
This, in turn, requires an Army of at least ten million.
It is much worse to fight the Islamists on their own turf and lose that it is to try to make peace with them.
I do not advocate peacemaking, since it simply puts off but does not eliminate the threat to our safety.
I support a wider war.
I do not support provoking chaos in Iraq, and then failing to suppress it.
President Bush and his State Department apparantly really, really believe in the myth of "moderate Muslims", who, once freed from their evil rulers will become happy world citizens.
The Administration wants to build the world a home, and furnish it with love.
They should want to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and listen to the lamentations of their women.
Yes, I know the RATs are worse-much worse.
Yes, I am planning to vote for Bush.
But that does not mean I subscribe to willful self delusion about the war. or about our enemies.
It is not.
What is a disgrace is to fight under the influence of false ideas and false notions about the enemy.
You can be beaten by an enemy-yes, even Arabs, as incredible as that may seem-who understands the conflict better than you do.
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
I was born in 1957. Both my parents were born in 1915, and lived through WWII. From my earliest days it was drilled into my head that had the Allies acted against Hitler WHEN HE WAS IN VIOLATION of the treaty of Versailles BEFORE he was able to build up his armed forces that the war would never have happened. In junior high I learned that at the time of the Berman move into the Rhineland the French had an army FIVE TIMES as big as the Nazis, yet the French did nothing.
You clearly don't learn from history. Why don't you change your screen name to chamberlainbluff.
I share the same sentiment... We must, at once, raise the black flag. Give them no quarter. We must utterly defeat them. It's the only thing an enemy understands.
Say it ain't so, Pat!
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