A Matter for Debate
President Bush's May 27 commencement address at West Point lays out, maybe not for the first time but more clearly than previously, his understanding and proposed roadmap to today's "long war" (hat tip: Austin Bay). The metaphor he invokes to describe what's been called the War on Terror is the Cold War. The Cold War is the last "Big One" of which large numbers of people still have a first hand memory. Only a slowly shrinking number of old people can actually remember the Second World War. But Vietnam, Checkpoint Charlie, Chrome Dome and Cuban Missile crisis are within living memory and it is on this that Bush hangs his rhetorical hook by recalling the first five years after World War 2.
In 1947, communist forces were threatening Greece and Turkey, the reconstruction of Germany was faltering, mass starvation was setting in across Europe. In 1948, Czechoslovakia fell to communism; France and Italy appeared to be headed for the same fate, and Berlin was blockaded on the orders of Josef Stalin. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon, giving our new enemy the ability to bring catastrophic destruction to our homeland. And weeks later, communist forces won their revolution in China, and claimed the world's most populous nation for communism. And in the summer of 1950, seven North Korean divisions poured across the border into South Korea, marking the start of the first direct military clash of the Cold War. All of this took place in just the first five years following World War II.
It's hard now, in the first years of the 21st century to even imagine the succession of foreign policy disasters which appeared to engulf the US a few short years after its triumph over Nazi Germany and Japan's surrender in Tokyo Bay. The "fall of China"; the Soviet sweep across Eastern Europe punctuated by the annihilation of a US task force in Korea -- Task Force Smith -- were a succession of catastrophes orders of magnitude greater than any debacle facing GWB today. And they swept over Harry Truman's administration like an evil and apparently unstoppable tide. But Bush went on to describe how Harry Truman found in it not defeat but the framework of victory.
Fortunately, we had a President named Harry Truman, who recognized the threat, took bold action to confront it, and laid the foundation for freedom's victory in the Cold War. President Truman set a clear doctrine. In a speech to Congress, he called for military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey, and announced a new doctrine that would guide American policy throughout the Cold War. He told the Congress: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." With this new doctrine, and with the aid to back it up, Greece and Turkey were saved from communism, and the Soviet expansion into Southern Europe and the Middle East was stopped.
The implication, though it will be a hard act to follow, is that the time is ripe to create a new version of the doctrine which guided the Cold War and GWB says this bluntly. "Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before -- and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory." He is consciously donning the mantle of Truman, but unlike his predecessor's Bush's strategy has a large "rollback" component from the start; it is not content to limit what it calls the terrorist threat; it aims to stamp it out at its base.
Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before ... The enemies we face today are different in many ways from the enemy we faced in the Cold War. In the Cold War, we deterred Soviet aggression through a policy of mutually assured destruction. Unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist enemies we face today hide in caves and shadows -- and emerge to attack free nations from within. The terrorists have no borders to protect, or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred -- but they will be defeated. America will fight the terrorists on every battlefront, and we will not rest until this threat to our country has been removed. ...
In this new war, we have set a clear doctrine. After the attacks of September the 11th, I told a joint session of Congress: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists and you're an enemy of the United States of America. In the months that followed, I also made clear the principles that will guide us in this new war: America will not wait to be attacked again. We will confront threats before they fully materialize. We will stay on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.
In contrast to the Cold War, GWB hopes to create offensive alliances rather than purely defensive ones. This is best illustrated by NATO: once a defensive shield now an extirpating sword.
In this new war, we have helped transform old adversaries into democratic allies. Just as an earlier generation of Americans helped change Germany and Japan from conquered adversaries into democratic allies ... In this new war, we have forged new alliances, and transformed old ones, for the challenges of a new century. After our nation was attacked, we formed the largest coalition in history to fight the war on terror. More than 90 nations are cooperating in a global campaign to dry up terrorist financing, to hunt down terrorist operatives, and bring terrorist leaders to justice. ... For five decades, NATO forces never deployed outside of Europe. Today, NATO is leading security operations in Afghanistan, training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad, delivering humanitarian relief to earthquake victims in Pakistan, and training peacekeepers in Sudan. An alliance some said had lost its purpose after the Cold War is now meeting the challenges of the 21st century. ... In this new war, we've undertaken the most sweeping reorganization of the federal government since the start of the Cold War.
