War by Fallacy Afghanistan is a symptom, not the problem

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YmIwMWYzMWI5ZjgyYTJhMWVmNjJhNWE2ZDFiM2E0OTE= ^ | Andrew c. McCarthy

[ventanax5]

I can’t have any more bills. I’m out of checks.” It is a joke we used to hear all the time, back in the days before credit cards made it even easier to run up bills we can’t or won’t pay. Like all good jokes, it has a kernel of truth: a truth about the human mind’s capacity for self-delusion. In his important new book, Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West, Michael Ledeen describes this capacity as “that part of the spirit that shelters active thought from unpleasant truths.” Rarely has the talent for self-delusion been more prominently on display than in the current debate over the war in Afghanistan.

That we are talking about the conflict as “the war in Afghanistan” is a symptom of the disorder. The Bush administration, backed by Congress, first declared a “war on terror.” That amorphous phrase suggested two impossible possibilities: either (a) we were at war with a tactic rather than an enemy, or (b) our enemies include anyone — or at least any foreign entity — practicing terrorism. It was initially understood that the pertinent “terror” was that practiced by al-Qaeda and the rogue Islamic governments that abetted it.

“Terror” was the label used to avoid offending Muslims. But this imprecision, and the failure of will it fails to conceal, inexorably evolved from a labeling challenge into a conceptual problem: Who is al-Qaeda? What are its “affiliates”? How much does a hostile nation such as Saudi Arabia need to do before it is deemed an “abettor” rather than an “ally”? And what about jihadists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who, at least in some situations, feign condemnation of terror? Are they “allies” too — even as they burrow into our institutions and announce their intention to “conquer America”?

[neverdem]

BTTT!

[TomasUSMC]

Who is al-Qaeda? What are its “affiliates”? How much does a hostile nation such as Saudi Arabia need to do before it is deemed an “abettor” rather than an “ally”? And what about jihadists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who, at least in some situations, feign condemnation of terror?
/////////////////
THE ENEMY IS ISLAM