So, as Talking Points Memo points out:
The President launches a series of speeches that repeatedly quote the words of Osama Bin Laden to highlight how terrorists want to kill Americans. Then, a week later, he says that catching Osama Bin Laden is not a priority. Words vs. action. Rhetoric vs. reality. The Bush presidency. If only the Democrats knew how to take advantage of the glaring inconsistencies.
?I absolutely do not agree that Iraq is part of the war on terror,? said Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, at a news conference in Oakbrook Terrace. ?I think a very small percentage of what?s happening in Iraq is terrorist activity. I think most of it is sectarian violence. It?s Sunni fighting Shiites.?
That view drew a raised eyebrow from her Republican opponent Peter Roskam.
?The notion that theater of conflict (in Iraq) is de-coupled from the war on terror, I just disagree with that,? said Roskam, a state senator from Wheaton. ?I?m actually surprised she would say that.?
Roskam agrees with Bush, who stressed in his Monday speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that Iraq is a key front in the war on terror.
?Al-Qaida and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a free society in the heart of the Middle East,? Bush said. ?They have joined the remnants of Saddam?s regime and other armed groups to foment sectarian violence and drive us out.?
But Duckworth, a Hoffman Estates Army reservist who saw combat action in Iraq, disagreed.
?I think that to try to tie Iraq into the war on terror is a disservice to the real work that has to be done on the war on terror,? she said.
Duckworth lists capturing Osama bin Laden, finishing the job in Afghanistan and enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations on homeland security as the ?real work.?
Petey and Dick Cheney aren’t up on their reading.
There can be no clearer differentiation between the reality based community and those who have decided to live in a fantasy land. Look at today’s ticker and you’ll notice these aren’t terrorist attacks, this is a low grade Civil War with tons of sectarian violence. Trying to fight it as if it were about terrorists will certainly result in even worse outcomes than we already are stuck with.
What is central to fighting terrorism is bringing down Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Apparently, Bush, and Roskam since he’s following the President’s line, don’t think that’s so important.
Mark Kirk, Jerry Weller, David McSweeney and Andrea Zinga can all join in and explain to the people of Illinois exactly how getting Osama bin Laden isn’t a high priority. I’d love to see that done in a way that doesn’t cause people to either bust out laughing or just start crying.
You liberals need to get your story straight. There was just a spasm of coverage in the MSM about how al Qaeda controls some province in Iraq.
Larry,
I think, if I gave you a choice, you would prefer degrading the capacity of Al Quaeda and its fellow travellers over capturing bin Laden or killing him.
The goal in war is to incapacitate your enemy so that you can impose your will. You only have so many resources and as a great power we have lots of interests. It may feel good to get bin Laden, but winning is more important. This isn’t chess, we don’t win when we checkmate the King.
I think some on the left are falling into a trap. For example, arguing that thanks to the war in Iraq there are more terrorists now than before Iraq as some democrats have done begs the question of whether those terrorists have the capacity to attack the US homeland or US interests overseas. You just set yourself up for the slapdown.
As far as Duckworth is concerned. Al Quaeda seems to disagree. They call Iraq the central front in the war with the West. bin Laden himself says so. If you enemy declares something important…especially in this media environment…it’s important.
I hope all is well. It’s good to have you back… I hope the new job goes well. very best regards.
Maybe this is why Bush told Couric last week that it’s hard work linking the Iraq War to the War on Terror….
Freudian slip? Maybe.
—
Dan, if al Qaeda controls anything in Iraq it is because Bush’s failed war planning (and lack thereof) opened the damn door.
Duh.
—
Greg, You can spin it however you want, but that doesn’t change the fact you’re just spinning and not really going anywhere.
Capturing bin Laden when Bush had the chance would’ve taken a helluvalot of steam out of al Qaeda and AQ-wannabes and you know it.
The guy masterminded 9/11, but Bush has all but forgotten about him. He’s “just not that concerned about him” (actual Bush quote).
Bin Laden is hiding in a cave with a dialysis machine. It shouldn’t be that hard to find him.
It’s all about priorities and for the conservatives right now priority #1 is simply self-preservation, no matter how many lies or how much spin (Greg) it takes.
Conservatives policies have failed America — from Iraq to Social Security to immigration to healthcare to taxes to emergency preparedness … and on and on.
Dan,
Are we talking about Anbar? Where we have failed miserable and allowed them to gain a foothold in a country where they didn’t before? Remember, the only Al Qaeda in Iraq previously was in our area of protection and Bush specifically didn’t take them out.
How did we get in the position there to be losing? Because we tried only a military solution to a political problem. Unless one is willing to carry out tactics like Hussein, you win by political tactics in such wars. The US has refused to engage in any serious political solutions instead claiming we’ll kill the insurgents as if this was a zero sum game. It isn’t and we’ve created insurgents.
If you bother to have read any of those stories-set off by a Marine Colonel, not the mysterious amorphous “left” you might have noted the argument is there is no way for the US to win.
If that’s the case, then what are we doing?
