I woke up on 9/11 the way millions of others did, with the phone call to turn on the television — with an urgency that told you it didn’t really matter which channel. And the first words out of my mouth after clicking the remote were probably the first words millions of other people said: “Oh my God.” Only, of course, there was nothing godly about it, no matter what the perpetrators might have thought.
Ten years and a multifront war later, perspective become more possible, if still imperfect. I don’t care to rehash the day of the attack. My viewpoint was too remote to still matter to anyone but myself. If you want reminiscence, look elsewhere. There’s plenty to be found, especially in the blogosphere.
What I do want to do today is take a brief look at ten years of war. After the shock of 9/11 wore off, resolve set in. Left, right, conservative, liberal, moderate, everyone said the same two words: “Never again.” So, as former New York Mayor Ed Koch used to ask, “How’m I doin’?”
The liberal conceit in the Global War on Islamic Terror was twofold and intertwined. There was the belief that the attacks that morning were somehow our fault, and that it wasn’t an act of war. Those notions have twin effects in collapsing our ability to fight . The first one treats our enemy as somehow less than adult, not fully responsible for waging a war against civilians. The second saps our national will and our cultural confidence. This is the real homefront, and it’s the one front where, if we aren’t quite losing, we certainly aren’t winning.
The conservative (and neocon) error was also twofold.
In theory I agree with your call to go against all the major facets of the Axis of Evil, but there are some issues I have with it.
A) It would require a draft. Pure and simple, the US military is strong as a professional army, but it’s not really capable of fighting that many opponents, in that fashion. The way you describe it would basically require the US military to substitute kinetic strikes for boots on the ground. And you’d be hitting, what, precisely? The populations of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq (and Syria), who are/were held in hostage to their totalitarian governments. It’d have to be carpet bombing, writ large and for a 21st Century military.
B) In warfare, it’s not a matter of what you can do to the enemy, but also what they can do to you. North Korea alone would be a charnel house. We’d win, but it’d be bloody, and it’d require sustained operations. Iran has a population of more than 50 million people. Even with low level capabilities, they’d be able to swamp US ground forces with sheer mass and density attacks. This also underscores the other problem with your strategy: You want it to last a few weeks. It might. But it won’t. It would require sustained operations- and with the military all over the place, globally, it’d require immense logistical support.
C) You forget what Russia and China would do. Yes, they’re not as powerful as the US military is, but they don’t have to be. Would you want to engage in combat operations against the Axis of Evil, and then find out they’ve got a strategic partner willing to interdict on their behalf? Keep in mind, your idea (as much as I like it, in theory), will be seen by alot of the world as “America just went batshit crazy”.
D) Leaving the areas that we conquer an ash-heap, and not cleaning it up afterward just isn’t American. We didn’t do that after the Civil War, Spanish-American War, WW2, and Korea. And the 1st Gulf War told us to never leave the area a festering wound, which is exactly what those regions would be. Wounds to the Iranian and Iraqi psyches, and turn them against the United States, and belligerent for generations to come. We’d create the monster that we sought to defeat.
I do not believe the US could win a war, period. We have so many rules and regulations, cans and cannots, arm chair generals etc. The media ride alongs, the reporting of the minor infractions, our people brought up for court martial etc.. unarmed soldiers, no bullets, asking permission from someone in another location to fire on someone.. Not a way to do things anymore. We have enemies..they would cut our throats at the first chance and never look back, we need to do the same.
A pitiful bunch of men in a third world country have defeated us. Yes, they have.
We are like the British vs the Americans..that ragtag bunch of guys fought the highly regimented British…and won. We are the British.
We make a big deal of things, we announce plans, strategies etc. Just go in, kill them by “whatever” means. If I had a choice, I would much rather be feared than respected. Right Now..we are neither.
I don’t need to hear what we have and do not have, what they did etc. Just go in, destroy them and leave. Our money should not be used to rebuild the middle east.
Um, Sally, go check your US History. What you describe in your first paragraph is essentially the American Civil War, from the vantage point of the Union war effort. Yes, we are an over-bureaucratized nation that does more lawfare than warfare, but in the end, where is Al Qaeda now? I’m not advocating lawfare, but I am pointing out that there’s alot beyond the messy nature of the media hype machine. We’re winning, pure and simple. It’s not easy, but it never was. And, ultimately, I think Iraq will destroy the Vietnam Syndrome, once and for all.
