It is questionable that there were many Americans in 1942 raising the question as to why the allies were attacking French soldiers who at the time were still under Vichy [Hitler’s French puppet fascist rule] before the free French army was fully mobilized. Germany declared war on the United States; Pearl Harbor was never entertained as the thrust to do battle in North Africa. To use this extraneous illustration in conjunction with a 9/11 tie-in with Iraq would seem to be ...well,...devious.

To rationalize Iraq’s paltry gesture of twenty-five grand to families of suicide bombers after the fact is hardly a sign of overtly funding international terrorism, but rather a signal to Israel, not Al Qaeda. Moreover, the axis of evil reference was typically Bush rhetoric to antagonize the war on terrorism, rather than to stem its tide.

The presumption of mission accomplished in Afghanistan [stage 1] is another example of fuzzy logic. The point of removing the Taliban from power was but the initial strategy to hunt down Osama bin Laden and break completely the ranks of Al Qaeda, together with terminating the internal conflict of the many war lords that served as a breeding ground for lawlessness and eventually new havens for terrorists and drug runners. Afghanistan is still a mess and by no stretch of the imagination has it been stabilized in light of the deliberate diversion from the war by declaring a new one on Iraq.

The ad-hoc lunacy of justifying the war with Iraq because it had “programs” eventuating into WMD down the road as indication of an imminent threat well into the future is beyond belief, except for the self-aggrandizement of Blair as Churchill and Bush as a Rooseveltian icon. Let’s face it, folks, we’ve been dangerously manipulated and no convoluted rationalization is going to alter that fact. As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, all Bush had to do was continue and tighten Clinton’s strategy of containment by aggressive attacks in the no fly zone and occasional targeted strikes, along with pursuing Gen. Zinni’s “Desert Fox”:

 “In light of Clinton’s own belief that Saddam would continue 'to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction' his blunder as commander-in-chief was in not continuing the intensity of Desert Fox in order to render the thuggery of the regime totally vulnerable as Gen Zinni, of Mideast Command, expected, waiting in the wings to assist the provinces in a take over. George W’s blunder was at the outset in adopting the UN’s ineffectual 'smart sanctions' rather than to pump up Desert Fox, and by so doing avoid all brouhaha of “preemptive” strike. It is true that Zinni’s strategy would have necessitated strategic special forces — not to mention smart air support — on the ground in Iraq, not unlike the Afghanistan operation, with help from the millions opposed to the regime by unleashing the Kurds against any insurgents in the triangle left over from punishing air strikes — and not unlike the help George Herbert promised the Shi`a’s uprising had he followed through.”[stevendedalus, “A Matter of Different War Strategies”]

It is highly improbable that Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia will ever have open societies, as long as Islamic extremism exists, or for that matter, the dominance of Islamic Law dictating its politics and culture. This, however, does not imply that there cannot develop a reasonable diplomacy for co-existence, as in the cold war with the Soviet Union, and let it run its course which will eventuate modest reform over time as in Turkey and Egypt; nor does it imply that the US is saddled with a conclusion to sit and wait for another catastrophe. To generate doomsday — the fear of fear itself — and another marketing mania to build bomb shelters, along with a new devious CIA — is a hell of way run a democracy and to set an example for the world.

We would be far better off if we, with international cooperation, tracked down the scientist and the careless or profiteering custodians of nuclear arsenals and double our resources in assisting nations to dismantle their storage of nuclear and bio-chemical weapons than to waste our treasures on the fantasy of building stabilized nations.

 

  

 

   

 

Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: May 10, 2004.