We can’t go after insurgents like Sadr because he’s a part of the ruling government and protected by Malaki.
So who can win in these areas? The US has already largely lost. What might work are those who can win a political fight and that group is only composed of Iraqis.
Conflating the influence of Al Qaeda in Iraq–affiliated with Al Qaeda, but also separate, with it being a central front on terror in Iraq misses the important point that their influence is because they are Sunni and they offer protection from Shiites and filled a political vacuum when we tore apart the Baathist regime. This is a problem of sectarian violence that we can easily cause to become a problem of terrorism by continuing to fight in an area where we cannot win.
What is the strategy? Seriously, it’s more than a slogan and right now the only evident strategy is to avoid any political solution to the fighting and insist we can kill everyone who opposes us. If it wasn’t such a tragic fuck-up, it would be silly.
Greg,
Thanks and it’s good to be semi-back–let me know when you are down again, everytime we try I’ve been having hectic days.
There are two reasons to go after bin Laden himself.
First, he spearheaded the killing thousands of Americans. Second, his continuing ability to flip up and flaunt his survival is tremendous example of the impotence of the US. His continued ability to operate demonstrates the exact argument he tries to make the US isn’t that powerful.
Third, he and his people were just granted a free pass in a country with nuclear weapons and teetering on the edge of Islamic Revolution. If there was one thing that could be the worst result out of 9-11, this is it. It’s worse than Saudi flipping. Saudi requires the outside world to work with it to make money. Pakistan is a country with nukes and Islamic radicals just so close to taking over. Providing Al Qaeda and the Taliban a base there where the can live “peacably” provides the safe haven to plan attacks and the ability to build up a movement in the only Muslim country with nukes. Add to that Somalia and the Sudan and there are three excellent safehavens for Al Qaeda right now. The presence in Iraq is costless to Al Qaeda because all that goes on there are locals who would be fighting under sectarian banner get to use the name for recruiting and fight as they would anyway. The danger isn’t there where there is a possibility of a political solution involving Iraqis deciding how to proceed and not Americans insisting that there is no compromise.
The danger is in these failed states and ungoverned areas such as in Pakistan. Bush claiming it would take 100,000 Special Forces troops and so it’s undoable doesn’t deal with a catch 22 other than to kick it down the road. If the Taliban and Al Qaeda can sit in the border region and regroup, then they can lead an Islamic Revolution in Pakistan and lead terrorist operations elsewhere. It gets them closer to nukes. Attacking them now has problems with Pakistan’s stability, but so does not attacking them. In fact, not attacking them leaves out of our control the timing to try and do something about Pakistan’s nukes.
We are tied down policing sectarian violence in a country that isn’t the biggest threat and the threats are allowed to grow in places with far more danger to us.
If you have a bunch of cockroaches scattered throughout your house, wouldn’t it be advantageous to have a lot of them come into a single room so it’s easier to get rid of them?
All wars have “failed war planning.” George Washington made so many blunders it wasn’t even funny. But he stuck it out and we now have a country we can all be proud of.
Let’s stick it out here and win instead of trying so hard to stick a harpoon in GWB’s back every five minutes.
If we had done nothing in Iraq and somehow a terrorist with any connection at all to Iraq committed a mass murder in the US, every newspaper and pundit in America would roast GWB. These aren’t easy decisions at the top. The one thing I trust in GWB is that his intentions are pure.
If the preznit was serious aboiut getting rid of Al Queda in Iraq, Danny Boy, then why hasn’t he committed the proper number of troops to do it? If this is a fight to the death, then why is Bush tying one hand behind our collective backsides?
Roosevelt and your idol Churchill never tried to win a war on the cheap. If this is all-out war, then fight it that way.
===If you have a bunch of cockroaches scattered throughout your house, wouldn’t it be advantageous to have a lot of them come into a single room so it’s easier to get rid of them?
Except they aren’t doing that unless you mean Pakistan.
There are two fundamental problems with the assumptions you are making.
First, the number of terrorists or insurgents isn’t a set number that is reduced by the each one you kill.
Second, you are conflating an insurgency based on sectarian violence with a terrorist network. Al Qaeda in Iraq are Sunnis who are rallying around the brand, but that does nothing to limit the number of potential terrorists elsewhere. Trying to defeat sectarian violence as if it is simply some sort of foreign terrorist network is a recipe for failure. Insurgencies are put to rest politically in the end–negotiation. The US has refused to allow any sort of discussion that would allow insurgents to get amnesty if they put down their arms if they had attacked Americans. That makes a political solution a non-starter.
===Let’s stick it out here and win instead of trying so hard to stick a harpoon in GWB’s back every five minutes.
How about he go after the terrorists who attacked us. How many were from Iraq? 0 When was the last Iraqi sponsored terrorist attack on the US? The attempted assassination of George Bush in Kuwait. The last attack on US soil by Saddam Hussein. There wasn’t one.
===If we had done nothing in Iraq and somehow a terrorist with any connection at all to Iraq committed a mass murder in the US, every newspaper and pundit in America would roast GWB.