And your analogy to the American Revolutionary War doesn’t work. The only reason the British gave in was because they were ALSO fighting the combined military force of the French and Spanish. To make the analogy work in present day, that would require the United States to fight a war that it didn’t want (Iraq doesn’t count; more than half the country did want it), and with our opponents allied with Russia and China. And William Pitt (the younger) made the smart realization that Britain could keep funneling armies to the Americas, but it was going to get more and more expensive (especially in light of the fighting against the French and Spanish), and it was better to let America go, and keep trade relations with them.
And “going in and destroying them, and leaving” isn’t valid. You’re just leaving rubble for Hitler to rebuild out of Versailles afterward.
And your comment about the money not being used in the Middle East- that smacks of pure racism. They’re just aaaaaarabs, right? Who cares, hrm? Bringing democracy, capitalism, and freedom to the world is what we do.
America needs to be more than the tip of the spear. It needs both the spear and the coca-cola.
It’s nice to think we bring the spear and the Cokes — but our record is mixed, at best. And I don’t say that as a smear on our reputation at at — I just think it comes from a misreading of some history.
Look at our two greatest success stories: Germany and Japan. Both were fascist warmongers on December 7, 1941. By September, 1945, both were well on the way to being modern, pacifistic democracies. But Germany was already a modern, western nation already. Japan was well on its way — and was desirous of westernization, since 1868. And to wring the warmaking out of them, we smashed both nations intro the ground. In the case of Germany, whatever the 8th Air Force left (not much), the Soviets carted away. Japan was a smoldering ruin before Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
So. We were starting with nations which were to a large extent, already more like us than unlike us. And then we were particularly vicious in how we dealt with their fascist leadership.
Which part of that formula is likely to hold true anywhere in the Middle East today? We’ve given Iraq a good start. But I warned back in 2002, that to get the result we wanted, we’d have to occupy that nation for fifty years. Instead, we’ll be gone at the end of next year. Sure, we “made Iraq into an ally.” For how long? Not much longer, I’d wager.
Would a Hitler rebuild from the ashes? Perhaps — but so long as that Hitler minds his own business, that’s not our problem. And my idea of a punitive expedition would have taught a powerful lesson. Germany (and to a lesser extent, Japan) was an industrial nation with the means to conquer Europe and threaten us. Araby possesses no such might, nor is it going to in our lifetimes. So long as they keep their problems to themselves, let’s buy as little oil as we can and leave each other alone.
Of course, that’s not the tact we took. How it all will play out, I don’t know. So far, we’ve done well. But recent events in Egypt show that we don’t have the slightest clue what comes next, except that it will probably be worse.
I agree with what you have written here. I would add however that in addition to Japan and particularly Germany being more like than unlike us, we also went to war in WW2 in order to save the democracies in Europe and the mostly potential democracies in Asia from those who had conquered them. The only democracy in the ME and SW Asia is Israel. We cannot save that which has never existed. I see no reason for the belief that democracy or human rights respecting societies can ever survive in most of the nations suffering the blight of Islam.
Actually Stephen, the assassination of Masood was the first shoe, Sept. 11 was the second. He was probably the only one who could unite Afghanistan under a not entirely corrupt government.
But that still was the extent of AQ’s ability. At its height.
Ok, THIS is one reason I read Green et al at PJM.
You know about Masood, understand his relevance, recognize he wasn’t perfect, regret his loss.
If I’m not mistaken, Masood warned us that if they come for him, be ready because they were coming for the US. He was tragically right.
Is there anyone like a new Masood in Afghanistan now?
Sadly, I don’t think there is anyone like him there. He remembered a pre 1979 Afghanistan that was relatively peaceful and had some modern sections. It was never a first or second world nation, but it’s gone backwards. Thanks to constant warfare from 1979 through today, and for the foreseeable future, it’s a prehistory tribal society, with the only modern thing being AK-47s.
If you ever get the chance watch Restrepo, a documentary about a company in the most forbidding part of Afghanistan during a 15 month tour. It’s not pro or anti war, just showing how messed up that area (it’s not even a country, really, not a nation state) is.
RBJ, I totally agree about Masood. He was the truly pro-American leader who could have blunted the corrupt nature of the Karzai family. It was smart to take him out from AQ’s vantage point.
“The 9/11 attackers were mostly the sons of Saudi Arabia’s upper-middle class.”.
I’m thinking of the Samurai class in Japan – once respected, they became obsolete and took up insane causes like Al-Qaeda.
