Posted on 06/30/2004 9:51:34 AM PDT by Theodore R.
The war we're losing
Posted: June 30, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
June 28, the day in 2004 that the Americans transferred sovereignty to Iraqis and proconsul Paul Bremer hastily departed Baghdad, is a day freighted with historic significance.
On June 28, 1914, 90 years before, Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and led, five weeks later, to World War I.
On June 28, 1919, German representatives, their country under an Allied starvation blockade, prostrate before a threat by Marshal Foch to march on Berlin, signed the Versailles treaty that ended World War I and set the stage for Hitler and World War II. Seen as an Allied triumph in 1919, Versailles proved a disaster.
Thus, it is a good time to attempt to draw up an interim profit-and-loss statement of what President Bush has accomplished in what he calls the "War on Terror." Who is winning this war?
To answer that question, we must first ask and answer antecedent questions. What is the war about? What are we fighting for? Who, exactly, is the enemy in this war? What is he fighting for?
Since 9-11, the president's objectives have been to exact retribution for the massacre, overthrow the Taliban enablers of Osama, run al-Qaida out of Afghanistan, remove Saddam, disarm Iraq and defend America. He has attained them all. Yet, 54 percent of Americans believe invading Iraq was a mistake. The nation understands that something has gone wrong.
The nation is right. For what this war is really about is who shall rule in the Islamic world. Will it be the men who share our views and values? Or will it be True Believers who will purge that world of what they see as our odious and corrupt presence?
What our enemies seek in the great Sunni Triangle from Rabat to Chechnya to Mindanao is what the Iranian Revolution achieved: to be rid of the Americans and of rulers that they view as vile puppets of the United States, to purify their societies and to unite their world against the West.
If this is indeed the ultimate goal of the radical Islamists, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a strategic victory for the enemy.
Consider what has happened as a result of our war on Iraq. An enemy of Islamic fundamentalism, Saddam, has been removed. His secular Baath Party is gone. A vacuum has opened up in Iraq that the Islamists and their allies may one day fill. The Arab world has been radicalized and supports the Iraqi resistance in its drive to defeat and expel the Americans.
The destabilization of the Saudi monarchy through terror has begun. Rulers in Arab countries have been forced to distance themselves from the Americans if they wish to retain the support of their people. Western tourists are staying away from the Middle East, Western investment is on hold, and Western workers have begun to depart Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
"There exists today a hatred of Americans never equaled in the region," Egyptian President Mubarak told Le Monde. "In the beginning, some people thought the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred toward Americans. After what happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented hatred, and the Americans know it."
This longtime friend added, "American and Israeli interests are not safe, not only in our region but in other parts of the world, in Europe, in America, anywhere in the world." The war on Iraq into which his neo-conservative advisers prodded the president seems to have ignited the very "war of civilizations" between Islam and America that the president said he wanted to avoid.
Raised to believe in the innate goodness of America and the nobility of her purposes, President Bush finds it hard to believe the best recruiting tool al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgents have is the presence on Iraqi soil of the U.S. soldiers he sent to "liberate" Iraq.
Of late, the president appears to have begun to understand that our presence is a primary cause of the war of resistance and that, when this phase ends, the real war, the civil war to decide which Iraqis rule in Iraq, begins. Will it be Iraqis who wish to belong to the modern world? Or Iraqis who wish to be part of the anti-American Islamic revolution?
War, Clausewitz reminded us, is but the extension of politics by other means. All wars, even wars in which terror is the weapon of choice of the enemy, are about, as Lenin said: "Who? Whom?" Who shall rule whom? And even in an Arab world where monarchs and autocrats now rule, the victors will be those who win the hearts and minds of Arab peoples.
This is the war we are losing. And to win this struggle, the United States needs to do three things that may go against the political interests of both parties: Stand up for justice for the Palestinians. Remove our imperial presence. Cease to intervene in their internal affairs.
We Americans once stood for all that. And if we go only where we are invited, we would be invited more often to come and help.
Shut up Pat. Go back into your bunker.
In the words of Willie Green (not!), "No, Pat, No"
The Allied Forces blew it up a long time ago.
Quoting Mubarak to demonstrate his point - not very impressive.
Pat has missed something. Bush went to war because Saddam was 'killing his own people' and he wanted to make them a Democracy so they would 'love us' and their neighbors. Like the Blues Brothers, Bush and Cheney think they are on a mission from God. This mission Bush may not attain.
What's your problem? Things slow over at DU?
Stand up for justice for the Palestinians. Remove our imperial presence. Cease to intervene in their internal affairs.
Channeling Rachael Corrie.
I wouldn't want to be an American flag in Pat's house.
Buchanan: "The War We're Losing"
Yep. Buchanan is losing his war against the Jews.
Isn't it funny how when Pat is criticizing W, the press stops referring to him as an extremist or an anti-semite?
I am afraid not, Pat. I agree with you on one thing and one thing only: We are now seeing the destruction of America due to the open borders policy of our politicians. When you said that you should have shut up.
Sharon took care of that, Pat. He's cut off the heads of several snakes of Hamas, and the violence seems to be in retreat.
Pat just can't resist taking a shot at Israelis. It's pathological.
There's talk about building a 100 foot steel wall around America and covering it with American-made machine grease. The wall will be called Fortress Buchanan.
Pat is full of crap and a MM wannabe. He might need to gain 200 pounds (of crap) before he's taken seriously.
Err, how many islamic fundamentalists did Saddam turn over to the West? Tell me again how this guy was their enemy? In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, thus Al queda and Sadam are buds, Pat why don't you see this?
Now if you argue that the prosecution of the war was muddled up and that Bush may end up losing the presidency because of this, thats a different matter, but the war was not a mistake. The only mistake was to ever believe the enemy when they say "lets have a cease fire and talk about turning ourselves all into your custody" or words to that extent.
"Quoting Mubarak to demonstrate his point - not very impressive."
excellant point....Mohamed Buchanan has become a total basket case
For being a supposedly strong cold warrior, I would think Pat would be of the opinion that those under tyranny deserve freedom. I guess old age and whiskey have clouded his mind.
The "just leave 'em alone" attitude would have directly led to a Nuclear armed Iraq (thank God for Israel in 1981), could lead to a nuclear armed Iran, and a continuation of a terrorist nest in Afghanistan.
Does he seriously think the Iranian people would elect the despotic Mullahs currently in control? Does he think the Shia and Kurds pine for Saddam's return? Does he think we should abandon the only Democracy, Israel, to the whims of the Arab world? Does he think Libya would have given up its nuclear ambitions if we just minded our own business?
He is delusional, and if he brings up his Ronald Reagan credentials again, I'm going to bitch-slap him.
PJB's views have been listened to by average Americans...and resoundingly rejected three times.
At this point, yep, shut up and go back to your bunker, Patty.
Battles, both political and others are lost, won or tied, but the war is only beginning.
And the Right starts again. He's hated by both sides, so the charges will come from someone depending on whose feathers he's ruffling.
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