Required Reading
The first two grafs:
The new Socialist government in Spain has caved in to the terrorist threats and withdrawn its troops from Iraq. So have Honduras and the Dominican Republic. They are unlikely to be the last. With the security situation expected to worsen before it improves, we have to accept that a few more countries–which do not appreciate how much the world has at stake in building a free Iraq–will also cut and run.
No matter how the retreating governments try to spin it, every time a country pulls out of Iraq it is al Qaeda and other extremists who win. They draw the conclusion that the coalition of the willing is weak and that the more terrorist outrages, the more countries will withdraw.
Now it’s time for a quiz. Who wrote this piece? Was it:
A) A blood-thirsty warblogger.
B) An impassioned neocon.
C) Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta.
The correct answer — duh — is C. Now go read the whole thing.
So what?
Repeating the chant again and again doesn’t make it in any way true.
Why should any other nation march along with a loser, i.e. keep supporting a US government that pretends to be in command – they cleary showed that in their relation towards coalition “partners” – of how things are going in Iraq and just drifts from calamity to worse. There is no premium in politics for doing stupid things any longer than the time needed to realize that a policy is stupid.
The Spanish government has done much more to reduce the threat of future terrorist attacks against its people by letting its police do their work than by sending some troops to Iraq.
How in the world did the ideology successfully convert highest government circles in the US that the militarization of policies is the key to success in everything from foreign relations to internal security?
They let the military run the show even though it should have be plain clear from the beginning that the US military has a few core competencies where it is extremely good at, like planning and executing battles, and a vast area of policy domains where its level of expertise rises barely above what the common citizen knows about a topic.
Yet the Pentagon hawks were put in command to build a model democracy in Iraq. (Never mind there was also a guy called Bremer) Can you think of anything more stupid?
“Can you think of anything more stupid?”
Yes.
Leaving the Saddam regime in place.
Being paralyzed by self-righteous pacificism like Germany.
Or the combination of whoring state policy to the highest bidder and medacious opportunism in pursuit of a European bloc dominated from Paris by France.
Or saying “me too! me too!” like Belgium
Or giving the impression of running away under fire like Spain.
“Leaving the Saddam regime in place.”
Removing Saddam was the one issue for which the US military was the best qualified organization. And they did show they could handle that job.
What I am asking is why the Pentagon was allowed to command and plan (Insofar as they did some planning. There is not much evidence of that out there) the re-building of the Iraqi political system after the end of Saddam’s rule.
With respect to your other remarks:
Send them to Rumsfeld. He needs any “help” he can get right now.
Uh, TEO? The USA is running the country and Saddam is in a jail cell. I think we’re winning.
Eight “cabinet level” ministries have been handed over to Iraqi control, most recently Foreign Affairs. No rebuilding of the government, huh?
And there have been precisely zero terrorist attacks in the US since the war began. So much for the argument for troop withdrawl making people in the home country safer…
So are you actually going to comment on the facts, or just spew wild fantasy?
“What I am asking is why the Pentagon was allowed to command and plan (Insofar as they did some planning. There is not much evidence of that out there) the re-building of the Iraqi political system after the end of Saddam’s rule.”
Who did you have in mind? The UN? (*snicker …..*)
“And there have been precisely zero terrorist attacks in the US since the war began. So much for the argument for troop withdrawl making people in the home country safer… ”
Disregarding all US victims outside US borders, are we?
TOE:
What do you think “zero terrorist attacks in the US since the war began” refers to?
And do you really think withdrawing the troops would make Americans in, say, Saudi Arabia safer?
But, then, you’re an old European. So, terrorism in your home country (especially if you’re a JOOOOOOOO) is something you’re used to, eh? Or do the French Jews walk around safer today than they did ten years ago?
Slightly off-topic:
You noticed that you lost Friedman? He is no longer marching along with Bush’s War in Iraq.
Ah, M. Old European, didn’t you listen when Osama was spewing his reasons for the war he declared? Among the things getting his underwear in a bunch was the Tragedy of Andalusia in 1492. In case they don’t teach history in Old Europe anymore, I will remind you that he was referring to the conquest of Granada by the Spaniards. That was the last Muslim state in Spain, and the final step of the Reconquista.
The terrorists will be coming for you guys soon. Not only must all land once Muslim be returned to Muslim rule, but the rest of Europe is a target too. due to all those Muslim immigrants. It is unacceptable that Muslims should live under the rule of non-Muslims. They will want to redress this shocking inversion of the natural order ASAP. All of southeastern Europe including Hungary was once ruled by the Turks. Muslim land again, the jihadis will be coming for it, unless they are stopped before they get hold of significant state power. How much of Europe will you give up to nuclear armed jihadis?