To be brief, millions died.
“The cost — in blood and treasure and national will — has been higher than it should have been.”
This is a oft-repeated bit of panacea dished out to liberals. I object.
Blood: In reality, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were safer to USA Armed Forces personnel than the long period of peacetime after Vietnam and before Desert Storm. I measure safety in terms of dead per day. Iraq and Afghanistan rate a 2 dead per day. Compare to Vietnam (20), Korea (80) or WWII (200). Our Armed Forces are determined, focused and safe. Wonder why the networks no longer have those moments of silence? No one is dying. It was only a war for about six weeks.
Treasure: The number you use is a Trillion, or two. And that’s over ten years. Obama has spent this with a couple stroke of his pen on Stimuli… add in Healthcare if you really want to talk treasure. Even Bush’s spending outside of the wars will be a longer legacy than these “wars”. These adventures have been relatively cheap, and deposing Hussein was worth it.
National Will: This is the hardest part. As long as it’s politically impossible to realistically measure the Armed Forces efforts (as i did above), as long as people read the New York Times and associated Kool-Aid as if it’s gospel, our “National Will” will be harder to build and steer. But momentum is everything, and 9/11 demonstrated well how one morning can turn the ship of National Will on a dime.
Scott –
To say that our price in blood could have been lower isn’t to say that it is high. It is merely to say that it could have been lower than it was.
And then you bring up Obama’s spending, apropos of nothing I wrote, and as if to critique me for supporting it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sorry if an inference appeared; none was intended.
My point was that the Obama spending on misguided social programs, as well as the Bush era spending on, well everything, dwarfs the cost of these wars.
The wars at least resulted in the ouster of Saddam. Results we can use.
PS VP: I LOVE everything you do; tweet more! This site is a must read.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
You replace what we did in Iraq with a wholesale invasion of the ME and say this is the more sensible choice because Iraq was too costly in blood and $$?
Russia and China would have busy watching YouTube, perhaps?
We do have the military power to eradicate our enemies with one swift stroke, but we do not have the power to control what happens after that.
We invaded Afghanistan as a tactical response to 9-11 and stayed there as a strategic response to 9-11.
We invaded Iraq and changed it into an ally of the US as a strategic response to 9-11. That is, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, but 9-11 had everything to do with invading Iraq.
That’s the realization that kept the Cold War coolish.
Our new enemies don’t think that far ahead, or they assume that a world with no more West and no more Israel, will capitulate to their rule. Maybe the past ten years have made an impression, though, on the people who expect to live in a world where we don’t exist.
McGehee, I generally agree with you, although Vietnam was an area where we should have ditched that viewpoint, and invaded the North.
And our current enemies didn’t think it through that Bush wasn’t going to be the Clinton administration. And after Obama’s hiccup presidency is over, America will go back to the Bush Doctrine’s overt legacy. Obama spends more time pissing American allies off. Bush spent more time building real alliances (that everyone called “unilateral”), and calling our real foes out.
All I know is that in November 2012, if all goes well, David Cameron, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Nicholas Sarkozy will breathe a bit easier that our State Department isn’t a churlish mess anymore.
From JasonB: “…All I know is that in November 2012, if all goes well, David Cameron, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Nicholas Sarkozy will breathe a bit easier that our State Department isn’t a churlish mess anymore.”
If, and only if a Republican administration makes job one cashiering each and every political appointee in the executive branch on day one. I don’t think it’s possible to quantify how much damage was done to the Bush ’43 administration by Clintonistas left to fester for up to 8 years. And if the GOP can’t come up with a qualified candidate for position X, leave it vacant until they find one. That can’t possibly be worse than leaving what’s there now.
Well said, eman! Afghanistan’s tactical and strategic value to the US can’t be underestimated. And you’re spot on about Iraq, too. I think Hussein would have reverted to form if we didn’t topple him……or Al Qaeda would have done it first, and turned Iraq into their Taliban 2.0 (yes, they were trying to do that before 2003).
Plus, I’ll make an addendum: attacking Afghanistan and Iraq gave the United States far greater strategic and tactical force flexibility and projection in relation to Iran, Russia, and China.
Other than a road and some rail going through the worst parts of Pakistan (and that’s saying something) Russia has our nuts in a logistical vise in Afghanistan. Merchant powers do not project power from landlocked hellholes.