And in an indication of the perceived order of magnitude of the task the President makes a prediction to the West Point Class of 2006. This war will last the life of a young man.
Now the Class of 2006 will enter the great struggle -- and the final outcome depends on your leadership. The war began on my watch -- but it's going to end on your watch. Your generation will bring us victory in the war on terror. My call to you is this: Trust in the power of freedom, and be bold in freedom's defense. Show leadership and courage -- and not just on the battlefield. Take risk, try new things, and challenge the established way of doing things. Trust in your convictions, stay true to yourselves -- and one day the world will celebrate your achievements.
Commentary
The speech contains little that is new and simply brings together threads which were articulated separately. But it performs a service. Alexander Dumas observed that explicit speech forced listeners to examine an assertion on its terms, citing the case of Atilla who some had dismissed as brigand until he styled himself the "Hammer of God". Until then many had never though of him as such; afterwards it was necessary to determine whether he was not. President Bush, by gathering these ideas under the heading of strategy makes it possible to examine each notion in turn and to ask ourselves whether they are correct. While the debate over strategy will -- like the Cold War's -- probably rage over decades, here's what I believe the arguments will revolve around.
First: has the President defined the enemy correctly? He is content to call the enemy "terrorism". Others have preferred the notion of radical Islam or even Islam as a better descriptor of the foe. Personally I believe the underlying cause of the War lies in the breakdown of the Third World, as manifested in the multiplication of failing states: that is my definition of the enemy. Still other authors have preferred to describe today's troubles in terms of the Core and the Gap or as the consequence of the transition to a world of Market States. Whatever. The key question is whether the President has defined the problem to which today's Long War seeks a solution in a correct manner. This particularly necessary because the causes of War are likely to contain elements of unresolved contradiction within the West itself.
Second: is it appropriate to aim for a "rollback" strategy as opposed to one of pure containment? This is a very nuanced question. Going back to the Cold War metaphor one may argue that President Reagan's efforts at rollback bore fruit only after Communism had been weakened by the more passive containment of his predecessors. Rollback and containment may each be valid strategies, but within the context of timing need not be mutually exclusive. Many people who have criticized OIF believe it would have been better to maintain the encirclement of Saddam, limiting offensive action to police work or perhaps solely to Afghanistan. I think the issue of pure containment versus containment + rollback is the subject which will be most debated within the political center. I would add, however, that it is probably a less important question than "getting the definition of the enemy" (the previous point) right.
Third is the implicit question of what the world will look like assuming GWB's strategy eventually succeeds. Is it a world in which America is dominant or at least the primus inter pares? Or is it a world in which America and perhaps other nation-states, eventually disappear? Although the future is veiled it is probably important to keep glancing ahead now and again to see whether we are emerging into "broad sunlit uplands" or "a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science".
None of the answers are evident. But at least the speech, while ostensibly making assertions, has actually asked the questions.
43 Comments:
Unless the enemy is correctly identified and named, the war won't go anywhere.
The ewnemy, like it or not, is radical islam; supported full well by islam in genral.
Labelling 'third world failing states' as the enemy gets nowhere, IMO because there're ample examples of failing third world states (e.g. the republic of Congo and Zimbabwe) where the absence ofislam makes it unlikely to contribute to terrorism in general. On the other hand, there are superficvially stable states (Pakistan, Saudi) that are feeding the jiahdist mosnter and are primary carriers of the jihad parasite.
Bush needs to put the ideas and strategies in front of the public at every opportunity. He needs to include the risks and the costs. Most people may change the channel to MTV or the Shopping Network, but the ones who pay attention will have a better idea what the leaders are thinking and aiming for.
