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| Osama bin Laden is Winning the War |
| 05.24.04 (10:18 pm) [edit] |
Its time someone called the score. Bush and the ambitious neo-conservative majority cabinet have jeopardized the War on Terror by embarking on a reckless, if not worthless war in Iraq.
Consider, a $500 billion budget deficit, we have no money for the real threat posed by North Korea or for Homeland Security on our soil. An Army of 480,000 stretched thin, national guardsmen serving double duty. Najaf and Fallujah costing us a battalion of dead and wounded, though the combatants there hold no allegiance to Saddam Hussein.
Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history. Granted, the invasion was brilliantly conceived and executed by General Tommy Franks, our fighting men and women were among the finest we ever sent to war.
Yet, Iraqis are no closer to freedom and equality as we are to killing or capturing Osama bin Laden. As former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, put it, Iraq is a more dangerous place than we could have imagined.
A civil war is looming, and the supposed handover of power by June 30 may only expedite the process.
History shows that the liberated often turn to oppressing their oppressors. Freed from Saddam after the Gulf War, the Kurds seized Kirkut and its oil fields and started kicking Arabs out. The Shiites await a Shiite-dominated Iraq. The Sunnis do not believe in majority rule. They believe in Sunni rule.
Still, G.W. believes God has called him to liberate the repressed peoples of Iraq and the Islamic world, because freedom is God's gift to mankind, and when men are made free, they do not war with one another.
As one looks to Najaf, Fallujah and Sadr City, this seems not only naive, but delusional. Has the Yale graduate forgotten our own civil war nearly 100 years after our great revolution from the Brittish crown?
As our networks show us pictures of the desecrated bodies of U.S. contractors being hung from a bridge in Fallujah, and the reprehensible video footage of Nick Berg’s decapitation, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera shows Arabs pictures of maimed and dead women and children from American bombs and bullets fired for their own good.
As the pictures we see engender hatred of the Muslim, the pictures Arabs see engender hatred of us. And hatred of the United States has never been greater in the Islamic world, nor has a president ever been so despised, even by our own. The great polarization of Arabs and Muslims against the America of George W. Bush that was the dream of bin Laden has been made reality by the Iraq war.
When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?
If American conservatives reject the "equality" preached by NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Affirmative Action Quotas mandated by the Coalition Provisional Authority to provide gender equity?
The Art of War prescribes that a good leader will establish clear goals and understandable rules for its peoples and its war campaigns. Can the President be both against Affirmative Action at home but all for it in Iraq? Perhaps the definition of liberty and equality is lost on the author.
With the squalid S & M photos from Abu Ghraib prison, we no longer have the moral authority to impose our "values" on Iraq. The hyper-sexual nature of U.S. G.I. behavior in Iraq did the president no favor. The actions of a few soldiers may not have been routine or ordained by the Pentagon, but true American culture was displayed before the world. The same culture, by the way, that is summarily rejected by bin Laden and the Taliban.
For weeks now, Bush, his cabinet members and military campaign generals continue to apologize for the western civilization they want to impose on Arabs.
Oh, by the way, still no Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq. It’s not clear that we’re even bothering to continue to look for them. Oh wait, a mortar shell used as a bomb in an attack on the Americans in the safe green zone was found to have traces of Sarin agent. Tests are positive, and so are weapons experts that believe the agent dates back to possibly before Hussein’s reign and is to archaic to be dangerous today. Darn!
To be fair and balanced, Iraqi oil production is near record levels. So is the price per barrel of OPEC produced petroleum. And they said this war had nothing to do with oil. But hey, Saddam was a bad, bad guy, so we’re still right, right?
The Arab street is rooting for their liberators to lose. A slice of the Iraqi population believes there are times it is justified to kill Americans. Polls have found support for suicide bombers.
The rejoicing around every destroyed military vehicle where U.S. soldiers have died should tell us that the battle for hearts and minds is being lost.
Thus, the Bush Administration has played right into the hands of Bin Laden and his Al Qaida masterminds.
I pray we will learn the lessons of Israel, their ability to kill Hamas leaders, have only provoked the Palestinians like they provoked the Lebanese rebels 20 years prior.
[b][i]You may kill the soldier but you cannot kill the revolution.[/i][/b]
All Bush has left is a decision between, cut and run, or to stay the course, which is John Kerry’s bright idea.
But America is not going to fight a 5- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will the creation of new terror groups in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world make us any safer from terrorism on U.S. soil. The retreat of the great American empire, is underway.
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