Stephen, Russia was an important facet in our invasion of Afghanistan, but over time, we built up our own power base in the greater Central/South Asian area. That is where Russia made their own strategic mistake: they thought we’d rely on their help. We did, but nowhere near as much or as long as they thought.
The ‘stans are ours, now. Or at least, ours if Obama doesn’t mess it up.
I am reminded of the Star Trek Episode where Kirk and Spock are trapped on a planet that has simulated attacks and people walk into Booths to be killed as casualties. They have sanitized War and as a result they have little will to end it.
War, as Kirk said, is a messy business and to be avoided but if War is necessary it should be prosocuted as violently and fast as possible. There should be devestation. There should be such a loss of National Blood and Treasure on the enemies side that we not only have taken away the will, but the ability to wage war for more than a generation at least.
As a southerner Gen Sherman is a complicated figure in American History but he was correct, “War is Hell”. It should be to remind everyone why it is to be avoided. In our efforts to fight a civilized War I am afraid we have forgotten the point of going to War in the first place amd that is to destroy the enemy, not placate them.
OK. I’ll bite.
Julius Caesar conquered Gaul. What most never stop to appreciate is that he conquered it between 4 and 8 times. He was rather too magnanimous in victory, always leaving his enemies ready, in a year or two, to fight again. He let them go home, after the battle, because he was not a cruel man, and had the liberal disease of mercy towards people who would offer him none. A noble, if ill advised, conceit.
When he finally decided to quit Gaul, and return home, he had one last campaign, against foes he’d already defeated twice. He knew he would not be there to fight back, so, reluctantly, he finally went for a traditional remedy: he chopped off their right hands, thereby assuring that it would be at least a generation until the Romans would need to fight them again. For this, even then, he was excoriated, and called brutal, the five previous years of perhaps unwise mercy notwithstanding. But Gaul was subdued.
Since that time, most successful generals realise that, once an intractable enemy has declared himself, his absolute destruction, with no holds barred, is the most humane path to victory. Deferring single deaths just sets up a long term relentless killing machine. Better to end it with extreme prejudice, than slowly bleed to death. For both sides.
For some reason, atom bombs have made all the experts stupid, even though their inaugural use worked exactly according to this doctrine. The Japanese went from busily setting up a suicidal killing field in what had previously been their country, and the Japanese generals wanted to try it, bigtime. Many think that Nagasaki wasn’t neccessary, but it was. Indeed, if they had known that was our last bomb, the war wouldn’t have ended there. They were willing to sacrifice every single Japanese, rather than surrender. We weren’t. That makes us bad?
General MacArthur was shocked that Truman refused his request for atomic weapons in Korea, which he had assumed was a pro forma request. If you lost anyone in the retreat from the Yalu, thank Truman. MacArthur’s comment: then what the hell do we have them for? That you would have a winning weapon, and not use it, didn’t even enter into his thinking, forged in the fires of WW1.
When Iran took the captives at the embassy in the ’70s, I saw a small number of people holding America hostage, and knew that if we let that stand, millions would eventually die. If, within a day or two, we’d obliged the Ayatollahs to meet their maker by say, nuking Tehran, how much misery, how many deaths of innocents, would since have been saved? Yes, the hostages would be dead. Yes, quite a number of innocents would have beern killed. But how many have died since, who were even more blameless?
Politics ain’t beanbag, and War is Hell, but if we always approach it with a mealy-mouthed lack of resolve, we will always eventually lose, and those people who we are supposed to be protecting will suffer the worst. Marquis of Queensbury rules only apply as long as the opponent abides by them. Once he is caught cheating, survival kicks in. What we’re doing now just doesn’t work, we are just playing whack-a-mole. Whack-a-mole with Predators. What could possibly inflame our middle ages enemies more than remotely killing them with industrial robots, thereby shaming them? There is no glory, only humiliation. This, of course, is brought to you by liberals, who claim some slight 2000 years ago, or say, a speech by GWB, is the root cause of terrorism. What idiots.
If noone else will say it, I will. Is the military nuke program just another jobs program? Why do we have them? I say, nuke Mecca and Medina, at the height of the Haj.If nothing else, they’ll be so busy trying to survive, they won’t be quite up to mischief. If it was good enough for Japan (and the Germans. After all, that’s who we built the Bomb for), why not them? If one were truly heartless, one could make the case that the Japanese were lucky we did it. They were on the verge of world domination in the ’80s, until McDonald’s and Pizza Hut (and the welfare state) put an end to their virility.
