Further on the line of fundamentally counterproductive strategies, one of the pretexts given by the Bush Administration for its invasion and occupation of Iraq was to reduce the threat of international terrorism. In their fantasyland, all evils were one, and so Saddam was obviously in bed with Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked out too well. Today, CIA director Porter Goss said that the conflict had become a "cause for extremists". Worse, Iraq has become one giant terrorist training camp:
"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said."They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks."
So, rather than making us safer, the US has endangered us all. And rather than reducing either the number of terrorists or their ability to conduct attacks, the US has ensured that we have more and better trained terrorists with a new reason to strike against us. Thanks, America!
reminds me of the strategies of the left and the strategies of the terrorists. Hidings to nothing.
ReplyDeleteSo it was all worthless? Arresting Sadam and having elections were not worth it? The ability to stand up and speak for freedom is a waste? Too bad.
ReplyDeleteAnon: I'm evaluating Iraq as the Bush administration would have (at one stage) evaluated it - as part of the fight against terrorism. And on those terms, it's a bust.
ReplyDeleteI've addressed the humanitarian issue in other posts. In short, while the arrest of Saddam and the holding of credible elections are genuinely good things, that good is drowned in a vast pool of blood. It wasn't worthless - some good has come of it - but it certainly wasn't worth it.
The problem is if you aim is "to do somthing that was worth it" and your opponents aim is to "make you not achieve that goal" they will always win because your objective is too difficult to defend and it is easier to destroy than to build.
ReplyDeleteto avoid this problem - in the end you will have to do exactly what they tell you to because nothing else will be worth it in isolation.
In iraq this manifests itself as one group that is willing to kill aid workers who want to give them aid just because they think it will make life more difficult for the americans in some way for example to get the left in america more certain that the US is in a quagmire and not achieving humanitarian aims and then eventually force the US to withdraw with its tail between its legs.
their goals isnt really to "defeat" the americans in absolute terms because they know they cant - it is just to deny them victory. So they need to find what the US is aiming to do - it would seem the us wants to create law and order and life expectancy and trade and aid and so forth - well these are things they know they can stop and are next to imposible for the US to defend.
the paradox is - If the US did not care about such things there would be no point in attacking them.