Apparently not. We haven’t roasted him for not doing anything about Osama bin Laden.
Iraq’s support of terrorism was very limited to types like Abu Nidal who had their day many years ago and some small operations around the Gulf area. He wasn’t a major supporter of terrorism as are governments in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and a host of the Gulf States. The most dangerous networks of terrorists in the Middle East for the last 20 years haven’t been nationalists. With the exception of the PLO, Middle Eastern terrorism has become a religious based movement whether it be Sunni (Al Qaeda) or Shiite (multiple) instead of nationalist based movements from the time of Nassar.
There are so many misconceptions about the history of the Middle East in the US it is nearly impossible ot have a discussion of how the period of Nationalism that spawned Nassar and the Baathists eventually led to the relgious based movements of today. Baathists were a force of the status quo in the Middle East by the 1980s and that is why the US was willing to work with them–as wrong as we might see that now. While Syrian Baathists were willing to work with religious based terrorists to further their goals of expansion in Lebanon, Hussein’s version of Baathism was entirely state based and a fascist model.
The point of this being, trying to pretend that attacking Iraq was about terrorism demonstrates a serious disconnection from reality. Iraq under Hussein was one of the least likely threats in terms of terrorism. For Bush to think attacking Iraq would help combat terrorism is the most damning indictment of his judgment.
Arguing that Iraq was close to nuclear weapons capabilities was a legitimate argument because Hussein was so incredibly bad at understanding the consequences of his expansionism. However, that was predicated on there being some sort of nuclear program in 2002 in Iraq and there wasn’t. Apart from that there was no serious reason to attack Iraq.
We are allowing safe havens for Al Qaeda to be created in the Sudan, Somalia and Pakistan. I can understand that no American politician would have the guts to put troops on the ground in Somalia. And I can understand being delicate about a nuclear power. In the case of the Sudan we have both a moral reason to intervene due to the genocide and to deny Al Qaeda a potential home.
Being delicate about Pakistan does not mean not doing anything about it, however. Leaving the problem to fester will only lead to more instability in Pakistan over the long haul. We can take the pain now and hopefully prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of Islamic radicals or wait around for Al Qaeda to have a friendly government installed and give them access to such technology.
But we don’t have the manpower to do it right now because we have overtaxed our ground troops who are following a flawed strategy in Iraq.
Are you suggesting Bush started a war in Iraq to draw Al Qaeda to it, so we could kill them there?
You mean to say that we’re using Iraqi civilians as … bait?
And you say Bush’s intentions are pure. Wow.
Larry,
Sorry it took so long to get back. It’s been busy.
I think we are not that far off from agreement. I think you put forward good arguments. I agree that we should go after bin Laden, and I know resources are being expended to do just that. But should it be our number 1 priority? No. Should considerable resources be used to pressure Al Quaeda’s leadership on the Pakistani frontier? Yes. Saying a thing is not a priority is not the same as saying it’s not to be done.
And I think you agree that failed states are the problem. But when I look at failed states, Sudan, Somalia, the Pakistani frontier, and Iraq (both before and after Saddam) I’d much rather have Al Quaeda bottled up on the horn of Africa over Iraq or Pakistan. I think that Pakistan going radical is also a bit of a stretch because of the military leadership in Pakistan has a history of not letting that happen. It doesn’t have the success of Turkey, but that role exists.
Iraq is our greatest challenge. With or without Saddam it sits on the world’s third largest proven oil reserves. That’s a lot of economic and political clout. Al Quaeda with Iraq’s capacity to do harm is a real threat and the thought of abandoning Iraq would do far, far, far greater damage to us than Osama bin Laden thumbing his nose at us from a cave in the Pakistani frontier, or in Somalia or in the Sudan.
The main tenents of our policy in the war on terrorism are to protect the homeland, attack the terrorists in the states that harbor them, and promote democratization as a means creating strong stable governments that have the capacity to halt terrorists operations from their country.
Facts such as there may be more terrorists now than five years ago (how do we count that?), that Osama bin Laden can thumb his nose is irrelevent if they do not possess the capacity to harm us.
I think you are correct about the sectarian violence in Iraq being about branding, but if you are right than it is manageable. We’re not going anywhere — I don’t care who is President or running Congress. The military leadership there is learning how to address it. The three block war has become a one block war. The focus of our effort is in Bagdhad. And both you and I know that progress won’t be linear and it won’t be over until the nut jobs figure out that killing one another isn’t doing them any good.
Finally, saying Iraq wasn’t about terrorist is kind of like saying that M.E. politics aren’t about oil. Iraq isn’t about oil, but our whole presence in the region is about protecting the free flow of oil and the global trade in oil. Iraq isn’t about 9-11 terrorism, but it is about terrorism nonetheless because Saddam will deal with whoever he thinks will help him; he wanted revenge on the US; and as a brittle dictatorship Iraq was ripe for housing Al Quaeda. Both he and Al Quaeda wanted the US out of the region and both want to use oil as a weapon…