Occam’s Razor. Sometimes, the simplest answer is the correct one.
I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I truly am. But this elephant has been sitting in the corner for 50 years, and someone must, eventually mention it. A weapons system which will never, and by definition, can never be used, is not a weapons system. It is merely an amusing toy. An obscenely expensive and dangerous toy.
Any surgeon will tell you that he is more afraid of sparing too much flesh than cutting too deep, if thereby he kills the patient, slowly. Let us ponder this, and let logic and a love for all of humanity, choose our course, not a fear of being insensitive. How come noone has a problem with really innocent people dying because of our delicate sensitivity? Jimmy Carter wasn’t, and Obozo isn’t going to do this, but I fear, more and more, that someone is going to have to punch that button; sooner, rather than later. Once we recognize that, our choices become clearer.
Are you familiar with wretchard’s Three Conjectures?
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
One way or another.
HOW TO SOLVE AMERICA’S TERRORISM PROBLEM IN 5 EASY STEPS by Craig Biddle
Here is how America could solve her terrorism problem in 5 easy steps:
1. Stop sacrificing American soldiers to bring “freedom” to savages in Iraq. Pull our soldiers out of that hellhole, and let the savages have their civil war. ( Iraq is not and never was the main source of terrorism against America. Iran and Saudi Arabia are.)
2. Declare war on Iran.
3. Obliterate, from high altitude and long distance, all known Iranian military assets, all Iranian government buildings, all Iranian mosques and madrassahs, and the residences of all Iranian leaders, imams, clerics, and government officials. Hit these targets when they are most likely to be occupied (e.g., mosques during the day and residences at night). Do not send soldiers in on foot, except as necessary to identify targets or gather intelligence. We do not need to send soldiers in on foot to fight, and it would be immoral to do so. We have many big missiles, fast planes, and good bombs, and we should use these liberally while building bigger, faster, and better ones. (As to innocent non-Americans, such as Iranian children, who would be killed in such a campaign, they are not properly the concern of our government. Nor would their deaths be the fault of our government. Such deaths are always the fault of the force-initiating regime—and of those who in any way support or enable it—whose actions necessitate such retaliatory measures.)
4. Airdrop leaflets across the Middle East explaining: “From now on, this is how America will respond to any and all threats to her citizens or allies. We look forward to the time when you decide to civilize yourselves, stop taking religion seriously, renounce the initiation of physical force, recognize the principle of individual rights, establish rule of law, and join the free world. Until then, we will be watching you from way up in the sky—higher even than Allah, by means of technology He cannot fathom—and if we see anything that we so much as feel might conceivably pose even a remote threat either to America or to our allies, we will annihilate it and everything in its proximity without further warning.”
5. Notify the regime in Saudi Arabia that it got lucky and has the option of not being obliterated; that we are prepared instead to seize “its” oil fields and sell them to private industry, in part to pay for the campaign against Iran, and in part to return the fields to private industry where they belong; that it has 24 hours to turn the fields over to our agents; and that if it fails to comply or ignites the fields or does anything to thwart our program, its leaders, like those of Iran, will meet Allah sooner than later.
If we took these (or similar) measures, our terrorism problem would be solved. Sure, there would still be a few isolated instances of terrorism here and there in months and years to come; this much is inevitable given how long we have permitted the Islamists to plan and plot and establish cells. But, so long as we follow through as indicated above and immediately destroy anything that we think looks even remotely threatening, state sponsorship of terrorism against America would be over; the major threat to our lives would be gone.
Of course, we will not take such measures any time soon. Altruism will not let us. We will not take such measures until there is widespread understanding of the moral rightness of doing so—that is, until a substantial number of Americans understand that self-interest is moral and self-sacrifice is evil—and we are a long way from that. But such measures are morally correct—they are what we should do—and everyone who understands that they are should say so loudly and clearly. By placing such actions on the table for discussion, we create an opportunity to explain why they are morally correct—and that is what Americans (and westerners in general) most desperately need to learn.
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2006/08/how-to-solve-americas-terrorism-problem-in-5-easy-steps/
You know, this reminds me of the British prince, after the armistice ended the Great War, who was watching the Royal Navy scuttle the German Navy at Scapa Flow, said “This is wrong. We will be fighting this war again in twenty years.”
He was right. To the day.
And he is just as right about Biddle’s idea. It’s a fantastical idea that relies on pure brute force, and a complete lack of understanding Newton’s maxim that “For every action, there is an equal reaction.”