10% of people do 90% of the work. Those 10% need to be kept as informed as possible. Although they can be outvoted, if the 10% are not included in the process, nothing wothwhile will get done either way.
Wretchard in his conclusion poses three questions to another thoughtful post.
“First: has the President defined the enemy correctly? He is content to call the enemy "terrorism".”
All wars have a military and political component. The WOT is 90% political and 10% military. Calling the enemy “terrorism” is not true. This is the beginning of a dishonest predicate. If you cannot frame the political argument and at least describe your enemy correctly, you are starting from a very weak position to win what is primarily a clash of ideas and a vision for the future. The war on terror is a propaganda campaign and it is not going well. I propose going to an Islamic country and counting Osama Bin Laden t-shirts. It is not encouraging. We are losing the propaganda war in Islamic countries. Outside the Islamic world, I cannot think of one country where we have a simple majority support for the US position.
“Second: is it appropriate to aim for a "rollback" strategy as opposed to one of pure containment?”
Had we engaged the Cold War with a roll back strategy, we would have had to attack Poland, Hungary, Cuba, China, East Germany etc., etc. There would be no United States had anyone been mad enough to propose and enact that strategy. Assume active terrorists make up 5% of a population. We have to attack 95% to get at the 5%. Total insanity.
“Third is the implicit question of what the world will look like assuming GWB's strategy eventually succeeds.”
This is the most rhetorical question. The War on Terror is coming to an end because there are so few takers. Country after country is leaving the field. The politics for support are gone. There is a way to go after and destroy militant Islam, but not by GWB and not before we get hit a few more times and someone is honest enough to describe the problem and has the cold ruthless courage to do it quietly.
Dan,
I guess one answer is that in the past the breakdowns in the Third World didn't matter. But after it became possible to take an airplane to New York, emigrate to Europe, generate bird flu epidemics in the poultries of Asia and build an A-bomb in Pakistan it started to matter. In my view the massive influx of people from Mexico, the genocide in Darfur and attacks on Australians in Bali are part of the same continuum, but different in degree. They represent the global impact of what an in earlier era would have been local events.
U.S. Troops Kill Pregnant Woman in Iraq
May 31 1:18 PM US/Eastern
Email this story
By KIM GAMEL
Associated Press Writer
Using a high profile military in what is primarily a propaganda war can have consequences that will weaken your argument. case in point:
BAGHDAD, Iraq
U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women _ one of them about to give birth _ when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday.
Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday.
Lawrence Livermore Scientists"> have provided the most recent work on desalination work that will lead to major league cuts in the cost of desalination.
Gafney on GWB statement re:
Iran.
"One of the worst days of my life."
Let "The Process" proceed.
How much do Kabuki stand-ins get paid?
I had a diatribe going and deleted the thing. The real question revolves around Mr Bush.
He is not Harry Truman,
nor was Mr Truman, Harry Truman, really.
The Historical perspective raises Mr Truman's stature, only 'cause Mr Reagan succeeded in ending Containment, he moved on, to Victory.
We win, they lose.
Rolling back the Communists, rather than contain them. There were many times that we had the opportunity to assist Freedom Fighters in revolt against the Soviets. In both Budapest and Prague we had opportunities to "rollback" the Soviets, we never even tried. Leaving good men to die in the streets and their families to suffer decades more oppression.
Just like Iraq in '91.
There was a piece Bush's September 10 Approval Ratings that asks the $25,000 question.
"...I don't think that a fifth of the American people--the number who supported Bush then and disapprove of him now--have changed their minds and want us to lose in Iraq. Rather, I think they turned against Bush precisely because they no longer think defeat is a real possibility. To be sure, people are tired of the way the war is dragging on. They are tired of hearing about IEDs and suicide bombings, and they are very tired of having to hear about the wrangling over Iraqi cabinet posts by a succession of obscure foreigners with unpronounceable Arabic names. But the point is that they now feel they have the option of being tired of the war and directing their attention to other issues. ..."
