Course it isn't. It's much worse as it's surrounded by other nations that feel exactly the same way. Trying to keep together a nation molded from a war ending treaty 80 years later is not good foreign policy.
Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result each time. Doing things the way we have done them the last eighty years culimated in 9/11. 3000 people crushed, burned, dismembered, splattered and suffocated, all in the course of about two hours.
I understand the skepticism of thinking it can work.
I am not sure at all if it will work. But I do know one thing: what we did before 9/11 obviously did not work. Doing more of the same will give us more of what we got on 9/11.
There is something else I know. We live in the greatest, most unselfish country in the world. We are a force for good in this world, whether the rest of the world ( or even many in our own countrty ) wants to recognize this basic fact. We are lucky to live here, and the world is lucky to have us.
There have been plenty of things out there on this subject, but two books that echoed my thoughts on this (or I theirs) are: Dinesh Desouza’s book ‘What’s So Great About America’ and Natan Sharansky’s ‘The Case For Democracy’.
One of the things that irks me most about the Left in America, is that listening to them talk about JFK and what a great hero he was just illuminates their hypocrisy. In his Inaugural Address, he spoke the famous passage: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
We are being asked now to bear a burden in defense of democracy. The currency of our burden is the blood of our countrymen and the money from our treasury.
What we are doing over there in the Middle East is a good and noble thing. The fact that we hope to gain something from it does not detract in any way from the deed we are trying to do.
What we hope to gain from it is National Security. Yeah, it is a bit of a pipe dream to think we can plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East and somehow break them out of their Seventh Century mindset. We did not go over there just to free the Iraqis and Afghans. I would like to think I am altruist, as are the rest of my fellow citizens and the entire country.
But the truth of the matter is...we are involved in this for our own self interested reasons. There ARE reasons we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in a number of other third-world hellholes like Darfur and Somalia.
Like it or not, we run on oil. We can and should change that, but as the fact stands...we are willing to pay for what they have, and we have an interest in keeping their product (oil) on the market for us to buy.
But more important is the fact that the Middle East is a festering pustule of hate, discontent and violence in this small world of ours. That hate, discontent and violence has been unchecked for the last four or five decades. We have been content to let them do what they like to each other, as long as they keep shipping us our oil.
On 9/11 we had 3,000 of our fellow citizens slaughtered in cold blood. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, pregnant women, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, Americans. Some of them were pulverized to a fine mush under the weight of collapsing buildings. Some faced the choice of burning alive or plummeting a thousand feet to die on the pavement below. Others died screaming in terror as the planes flew past skyscrapers before hitting their targets.
I had an acquaintance of mine who died on one of those planes, American Flight 11. His name was David Kovalcin. My last memory of him is sitting up on a porch until 2 AM on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee drinking beers talking about life long after all the other people had gone to bed.
My new boss on 9/11 was a Colonel in the Army who had just retired weeks before. I was having my first interview with her in her office, when her phone rang. It was one of her former subordinates calling to tell her that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. After she hung up, she looked at me and said “I have a lot of close friends in that building.”
On 9/12, that mindset had to change, because we could not just sit back and wait for the next thing to hit us. If those people who perpetrated the horror of 9/11 had weapons that could kill a million people, they would have used them. They intentionally rammed those planes into the WTC to try to trap as many people in the top of the buildings as they could. If they could get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they would use it without hesitation. We did the right thing for the right reasons going into both Afghanistan and Iraq.
What we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan may yet fail. If it does, with a great deal of certainty, we are going to be fighting a bigger and deadlier war at another place and time in the future towards the same end.
So, yes. We may yet fail. If we fail, we will be no worse off than we were on 9/12, waiting patiently for the next attack on us. And if that happens, we may be required to use the “glass parking lot” option, or even worse.
For our own safety and survival, we may be impelled to make them fear us more than they hate us. But I am morally satisfied that we have wielded the power we have in an unprecedented way. Since WWII, America has wielded the power we possess to make the world a better place. We may have done it clumsily or wrong, but there can be no doubt that we used our power to make the world a better and safer place, and not to conquer territory, make people our slaves or subjugate them.
We have fought a cultural battle, and have largely won. Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing is a reasonable debate, but many (if not the majority) of the people in the world would come to America given a chance. They already have our slang, entertainment and Chicago Bulls jerseys in remote parts of the world.
What we need to get into their hands is the real reason America is so great. It is our attitude. Anyone can really BE an American. There are not many countries around the world (if any) that can make that claim. If I go to France, give up my citizenship and become a French Citizen, I will NEVER, EVER be French. But you CAN come here and be an American, no matter who you are. The gift given to us by the Founding Fathers is the essence of what makes our ideas great.
As Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying (and it is so true) Democracy is HARD. Self-Reliance is HARD. And even though 5000 years of history say we may not be able to do it, I say we should try.
After all...it IS possible. There was near common unanimity after WWII that we would never be able to establish a democracy in a feudal society like Japan. But it worked. Look at them now.
The point is...if we have to carpetbomb the entire Middle East with nuclear weapons (and we may yet have to do that) history will record that we, as a nation, attempted to give another nation a hand up off the ground to try to end the cycle. We ARE trying to do it that way. As the strongest nation on the face of the earth right now...I think it is our responsibility to make the attempt.
We need to be in it for the long haul. And that is going to be hard. But we will benefit greatly, as will the Iraqis the nations around them and the rest of the world. If the USA fails, history will judge we didn’t try hard enough. If we succeed, history will judge the us kindly.