You’d just breed more terror with your plan. And it smacks far more of racism than not.
Oh Stephen, Stephen.
I am sure you are familiar with Ogden Nash’s poem “A drink with something in it”, that starts “There’s something about a martini”.
That’s what reading this stuff is like — let’s not mention the unmentionable submission cult that drives it all, from family/social structures that make suicide bombers of young males, to all encompassing impetus for its spread, and instead talk of the state actors (Iran, or Saud), outfits like al Qaeda, or those Arabs who “failed to modernize”.
To win this war would require even less bloodshed that punitive expeditions — destroy symbols of the cult, put forth propaganda forged by apostates (just like we did with Radio Free Europe and thelike during the Cold War) and try to make it safe for future apostates, and you’ll have millions drop out of the cult.
Not that punitive expeditions wouldn’t have their place….
As it is, we are exactly where bin Laden wanted us — bleeding men, money, materiel and morale, chasing the enemy at various fronts while the cult is having a Spring everywhere from Africa to Turkey to Indonesia….
Here’s the problem: al Qaeda is not the entire enemy. Though it has branches in many places, al Qaeda itself is only one offshoot of the enemy. As necessary as it is to defeat al Qaeda, that won’t end the war or put us out of danger. It’s time to begin looking at all of the various branches and front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with other supposedly “non-violent” organizations such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
The real enemy is Islam itself, which is an expansionist, enemy, totalitarian political ideology that seeks to eliminate everything outside of itself. It must be defeated both on the battlefield and in the marketplace of ideas.
HONORING THE VICTIMS OF 9/11
The best way to honor the victims of 9/11 is to reach all Americans with the truth that we’re in a fight to the death for the fate of the earth with totalitarian Islam-the primary cause of that terrible day of destruction and death when 3000 died in New York, DC and Shanksville, PA. Those who are urging us to move past 9/11 and forget the event (by turning it into a day of national service or something) are either the enemy within who want us to sleep while they destroy us in secret; or the see-no-evil-in-Islam Left who 9/11 never awoke (to the civilizational struggle we’re in) and want to remain sleeping in the belief that we, not Islam, were the cause. TOTALITARIAN ISLAM IS THE ENEMY! And 9/11, like Pearl Harbor throughout World War II, will remain fresh in the minds of all counter-Jihadists until it’s defeated.
Militarists have always argued that the damned politicians are the only reason for their failures. If we just invaded a few more countries and operated with less restraint, we’d crush our enemies once and for all and the rest of the world would applaud instead of forming a coalition to neutralize a rogue power. If only we hadn’t been stabbed in the back, we’d have been in Paris by July. Only traitors and cowards oppose our righteous arms!
If your point of view were a sandwich, maybe they’d call it the Barbarossa, hubris and stupidity on a bun.
I don’t think genocide is a very good idea. I know that makes one a cowardly librul and traitor to the Glorious White Man’s Civilization these days but I’d like to be known as someone who opposes mass murder and aggressive war.
“I don’t think genocide is a very good idea. I know that makes one a cowardly librul…”
Since liberals are the only group in America that has ever done anything even remotely genocide, it’s hard to see how opposing genocide would make one a liberal.
Explain your “genocide” charge. Was the near extermination of the Native American population a liberal enterprise?
Slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians in WWII by deliberately targetting cities with high explosives, napalm and atomic bombs springs to mind.
I reckon that’ll do for starters.
It doesn’t exactly fit the definition of genocide, but it’s close enough for government work.
And, it’s a hell of a lot closer than anything American non-liberals have ever done.
Congratulations on formulating a five-year-old’s solution to a grown-up problem. Now all of you go out and play. Daddy’s busy.
You’ve obviously not picked up on the parallels between international relations and a group of kindergartners at recess. It’s quite striking.
How old are you, Green? Old enough to fight? Do you have children of fighting age? Do you plan on having children? Are you going to go yourself and/or send them to fight and die in these wars you dream of? Enjoying your “vodka” haze as you sit in your armchair and demand that others die for your ill-conceived, immature agenda? Disgusting. I am usually not this strident, but if anything warrants a strident response, it is fetid bilge like this. It certainly doesn’t warrant a substantive response. Grow up. The same goes for your approving commenters.