Another piece I read, unfindable now, asked another basic question, relating to Mr Bush's lack of continued support. Have the people that abandoned him done so because he is ineffective in delivering on his vision, basicly his "competentcy", or have they soured on his "vision"?
The writer thought that if it was a question of competency, Mr Bush & his Policies "could" recover.
If the majority of the public have soured on his vision, though, there will be no US involvement in a "Long War', for long.
"The massive influx of people from Mexico" is simply the result of the people of Mexico having a modicum of intelligence, common sense, and a healthy dose of self-interest.
The only way GWB could have made his behavior more attractive (Even AFTER 9-11) to those thinking about crossing our border would have been to record ads in Spanish INVITING them to come in.
The refusal of some to admit this, or be honest about what they would be saying if it were Bill Clinton doing it instead, is disappointing in the extreme.
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(For those who were aware:
Recall the howls of protest from the right, when orders went out, and standards were ignored, in order to rush the maximum number of new (Democrat Voting) arrivals into the country before an election.)
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His dishonesty about the matter is shameful.
quantum,
Islam has been militant for centuries but the peculiar weakness of the West has allowed it to regain its virulence. Nothing in Osama's doctrines are new. What is new is the feebleness of the international immune system. There are other ideological pathogens out there besides Islam, at least in my view, though militant Islam is the most prominent. And even if Islam somehow blew itself up tomorrow the chaos out there would soon cough up another threat at whose feet our intellectuals would immediately worship. I think GK Chesterton once wrote that the consequence of losing your faith is not that you henceforth believe in nothing but that you will soon believe in anything. The Left, for example, is totally indifferent to Islam as theology. Its main interest in Islam is as an enemy to the West. That is its virtue and its only virtue.
re: identifying the enemy.
Is less important than identifying the threat. The threat is that small groups and individuals can now be immensely powerful (enabled by technology, w/ very low costs enabled by global markets & the low cost of information), far more than entire nation-states of the past (these groups and individuals will be far more powerful at every turn of Moore's screw), and that tyranny of any form (a lack of civil society and democratic action) denies these entities an appropriate (positive) expression and reward of their efforts.
So "terror" is as good a placeholder as slavery (or piracy). Neither can be permitted (given technology making individuals near-gods), anywhere in the world (if we want a free and comfortable life for ourselves and our children. i.e. Maginot lines do not, can not work). And terror can only grow in the vile Petri dish maintained by tyrants. A free and open society sterilizes same (the citizens in an "ownership society" are more vested in making their own future secure than any alternative type of rule).
An interesting indicator here is the natural-inclination to embrace "gun control" by those that think with their heart. They'd like to believe that denying weapons to citizens means we've slowed the increase in the power by motivated small groups and individuals. But we know that the opposite is true (individuals and small groups are in ascendance, and government is not, in all dimensions).
A related faulty belief is that income is becoming more unequal (poor getting poorer, rich getting richer). In fact, it's never been more equal if you consider the government as a "holder" of (unexpressed) wealth (and the government as just another special interest). It's the government that is losing power to the (new) rich and their enterprise. The wealth didn't exist before (save as suppressed by a government), and the new wealthy didn't extract a tax from the unwilling. Which implies that the less free (i.e. degree that free individuals and their enterprise are taxed/regulated) always have less equality in income than the more free. A continuum from most unequal - communism, to socialism, to mercantilism, to "fair" markets, to the most equal, as determined by the random walk seen in free markets. Castro being a archetype.
Via Hewitt:
The father of the Marine killed in Haditha gives this account.
After his son was killed, his fellow warriors took up positions around him, and began taking fire from insurgents in surrounding buildings who were using civilians as human shields.
If this account is true, I suppose we have become so refined as to expect the Marines to simply put down their arms and wait to die?
