Posted on 02/11/2002 9:45:02 AM PST by tberry
Charley Reese: Bush’s ‘war’ will prove expensive
Published Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:17 AM CST
The war against terrorism is going splendidly, President Bush says. In the long run, that will be proven false. The reason is quite simple: You can’t eliminate terrorism by eliminating individual terrorists. The death of every terrorist creates new terrorists. As long as the reasons exist that spawned terrorism in the first place, new generations will take up the fight.
I hesitate to bring up something that is apparently so inconsequential to most Americans as the Constitution. It does, however, forbid a president from unilaterally committing the nation to war. Without a formal declaration of war by Congress, we are not at war, even if our military forces are engaged in combat. Therefore, the president’s war is illegitimate.
No one, including me, objects to, or would have any reason to object to, America’s military forces hunting down and killing the people who played any part in the attack Sept. 11.
That should properly be called a campaign against terrorism. If your ships are attacked by pirates, you don’t need Congress’ permission to order the Navy to sink the pirates.
But the president’s use of the term “war” was deliberate, and under the pretense we are at war, he is greatly expanding the power of government. The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.
The president is also asking for many billions of dollars to bolster our defense spending and for homeland defense. Does it not occur to anyone else but me to wonder why, since the federal government has been spending close to $2 trillion a year for some time now, we are so vulnerable? It’s not as if the Defense Department has to start from scratch to build the forces necessary to deal with terrorism, nor have we been defenseless at home, as one might imagine from the current rhetoric.
The answer, of course, is that much of what the government spends is poorly spent. By that I mean it is spent on stuff that does not accomplish the mission — or does so at an excessive cost. Americans should highly prize the few thousand (that might be an overly optimistic estimate) dead members of al-Qaida, as it cost us $1 billion a month to kill them.
Granted, our politicians (and, indeed, we ourselves) don’t like American casualties, but if we are going to use expensive carriers and airplanes and million-dollar-a-pop missiles to take out 60 or 70 bad guys holed up in some camp, we’d better damned sure have deep pockets.
It is, to be blunt, stupid to talk about homeland defense without tightening our borders. The immigration laws and the Immigration and Naturalization Service are a disgrace and have been for years. Yet the president dances around this question, I suppose, lest he offend his friend, the president of Mexico. If you can’t keep illegal immigrants out, you can’t keep terrorists out; if you can’t track people who come in on a visa, you can’t track terrorists who come in on a visa.
But most importantly, unless you change the policies that create terrorism, you will never rid yourself of it. It is an insult to our intelligence to say that people hate us because we are free. They hate us because our policies are all too often seen as cruel and unjust.
There is logic to terrorism. As long as we suffer no consequences from our policies that cause pain to others, we are unlikely to change them. The task of the terrorists is, to borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton, to help us “feel their pain.”
We tried this appeasement bs and it cost us about 3,000 lives and about a Trillion $'s due to just the events of 9/11!
Kill all of the teachers of hate and bankrupt their financial backers and terrorism will be eliminated.
This is typical of the BS that we will read as the next terrorist countries come up in the bomb sights.
Same old Arabic propaganda, that we can never win by being strong. The opposite is true! The horrible results of 9/11 and post 9/11 show that we can't set back and be nice guys.
Just kill all who are real threats and promise to kill us!
We are starting to see the first of massive surrenders of the top Tallibaniers in Afghanistan. They are realizing that to resist is to die a miserable death, and they are surrending in large numbers. Expect those numbers to be even larger during the cold winter months in Afghanistan!
The best economic strategy for America is to kill all those who would kill us and to wipe out their toys of war. To do otherwise is to commit financial suicide!
Want to bet. If this is carried out as threatened we will win easily. The US is not the cause of terrorism and hatred in these areas of the world. The culture and government is to blame. Both have to change. Trying to understand them will only embolden them to make us "understand" more. People are getting ready for a buttkicking that is long overdue.
Didn't we kill a lot of Germans and Japanese in WWII? Aren't we allies with them now?
Sometimes killing people gets someones attention.
As portrayed to them by their leaders through state controlled propaganda ministries and barbarous fanatical clerics.
I agree with many of the author's points but I will never buy into the argument that 9/11 was a result of our foreign policy.
More properly without the passive voice disguise, they see our polices as cruel and unjust. That doesn't mean the policies are cruel and unjust. It just means its easier to blame the great Satan for their own shortcomings as a culture, which of course includes their governments and other institutions as well, than to get their own house in order, probably at the expense of the powers that be in those societies.
Which is why we try to feed the locals in Afghanistan. Eliminate the immediate threat and take steps to reduce future threats.
Sounds like a fine DNC fax....
Let's just apologize and just get along with these folks.
They're just so nice.
I'm not talking about intervention. I'm talking about eliminating terrorists leaders who plan/discuss attacks on America to kill Americans. Then eliminating their financial connections and destroying their ability to make war.
Of course you would not understand this. PB never wanted us to fight the Nazis as they presented no harm to America. If you believe that line, well-----------.
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