“We stepped into this mess in Iraq, intentions pure and hopes aflutter that as soon as we stepped in, the Iraqis would step up. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. But President Bush did at least persevere and pursue a second goal of turning Iraq into a deathtrap for jihadis. We’ll never know exactly how many of the killers we killed, but estimates run from 40,000 to 80,000. Better to fight then over there with soldiers, than over here with airplane passengers.”
Oh come on!
No. That is not why we stepped into the “mess” in Iraq, though I would quickly add that the Bush administration failed miserably in explaining it’s strategy in waging the Iraq war. The reason why we took the Saddam regime down was in order to demonstrate to the Arab Muslim world that we (under the leadership of G.W. Bush) meant EXACTLY what we said when we declared that we would regard states that support terrorist organizations as being no different than the trans-national terrorist organizations themselves. Iraq, at the time, was the biggest dog on the block. They were not alone, of course, but they were the most outspoken in their contempt for Bush’s stated objectives. Saddam flat-out thumbed his nose at us: continuing to provide sanctuary to most-wanted-list terrorists; doubling Iraq;s payments to Palestinian suicide-bomber families; continuing to hold regional jihadi conferences in Baghdad that explicitly called for the annihilation of Israel, America, and the West; and doubling down on their utter contempt for U.N. WMD inspectors.
Yes. Saddam was probably not directly involved in the planning of the 9-11 attacks. Probably. And maybe he had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks on America in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity against us. Maybe. But we did know, again, that he was the biggest dog on the block, and that he was the only one out there who was openly spitting in our eye at a time when the American people were (rightly) demanding vigorous offensive actions against Islamic terrorist organizations and the states that enabled them. So Bush decided to take the dog down. As an example. And he was right (both morally and strategically) to do so. American security improved dramatically by his aggressive actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. We can argue about the aftermath of it all: the whole nation-building thing. But we are much better off today for collapsing the Saddam regime. Unfortunately we have lost much of the geopolitical/military respect that Bush’s bold, swift, and determined strikes brought us in the early years of our “declared” war on Terror. The Fifth Column at home and in Europe has seen to that.
It was never about the Iraqi’s “stepping up” to advance American objectives — that and the Iraqi greeting us with open arms bullshit was nothing but a canard of the Left. All such considerations came later, after American forces shredded Saddam and his terror paramilitaries & vaunted Republican Guard (again) in a matter of days.
We probably should have just left at that point (and from Afghanistan as well), with a promise to return with the other fist should these barbarians ever disturb our peace again. I would have been fine with that. But Bush discovered high ideals within himself that he apparently didn’t know were there. And the totalitarian left, which has no ideals whatsoever, made him (and America) pay a heavy price for it. Who doesn’t recall the shock that swept around the world re the awesome power of the American armed forces that was displayed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first three years after 9-11? We had Iran, Syria, and the rest of them exactly where we wanted them, back then (raw power being the only thing that our Arab-Muslim enemies recognize). But the Left stole it all away. We allowed them to steal it away. We essentially allowed Dan Rather, Cindy Sheehan, and the NYT (metaphorically speaking) to stop the U.S. War on Terror dead in its tracks. They won. They turned America into the victimizer and G.W. Bush into George Armstrong Custer. And now, a few more dithering years down the road, we have the former USSR actively aiding Iran in building a nuclear weapons program that they have openly promised to the Muslim world to use against the New-Jersey-sized state of Israel. But I run on.
The Bush administration should have just leveled with us in 2002-2003. I understood what the mission was. I understood the reasoning behind chopping Saddam off at the knees. Why couldn’t they have just come right out and SAID IT — in plain language that any American could understand? I guess for the same infuriating reason that most of the Republican elite cannot just come out and say that Social Security is indeed a massive Ponzi scheme that will soon lead to the ruin of millions of American wage-earners’ lives. Truth, it seems, is seldom a viable option in politics.
Pretty good essay and good comments (even the ones I disagree with
).
I’d add this consideration – why would war spending be drastically different than any other type of government spending? Once the faucet is opened, it’s damned difficult to close. There are a lot of very powerful, politically connected, big-spending entities making billions of dollars off of the boondoggles these wars quickly became – just like Wall Street makes money off of government-covered risks, the endless corporate and individual welfare scams, etc. War carries other enormous political and moral dimensions, but at an economic level it’s just like every other piglet at the government sow’s teats. Politicians lie, cheat, smear, spin, and demagogue for all of this other spending – why would war be any different?
So much for the “balanced budget amendment” advocated by the pajama media types.