Wretchard is correct. Radical Islam is not the enemy, it is an enemy. Others will follow. The enemy isn't failed states, but rather the fact that failed states serve as the breeding grounds for illeberal ideologies that are opposed to the current "thesis", which is essentially liberalism or neo-liberalism, depending on your take. The enemy are those opposed to classical liberal, Enlightenment values that we call such things a Free-Markets, democracy, the rule of law, (for Islam, Man-made Law), Secularism, etc. Fukyama was quite, quite wrong. History has not ended, nor will it end anytime soon, unless of course Man or fate endeavors to make it so by removing Man from the picture.
FWIW:
Concrete workers in Florida currently are paid less per hour than what I paid a concrete man to help me pour a slab back in 1988!
(He was a Mexican:
Maybe I should have been more diligent about making sure he was not an illegal so I could have cut a better deal?
By today's standards, instead of doing my part of the job, I should have paid him less and "supervised.")
As John McCain says:
You just can't get Americans to do two days of yard work for 15 bucks anymore.
Numerous drywall, painting, concrete, and etc Contractors and workers have lost their livelihoods to this New New Free Market in Labor.
I've no doubt such losses are not confined to those fields only.
Good to know the illegals recoup some of their poor compensation when we the taxpayers pay their medical, welfare, and penal costs, among others.
Enemy Identification:
Barbarians
Great Powers through the ages have had to compete and win against the forces of barbarism. We just don't want to call it what it is. What else do you call:
1. "I believe the underlying cause of the War lies in the breakdown of the Third World, as manifested in the multiplication of failing states"
2. "other authors have preferred to describe today's troubles in terms of the Core and the Gap"
3. "consequence of the transition to a world of Market States"
Barbarians are stateless beings. No culture. No civilization. And, nothing to lose but their personal existence. Rootless and non-deteralble.
That is why this differs from WWII and the Cold War - but, other similarities (autocracy, centralized control, aggression, and minimal concern of the individual) exist in spades.
It is simply our turn to deal with the barbarians of our saeculum.
Containment is not an acceptable option with the spread of nuclear weapons.
Boghie,
Let's call it "barbarism", which is as good a name as any. In one sense barbarism has no independent existence so much as is consequent to a civilization which has lost its grip on itself. Barbarism is an opportunistic infection suddenly able to flourish in a collapsing immune system, like a flu which kills the old. That's why the War on Terror is also something of a War for Civilization, the flip side of a War on Barbarism.
My last posts have been about the need to mobilize our resources to persistently build the future. It's not a question of staving off collapse. It's too late for that. I hope I'm not misunderstood in saying that the mindset of the 1960s has already doomed itself. The collapsed demography; aimlessness; self-hatred; the hedonistic narcissism -- little of that can be saved and it's usless to try. But a new world is coming to replace it as the 20th century replaced the world of Kings. I don't know what it is but if we keep a sharp lookout then maybe the world can steer clear of the sharp rocks into relatively calm waters.
Think about that period from 1946 to 1951 no only in terms of the things that where known openly but also that which the senior leadership knew.
The USSR had managed to copy the most advanced aircraft in the world, the B-29.
The Venona intercepts of Soviet diplomatic communications had revealed that Communist agents had penetrated deeply into U.S. government and industry.
One of the most famous and respected general officers in the U.S. had been fired by the President because of an intense disagreement over how the Korean War - and hence the whole Cold War - should be fought. Very few have ever heard of the generals criticizing the President today; then everyone knew who McArthur was.
New weapons offered opportunity for vastly increased destruction. The next Pearl Harbor would likely be both the beginning and end of the war.
In retrospect, perhaps the enemy in the Cold War was not simply Communism but a wide range of adversaries that ranged from simple venality through home-grown socialism to the imperialistic machinations of the Kremlin - which likely would have minifested themsleves in any case.
Today, it is not simply radical Islam that is the problem - it includes the corrupt regimes of the middle east, the Wimps of Europe, venal politicians everywhere, technological incompetance, and what passes for the Liberal thought process in the West.
Elimination of any ONE of these elements would "solve" the problem presented by radical Islam, which is for the most part an opportunistic disease rather than the real source of weakness.