Maybe it’s a good thing those Spanish troops came home. They will be needed there soon. The rest of you will be needing troops soon too, but don’t expect them to come from America this time, as they did three times before in this past hundred years. We might help out Poland, but never again France or Belgium.
To: Lonie
It’s exactly that sort of Bushies propaganda that will lead to their failure in Iraq.
Whether Osama bin Laden refers to some historical fact or not is of such a minuscule relevance. I don’t bother a second about it. Neither do the Spanish nor the Moroccans who should be the two parties most affected by it.
BTW: A muslim king was driven off Spain in 1492, but muslims lived in other parts of Europe for centuries and in some they have done so to the present.
If you think you have identified the new Satan after the Soviet one vanished, be happy. At least you have found a mission again.
Yes, for example, Muslims lived in Kosovo and Bosnia. Pity it was apparently Europeans who couldn’t stand that (never mind that the Kosovars and Bosniacs are as European as their Serbian brothers).
Worse, of course, is that, while old Europe failed to protect them (Srebenica, anyone, and the vaunted Dutch peacekeepers), the Americans, having helped save the Bosniacs and Kosovars from the likes of Milosevic, get no credit at all in the Muslim world for having done so.
Or is that Bushie propaganda as well?
The Yugoslav Wars are a sad story and a huge failure of EU foreign policy. There can be no doubt about that.
But the starting point of the conflict was quite the opposite of what all the current muslim-bashers want to make us believe. It was the Communist Milosevic who refound his Christian-Orthodox origins and worked them into a nationalist-fascist worldview. There were no muslim hordes attacking peace loving Christians. It was the other way round.
But in Bosnia and Kossovo it was still US troops who had to redress the astonishing incompetence of European diplomacy and the Europeans’ unwillingness to succor people beset by tyrants. Once the US unilaterally started to do so the European countries were dragged along, having to support a US that “pretended” to be in command. Some pretense. The envy of US power just eats at the guts of people like Chirac and de Vuillipin.
The US has gone into Iraq to uproot the “root causes” of terrorism in the Islamic world, which lie in its dysfunctional political culture. Bush and his advisors are far more sophisticated than European reactionaries whose idea of policy is to take bribes from savage dictators.
Osama’s historical comments are of more immediate importance than you might think. They are being echoed in the banlieus and in mosques in Europe from Britain to Spain to Italy. There is a movement afoot to subject Europe to Islamic rule.
Read up on how dhimmis are supposed to behave under Sharia; you may need the knowledge. If Muslims in the US had to obey the strictures that Sharia demands of dhimmis to gain the famed tolerance of Islam for the People of the Book, we’d call it Apartheid.
“Osama’s historical comments are of more immediate importance than you might think. They are being echoed in the banlieus and in mosques in Europe from Britain to Spain to Italy. There is a movement afoot to subject Europe to Islamic rule.”
3 words:
“Bring ‘em on!”
You also need to read some serious newspapers.
Michael:
I’m sure you’ve been around long enough to know TOE’s modus operandi. Ignore cogent points, pick at specific corners (no matter how trivial), dismiss entire arguments.
I suspect that TOE belongs to the grand old tradition of appeasement—his disregard for what bin Laden has to say echoes that of the Euro-Left on what the Soviets had to say, and what the Euro-Left and elite had to say about Hitler (in the latter case, of course, it depended on what line Moscow issued).
That bin Laden, regardless of whether he is correct or not, believes this, and more to the point, so do his followers, is the key. After all, there is no reason to believe that Australians congregated in the bar in Bali in order to confront Islam, yet Amroz and the JI, both linked to al-Qaeda (and, therefore, to bin Laden), made such arguments to justify their actions.
Thus, TOE also fails to recognize (or is it to care) that the American presence in Saudi Arabia was a major irritant to Islam (and a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda), that the US presence was triggered by Saddam Hussein, and removing the latter was essential to allow the removal of the former.
Come on, don’t spoil all the fun. If I was to take every argument presented in forums like this one dead serious I would lose all my natural happyness (which I suspect is the sinister plan behind it)
You cite two examples where you can make a valid point. But extending a plausible argument to any other region and political event as you see fit belongs to the arsenal of techniques used to construct conspiracy theories. We have seen quite a lot of this “X has connections to Y and Y is related to Z and that’s why we have to attack Iraq” stuff coming out of the US government in the last year. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) these kinds of stories were almost always a bit short on evidence.
On a related note:
Thankfully Seymour Hersh is readily supplying material for my own conspiracy theory which I have named “the few rotten apples theory” about abuse and torture in Iraqi prisons. The theory gets apples added day by day. They come from these rare species of trees that grow only in highest political and military echelons.
Are you prepared to think the unthinkable?