This would have to be considered a 30-40T endeavor..stick to your games of Risk…
9/11 ten years on: Bush and Blair were right
In the last ten years, it has become increasingly fashionable to knock both George W Bush and Tony Blair for their response to the attacks of 9/11
But ten years on, I would argue that — while mistakes have certainly been made — Bush and Blair basically got it right. (
It is difficult to argue that the war to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan was not the right response. Here was a clear-cut case of a just war — the US was responding to an attack on its soil, by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan and hosted by the Islamist regime there. Any lesser response would have looked pathetically weak and left Afghanistan as a base for Al-Qaeda.
But what about Iraq? The lesson the US administration and British government took from 9/11 was that threats should not be left alone until they struck first. Saddam Hussein had been an ongoing problem for years, repeatedly obstructing UN weapons inspectors, while the sanctions regime against him was crumbling due to a lack of support from other countries. Here was a dictator who was in breach of seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions, had used chemical weapons against his own people and who had a record of harbouring and collaborating with Islamist terrorists.
Many people became legal experts overnight and declared the war ‘illegal’, despite the Attorney General’s advice that it was lawful, despite the seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions and despite a vote of Parliament.
Many more condemned the US and the UK for the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet they ignore the plain fact that the vast majority of civilian casualties have been caused not by US or allied forces, but by the Islamist insurgents fighting against us — who have received notably less condemnation.
Yet many in the West find it much easier to condemn the US and Britain rather than accept that we are genuinely facing a vicious enemy and have the right to defend ourselves. We were even blamed for ‘creating’ the forces that we were battling, with it still being wrongly claimed that the CIA funded Osama Bin Laden during the 1980s. In the case of Iraq, it was often said that it was the US that had armed Saddam Hussein in the first place, during his war with Iran. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US and UK combined provided Saddam Hussein with less than one per cent of his purchased weapons — against fifty-seven per cent from the USSR, thirteen per cent from France and twelve per cent from China.
Similarly, it was claimed that the War on Terror, and particularly the Iraq War, radicalised many Muslims. It should hardly need pointing out that it was Al-Qaeda that started the war, not us. And arguing that we should not do anything which might radicalise would-be terrorists would be to hand Islamist terrorists a veto over our foreign policy.
It has often been argued that the War on Terror alienated Muslim opinion worldwide, and was perceived as a ‘war against Islam’. Yet George W Bush and Tony Blair repeatedly went out of their way to emphasise that this was not a war with Islam and that Islam was neither the enemy nor the problem.
It has also been said that the US should have done more to ‘reach out’ to the Muslim world. In fact, in the early days after 9/11, there were many attempts at reaching out, particularly by Tony Blair, but beyond expressions of sympathy for the victims of the 9/11, there was little reaching back.
Incredibly, after 9/11, some still persisted in claiming that the terrorist threat was ‘exaggerated’ or even ‘manufactured’ by governments. But the reason there have not been even more terrorist attacks is not because Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have not had the intention of launching them but due to concerted military action and the constant vigilance and undercover work of our security services.
Many have criticised the terminology of the ‘War on Terror’, pointing out that you cannot fight a war against something which is a tactic rather than a group or an ideology. They may have a point, but such quibbles over terminology are hardly helpful. Given the scale of the 9/11 attacks and the threat of further atrocities, conceptualising the response as a ‘war’ was surely the right thing to do. Bush and Blair were absolutely right to recognise that these were not just isolated terrorist attacks against specific targets, but that they were indeed an assault on our values and way of life.
Thankfully, Osama Bin Laden is now dead, his organisation weakened, and his ideology dwindling in popularity. These things did not happen by accident, but as a result of the War on Terror and the efforts led by George W Bush and Tony Blair.
The ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrates another thing which Bush and Blair got right: that democracy could be spread to the Middle East, that freedom was not an exclusively Western value that was incompatible with Muslim or Arab societies. It is impossible to tell whether or not the Arab Spring would have happened if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq. If it had, then he would almost certainly be doing his best to crush it with a bloody campaign of repression to rival what has been done in Syria and Libya. Instead, we had a democratically elected Iraqi government calling for action against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.
While we have had numerous successes in the War on Terror, the fight goes on, most notably in Afghanistan. The last decade has been tough, not least for the US. Tough but — given the enormity of 9/11 — necessary.
At the end of the decade, it needs to be said: Bush and Blair did the right thing, and we are in a better position now than we would otherwise have been.