Geeze ... I think I just said almost exactly what our esteemed host just said, but without reading the masterful insights of his 5:42 post first. Imagine that!
Ari said,
"(these groups and individuals will be far more powerful at every turn of Moore's screw), "
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Tony, optimist that he is, sees future robotic warfare in terms of furthering our technological edge.
While this is true, doesn't it seem likely that the combination of such technology with Petrodollar funded madmen will make for a terrorist armamentarium much more difficult to defend against?
doug,
This is referenced in the westhawk link I posted earlier
"... "Fear and mistrust are smothering this city," [Captain Max] Barela said later. "I tell my Marines and the jundi [Iraqi army soldiers]—treat everyone with respect. On raids, knock—don't smash the door down. Don't throw suspects to the ground. If making an arrest, ask the man to tell his family he's going away for a few days. Put the cuffs on outside. When we get fire on a crowded street, I tell my Marines not to shoot back. We'll get the shooter another day. Most of these poor people are just trying to survive. The sooner we have jundis who can replace us, the better for everyone." ..."
The Marine Captain is speaking of operations in the city of Ramadi, Iraq.
So yeah, the Marines take fire, they do not always have RoE to return fire, in Iraq, they are targets, not combatants.
Jr's got about 80 some days, praise Allah 'cause he won't be goin' back.
" When we get fire on a crowded street, I tell my Marines not to shoot back. We'll get the shooter another day."
He' in Okinawa 'til the 7th or so, 2nd tour there, one to Fallujah.
I told him if he extended to go to Iraq the second time, instead of Okinawa on his normal 4 year tour, I'd have broken some of his bones, he believed that I was serious, 'cause I was.
"Most of these poor people are just trying to survive"
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Maybe that can be the Motto of the 21st Century Grunt?
Glad my kid is fighting this war from a console on the island, as there would be no consoling me if he were in the line of fire under ROE's like that.
...and all of us non-compassionate types know other people's kids deserve better too.
"On raids, knock—don't smash the door down."
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Isn't a knock rather harsh, jarring, and uncaring?
Better young things in Brownie Suits to announce the troops arrival at a preset time.
(memo: make time interval sufficient to allow detonators to be programmed)
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"Don't throw suspects to the ground."
Good idea for LA Cops too:
Nothing like a level playing field.
Don't see many young Bush's, Cheney's or Rumsfeld's deployeed in uniform.
Nor hear of any of those family names in the Civilian billets, either. None of those are full, in Iraq.
Lots of empty slots for all the young Ivy leaguers to volunteer for. State or Justice.
Lawyers, doctors, accountants, system managers, all are needed, few answer the call.
It just ain't a War, as I've said many times. Bush's "new" plan is just warmed over BS.
Ask Mr al-Sadr, he has the "real" plan. For someone so "Dumb" is sure has done well. While all our "smart" folk have come home empty handed.
One thing about Mr al-Sadr, he's no chicken hawk. He and his stood up to the US Marines, and won a Country. Who'd have ever guessed?
I kinda got the idea from W's early speeches that DETERENCE would be a large part of our strategy.
I was all in favor of that:
Make any and every state that harbored, funded, or trained terrorists soil their robes in fear.
"It just ain't a War, as I've said many times. Bush's "new" plan is just warmed over BS."
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Things started going seriously astray when the BS began to become the driver for changes in new iterations of the plan.
"The reason the troops now patrol with three fingers up their rectums is because we are bringing liberty, equality, freedom, justice, and democracy to the Mullahcracy."
Fear of missing their AID check.
That's all that any are concerned with.
Now that the US sponsors Hamas, even that stick has been whittled to a toothpick.
Cutting off the Palistinians money, that was just to much. The Sauds, who are pocketing an EXTRA $500 Million USD per day in a "war premium" for their oil, couldn't find the money to help those Palistinians.
Said it was US that were causing a Humanitarian Crisis, almost genocide, there in Palistine.
We believed 'em. Ask Ms Rice.
