"An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured."
- Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), West German chancellor
A recent email from one of my readers suggested it's time for us to withdraw from Iraq, that fighting terror militarily is a mistake and that negotiating with our enemies would provide a path to peace much more quickly than current U.S. policy will. I also have a couple of friends who hold the same view and have argued with me about mine, which happens to be about 180 degrees from theirs.
You see, I do not believe that al-Qaeda is interested in the slightest in sitting down over a cup of Starbucks with us and negotiating any type of settlement that would return the world to some semblance of normalcy. I think that they have no intention of stopping their campaigns of terror until every democratic government on the globe has been supplanted by an Islamic theocracy. I am aware of no evidence whatsoever that leads me to believe they can be talked out of advancing their ideology by any means at their disposal, up to and including the murder of millions of innocent Americans.
Appeasement and placation simply doesn't work with these madmen. We have a history of it throughout the 1990's when we were attacked time after time and didn't retaliate in a forceful way. And what did our pacifism buy for us? Only the murder of 3,000 of our citizens on September 11, 2001. I fail to understand how turning the other cheek after that disaster, or continuing to beg the United Nations to help us, or pulling in the reins after toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, would have advanced the long-overdue message that the U.S. would retaliate, with armed force if necessary, against any act of aggression against our country, its citizens, or its military.
On the contrary, I believe that taking a law-enforcement approach with our attackers, as some have suggested, would only have emboldened them further, reinforcing their belief that they could do whatever they wished to us and get no more than a slap on the wrist in return. No, my friends, it is not by appeasement that the threats these people pose to our way of life will come to an end. It is by force. As far as I am concerned, every country in the world needs to understand that when we are attacked, we are going to hit back, and hard. That is to say, when we are attacked, someone's going down.
The Taliban discovered this shocking fact, as did Saddam Hussein. And unless Iran and Syria, who are pouring money, weapons and manpower into Iraq to fight us get the good sense to cease their assistance to our enemies, my hope is their leaders will soon discover our resolve as well, either through negotiations, or failing in that regard, via the full might of our military and the overthrow of their governments. Why be so harsh?
Because what we've done so far has sent a message to countries who provide funding, safe havens, and other support for those who wish us harm. And I believe they're nervous, still not sure about how far we'll go, mainly because of all the wrangling back and forth in our country about the rightness or wrongness of what we're doing in Iraq. But they're nervous. If insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are eventually subdued, it bodes ill for them and their dictatorships and theocracies. If another of their governments should fall because of their support of terrorists, I believe that others in the same game will pause and say to themselves, "Geez, we have really pissed off the Yanks. Maybe we ought to ask al-Qaeda to find somewhere else to go. We could be next." They may be saying this already, based on what we've seen happen in Libya.
I do not believe in unnecessary war. I believe in peace. I always have. But when you have an enemy who is calling on his followers to kill Americans wherever they find them, and who has proven he has no compunction about murdering as many innocent civilians as possible, it's time to stop thinking about meeting with them at the neighborhood pub to talk over our differences and begin dealing with them with something they understand only too well--force. Turn the other cheek? It's kind of hard to do that if you're dead, and dead is what they want us. That's al-Qaeda's bottom line expressed for all to see--right here.
2 comments:
Amen! Ron, Amen!!!!! Some folks need to get their heads out of their asses and take a real close look at who we're dealing with. Those al-Qaeda nuts aren't gonna be happy until they've killed more Americans. Their beliefs run strong and deep and talking isn't gonna change a thing! Anyone who truly believes that it will is definitely living in a DREAM world. WAKE UP people!
The Bush Administration is understandably eager to equate "fighting terror" with the Iraq War.
The problem with the general approach he expresses there is that stamping GWOT (global war on terrorism) on any military action the Administration wants to take doesn’t make the action good, desirable, or in the interest of the United States. So far, the Iraq War has *increased* the vulnerability of the US to terrorism by diverting resources to a war of choice in Iraq and by inflaming anti-American hatred in the Muslim world.
Those who want to cheer the Iraq War as part of the GWOT still have the same questions to answer as those who don't: What is so important about Iraq that we're willing to increase the terrorist threat to American by the occupation there? Are we willing to see the US put the far larger number of soldiers there needed to make the occupation successful? Are we willing to demand a military draft to achieve it? Are we willing to see Congress raise taxes, especially on the wealthy, instead of fighting to see that the wealthiest Americans pay fewer and fewer taxes to support their country?
How many American deaths are we willing to accept there? A thousand more? Ten thousand more? Fifty thousand more? Was it right to go to war and kill people and have Americans killed based on lies about WMDs? Why is the Iraq War today more important than the Afghan War?
Just the fact that we're at war with some Muslims somewhere does not mean that our actions are making the US safer against Al Qaeda or similar groups. The Abu Ghuraib torture revelations alone are likely to cause problems in cooperation between the US and European Union countries, whose laws forbid them to extradict a suspect to a country where they may be subject to torture. - Bruce
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