The War on Terror Going Poorly
by Tom Maertens
from The Mankato Free Press
Five years after the attack of 9/11, the War on Terror is going very badly.
In Afghanistan, our “victory” is slipping away. The Taliban has resumed unit-sized combat and, according to the U.N., the country is again producing 87% of the world’s opium.
In Iraq, 3500 civilians are being killed every month, and senior US military officers are now talking openly about a civil war, which is “code” meaning a war that cannot be won. A recent survey, reported in U.S. News, shows that 91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops in Iraq.
The President belatedly acknowledged that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet almost four years later, we are bogged down in a war that Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians, has called “the most foolish war” in 2,000 years. He could have added, the most incompetent occupation, as well.
The Kurds and now many Shiite leaders favor partition, making the breakup of the country likely, which will benefit Iran and leave an unstable Sunni rump state that could become another Afghanistan-style refuge for terrorism.
Some are inclined to overlook these failures abroad and credit the administration for protecting us at home, but consider that the Iraq war has cost us far more than 9/11 did in virtually every respect. There is one exception, the inordinate fear 9/11 has engendered among some, which the Bush administration has manipulated for political advantage.
As the LA Times editorialized recently, “the Bush administration is a past master at playing politics with terrorism.”
They have no plan to win the war in Iraq, but a detailed plan to exploit the war at election time.
Remember Dick Cheney’s comment during the ’04 election that if voters make the wrong choice in November the terrorists “could hit us and hit us hard?” (an unwitting comment on the 2000 election, perhaps). Recall the monthly terrorist warnings during the 2004 campaign? Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge later acknowledged they were dictated by the White House - and not warranted by any intelligence information. They suddenly stopped after the election.
The administration is still playing politics with terrorism. Don Rumsfeld is comparing critics of the Iraq invasion to Nazi appeasers, who did what? … acquiesced when Iraq invaded our country? Dick Cheney recently asserted that voting against Senator Lieberman in the CT primary was lending aid and comfort to "Al Qaeda types," and second, that Ned Lamont's victory "only proves that Democrats do not understand that we are in a titanic struggle with Islamic fascists and are therefore unfit to lead."
Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney was in charge of a government-wide committee charged with preparing for a terrorist attack? Cheney never called a single meeting of that committee prior to 9/11.
Is that what he means by ‘unfit to lead?’
Or does he mean someone who was asleep at the switch on 9/11, let bin Laden escape, misled us into a trumped-up war, alienated our allies, politicized the war on terror to infringe our civil liberties, cut taxes and ran up the deficit instead of paying for his war, slept through Hurricane Katrina, and is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan; someone who instituted systematic use of torture so that every major human rights organization in the world lists the U.S. as a human rights violator, right along with North Korea, Cuba and other third world dictatorships?
Who is unfit to lead?
Ron Suskind’s book “The One Percent Doctrine” quotes CIA analysts who believed that the U.S. has not been attacked since 2001 because al Qaeda changed its strategy to attack our allies – Spain, the UK and others -- to further isolate the U.S. Even George Bush can protect us if bin Laden has no intention of attacking.
Suskind also reports that the CIA concluded that bin-Laden’s “October surprise” was intended to insure Bush’s reelection in 2004 because he would “do what he’s doing for a few more years.” In other words, Bush’s policies in Iraq and the Middle East benefit al Qaeda recruitment.
Despite this record of failure, the Bush administration trumpets the claim that they are strong on national security. Why anyone still believes them is a mystery.
Tom Maertens served as NSC Director for Proliferation and Homeland Defense in the George W. Bush White House, and as Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the State Dept on 9/11.
from The Mankato Free Press
Five years after the attack of 9/11, the War on Terror is going very badly.
In Afghanistan, our “victory” is slipping away. The Taliban has resumed unit-sized combat and, according to the U.N., the country is again producing 87% of the world’s opium.
In Iraq, 3500 civilians are being killed every month, and senior US military officers are now talking openly about a civil war, which is “code” meaning a war that cannot be won. A recent survey, reported in U.S. News, shows that 91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops in Iraq.
The President belatedly acknowledged that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet almost four years later, we are bogged down in a war that Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians, has called “the most foolish war” in 2,000 years. He could have added, the most incompetent occupation, as well.
The Kurds and now many Shiite leaders favor partition, making the breakup of the country likely, which will benefit Iran and leave an unstable Sunni rump state that could become another Afghanistan-style refuge for terrorism.
Some are inclined to overlook these failures abroad and credit the administration for protecting us at home, but consider that the Iraq war has cost us far more than 9/11 did in virtually every respect. There is one exception, the inordinate fear 9/11 has engendered among some, which the Bush administration has manipulated for political advantage.
As the LA Times editorialized recently, “the Bush administration is a past master at playing politics with terrorism.”
They have no plan to win the war in Iraq, but a detailed plan to exploit the war at election time.
Remember Dick Cheney’s comment during the ’04 election that if voters make the wrong choice in November the terrorists “could hit us and hit us hard?” (an unwitting comment on the 2000 election, perhaps). Recall the monthly terrorist warnings during the 2004 campaign? Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge later acknowledged they were dictated by the White House - and not warranted by any intelligence information. They suddenly stopped after the election.
The administration is still playing politics with terrorism. Don Rumsfeld is comparing critics of the Iraq invasion to Nazi appeasers, who did what? … acquiesced when Iraq invaded our country? Dick Cheney recently asserted that voting against Senator Lieberman in the CT primary was lending aid and comfort to "Al Qaeda types," and second, that Ned Lamont's victory "only proves that Democrats do not understand that we are in a titanic struggle with Islamic fascists and are therefore unfit to lead."
Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney was in charge of a government-wide committee charged with preparing for a terrorist attack? Cheney never called a single meeting of that committee prior to 9/11.
Is that what he means by ‘unfit to lead?’
Or does he mean someone who was asleep at the switch on 9/11, let bin Laden escape, misled us into a trumped-up war, alienated our allies, politicized the war on terror to infringe our civil liberties, cut taxes and ran up the deficit instead of paying for his war, slept through Hurricane Katrina, and is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan; someone who instituted systematic use of torture so that every major human rights organization in the world lists the U.S. as a human rights violator, right along with North Korea, Cuba and other third world dictatorships?
Who is unfit to lead?
Ron Suskind’s book “The One Percent Doctrine” quotes CIA analysts who believed that the U.S. has not been attacked since 2001 because al Qaeda changed its strategy to attack our allies – Spain, the UK and others -- to further isolate the U.S. Even George Bush can protect us if bin Laden has no intention of attacking.
Suskind also reports that the CIA concluded that bin-Laden’s “October surprise” was intended to insure Bush’s reelection in 2004 because he would “do what he’s doing for a few more years.” In other words, Bush’s policies in Iraq and the Middle East benefit al Qaeda recruitment.
Despite this record of failure, the Bush administration trumpets the claim that they are strong on national security. Why anyone still believes them is a mystery.
Tom Maertens served as NSC Director for Proliferation and Homeland Defense in the George W. Bush White House, and as Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the State Dept on 9/11.
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