The idea was that it would spread like wildfire, but it never had a chance once the dampers were set on full.
"We believed 'em. Ask Ms Rice."
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As Dennis Prager says:
Some things can only be believed by college graduates.
Radical Islam is spreading like wild fire, doug.
aQ is building training camps and the Iranians are in a full cascade, all their own.
In Darfur the "cease fire" did not hold for even a week. Pakistan is all armed up, and buying more War armaments from China, as are the Indians. Those Chinese, sellin' guns and ships to everyone.
Only "good" news is that Columbia is still holding firm, but even Ecuador, where the USAF is operating out of, is nationalizing oil infrastructure.
8:30 PM,
Never forget, DC did not ever intrude with the
Marines Decision Making Process.
("I never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky, not once!")
I think the examples that prove the enemy is barbarism and not just Islam are Hugo Chavez and the drug cartels. Chavez is harder to deal with, but the great flanking manuever that is open to western civ. is legalize the drug traffic and cut off half the the cash flow that is paying for bullets (and bombs) for barbarians. The other half of the cash flow (oil) will take a few years to rectify.
Sure wouldn't want to SHOCK the system and shut off the Drug Money tommorrow by securing the border.
Predators plus shoot on sight would do the trick quick, and save lives in the long run.
(desert crossers, that is, not to mention possible hundreds of thousands from another "event")
The enemy is WEAKNESS,
which we used to know is PROVOCATIVE.
I agree with you, Wretchard.
At its root, I think our worst enemy isn't terrorism, al-Qaeda, or the chaos of the "failed states". It's America's (and the West's and the international system's) own lack of cultural confidence.
"Radical Islam" (whatever that means) is our enemy. The fashionable term is "Islamist". Concretely, that means Hezbollahis, Wahhabis, Salafis (Muslim Brotherhood), and few of their fascist allies. Still, they would not necessarily be our enemies if they were convinced that our way of life were the will of Allah.
I think our problems in the Middle East started when the Apollo program was cancelled.
The Muslim world was once in awe of us; America had gone to the Moon. That means something to Muslims because the Moon is a central motif in Islam. And what did Americans do? We gave up! We left the Moon, and it looks as though we will won't return anytime soon. Now, what message does that send to Muslims throughout the world? The message sent is that Americans are a bunch of hedonistic idiots who give up easily when the going gets tough, get bored easily, and have no historical memory to speak of. The Hollywood image of America is what the rest of the world sees, not us, not the real America, and certainly not the America that once believed in its own mission.
For goodness sake, most of the "West" is scared to even publish pictures of Mohammed. Now how pathetic is that? The fact is, al-Qaeda and its allies have the psychological upper hand even within the United States itself. No matter how much military force we bring to bear, it will all be laughable if publishing houses are scared to publish anything Muslim rioters don't like.
And look at immigration. A bunch of people illegally break into our country and work here, and then march in the streets demanding we give them citizenship or else. (Or else what...?) This is a criminal invasion we have here, but far from doing anything about it, our President and our Senate are proposing to give them amnesty. This is an expression of weakness to the entire world.
It will be difficult to rally Americans to "stay on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them abroad so we do not have to face them here at home" when the gates at home are so wide open to the enemy.
Good grief! Now, how many of the 9-11 hijackers were here illegally because they overstayed their visas? Are we now supposed to give every English-speaking Pakistani (or Saudi) American citizenship just because his forged papers claim he overstayed a visa? If President Bush and his allies get their way, al-Qaeda would be able to send an entire army into the United States on overstayed student visas, claim their citizenship, and attack us on our streets and there wouldn't be anything we could do about it. Normally, I would be reluctant to point out this gaping hole out of fear of alerting the enemy, but this strategy is such an utter no-brainer that it's fairly obvious the enemy will figure it out. After all, they did pull off the September 11 attacks!
There are other things we can do to defeat the Islamists, but the most fundamental thing we can do is believe in ourselves. If we believe in ourselves, in our cause, and in our way of life, we can contruct new institutions out of thin air and they will be enduring. But if we lack the cultural confidence to confront the future head on, nothing we build will last.
If Leftists want to create a just society with a network of self-governing cooperatives, let's encourage that. If Rightists want to create a moral society where Hollywood doesn't control our movies and our television screens, let's encourage that too. But the key, whether from the Left or Right, is to imagine the world as we would like it to become and not seek the destruction of the old as a precursor to building the new.
The critical failure of the Left in the past century has not been its opposition to capitalism, but its desire to destroy (or conquer) capitalism as a precursor to building is desired future. This metamorphosed into a simple desire to conquer. And few ideologies are better suited for conquest than historical Islam. Yet, enduring institutions must be built, not conquered. The problem with any ideology of conquest is that it quickly transforms into glorified brigandage. And brigandage, while temporarily lucrative to the robbers, cannot construct any civilization; it merely acquires (or parasitizes) what already exists. Civilization is constructed. Institutions are built. And that is how new economic and social systems are created.
"There are probably few urban areas in Iraq (there are a few) where innate hostility to the Coalition, as opposed to lack of confidence in the Coalition and its Iraqi counter-parts, is the problem."
-Westhawk link.
A lot of good comments- pointing to the weakness of the GWOT. I agree, 'Barbarism' is more apt than terrorism- and we should be aware that is how the Romans saw their neighbors. Rereading their exploits reminds us how little some things have changed.
I understand Desert Rat's frustration with the politicians bumbling over the current conflict, but I disagree with his prognosis of spreading radical Islam. Read about the Imam's complaining of the converts they are losing in places like Africa (sorry no link at the moment, think it was MEMRI). Like many things it'll continue to bleed us for the near future, but it is not a critical wound unless it is poorly treated. To follow the analogy, it could still get reinfected, but it's not a big wound compared to those looming in the future.
Other people alluded to our evident lack in 'cultural confidence' in which I agree totally, although words matter (as we alluded to earlier regarding terrorism/barbarism) and that definition is lacking as well. Because a dying left will tag on to anyone resisting the 'West'- it might tag on to someone who has the threat to really harm us eventually . How do we deal with these morally bankrupt (even if well-intentioned) fifth columnists in a way that honors our own beliefs?
It's going to be a rough ride. It seems the birthplace of Western 'Enlightenment' is being subsumed by the dying blows of Marxist victim-centric multicultural collectivism. If we value these attributes, we must be able to defend them- against petrocratic religious fundamentalists and unstable autocracies looking for support (take your pick: Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, etc) from each other, and even more worrying, from us.
Sometimes it seems to me we're just waiting- for someone to put it all together for us, or for someone to tear it apart. In the meantime we worry. There are always those little gaps or loopholes between our actions and principles highlighting the hypocrisy of our leaders. These are always fertile ground to be exploited by opportunistic 'barbarians' who mock us with what seem to be our own hollow principles. Someone like Ahmadinejad hopes, just as the Pan-Arabian Saddam did, to become a Vercingetorix or Attila, but this will pass only if we let him- only if we believe there is nothing worth sacrificing for, nothing worth defending.
Eggplant,
Let's not get confused by liberalism: Survival is a moral issue only to equivacators and prevaricators. Is it immoral to kill a band of ravaging predators, nightly taking our children?
When in a state of war, it is not immoral to kill the enemy, stopping only when the enemy surrenders unconditionally.
No one to surrender? The Muslim populations that offer succor(terrified or not) and those who provide financing must be made to be more afraid of US, than they are of the jihadis. Publicly displayed "wanted dead or alive" warrants might be a good start.
These Muslim populations must kill the jihadis and vociferously turn out those imams who preach the cult of death. Not doing doing so must be demonstrated to be terribly expensive for the locals.
Otherwise, there can be no satisfactory outcome, ever. I don't care if it's their religion. Change it or die.
It's the message to Islam that's important, and must be crafted and conveyed soon.
I thought Attila went by "The Scourge of God", not "The Hammer of God"...
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