Continued from previous post...
First of all, let me say that from my conversations with servicemen online and reading some of
the stuff they have written, I believe the majority of American military personnel in Iraq's personal intent is to help the Iraqi people and that they feel the insurgents and al Queda operatives are stopping them from fulfilling that mission. I honor them, I honor their service in the name of freedom and goodness to the Iraqi people.
How-ev-ver.
The whole
“We’re fighting them over there (Iraq) so we don’t have to fight them here (the U.S.)” is a load and the majority of both countries knows it.
Is Al Queda in Iraq? Hell, yes they are. They weren’t before. The extremist religious group wanted Saddam dead for his religious persecutions as much as we did for just being a dick. But now it’s prime recruiting ground. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld’s policies have made America look like everything bin Laden said it was but given the ever-escalating number of terrorist attacks world wide, that is certainly not the only place Islamic zealot terrorists are.
We may be helping some Iraqui people, but we are certainly not stopping terrorism.
Another big misperception that the Bush administration has spread that I encountered last night is that there is a single one big group of “Islamofacists” who only goal is “Death to America!”.
Folks, I know 6th graders who can perceive more clearly than this.
There are a bunch of terrorist groups, some are Islamic zealot extremists and some not. Even among to Islamic extremists, not all of them want to kill Americans. The wide majority of them would be perfectly happy if Israel was wiped off the face of the map. The thing is, Israel’s prime means of military support is…*points at us* and Great Britain, so I’m sure they are happy to side with al Queda to make things very uncomfortable for us in the Middle East. However, they do not necessarily follow the same al Queda command structure. They probably have command structures of their own with priorities and agendas of their own.
And that’s just the Islamic extremist groups. There are many different terrorist causes in the world. Trying to lump them all together under s single heading would be a mistake that could prove fatal.
We declared a “War on Terror”. The Bush administration is treating it like it’s a second Cold War. The whole “Democratic states don’t support terrorism” (even through we have ourselves) is just another word for “Domino Theory”. The Bush administration thinks if we convert the Middle East to American friendly democracies, all our troubles will go away.
(While their campaign contributors smack their lips in anticipation.)
The problem is terrorism is not Communism. Hammas and the Taliban are theocratic political groups that have used and are using terrorism, but terrorism is not their end goal. Terrorism is a technique, not an ideology. Columbian Marxists used terrorism, the IRA used terrorism, the ETA uses terrorism. It’s just a means to an end. The idea of a “Terrorist State” is a nonsensical unless you want to apply it to all aggressive political groups and call Germany in the 1930’s a “Terrorist State”. Several counties in South and Cental America could qualify as “Terrorist States”. We would now qualify as a “Terrorist State” under that heading.
Terrorism doesn’t have a tax plan. It doesn’t have an educational system. It doesn’t provide running water to people. It’s a form of behavior, not a socio-political structure. So how do we declare war on it?
The point of that behavior is not to be there when the guys with the tanks show up. Terrorism is highly mobile. As we sadly saw with Afghanistan, invade one country and they will simply move to another. Or several others. If it were possible that we could take over the entire Middle East, they would move into S.E. Asia. Or borrow a couple camps from the Chechnyans in the former U.S.S.R. states next door. Or run any number of other places.
Terrorism is a cancer, and you can’t excise cancer with a club.
If we are truly serious about the “War on Terror”, then we need to take the two pronged approach. Intelligence and diplomacy.
We need to beef our intelligence back up, we need to get more agents back on the ground and we need to work closely with other nation’s intelligence agencies to infiltrate and dismantle terrorist groups, or track down and either bomb or send strike teams in to take terrorists out. We need to attack their supply lines of weapons and money. We need to secure any loose nuclear or chemical material floating around out there and freeze their assets and the assets of anyone helping them. I understand this has been happening to some extent, but it needs to happen a *lot* more.
Then there is diplomacy. No one wants to hear this and every time someone says it they get called a “terrorist sympathizer.” We aren’t talking about terrorist themselves, but the groups of people they recruit from. We’re talking about reaching out to people before they cross that line into terrorism not by wading into their living room with automatic weapons, but by example. We know to show them democratic ideals work by maintaining them in our country and living a better life than they do. We need to take a look at how we have alienated the Middle East and lately, the Islamic World and try to find a middle ground so that the when the average Muslim on the street hears an al Queda recruiter screeching about how horrible the U.S. is thinks “Hey, they aren’t so bad. He’s full of it…” and goes back to watching football/soccer rather than thinking “He’s right. The U.S. sucks, where my IED?”
I quoted an article from the Smithsonian years ago about a report in Iran just shortly after we invaded Iraq. At the time, the journalist found the people of Iran very American friendly, despite Ahmadinejad’s claims to the contrary. “They tell us that America is to too blame for all our troubles, but we know better. I will always be friendly to Americans… provided they do not invade.”
Another issue is Islam itself. Many Muslim countries of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, declare themselves to be ruled under Shiria Law. This varies from country to country. In Indonesia and Pakistan it’s effect is limited to a few provisions in family law. In Saudi Arabia, the courts are ruled by the religious leaders who interpret the law. In Iran, you have the Ayatollah. The interesting thing I found when I was researching how women are treated under Shiria law is that there are parts of Shiria law that have no basis in Muslim religious texts. For example, in Jordan up until 1999 if a man discovered his wife or any female relative committing adultery, including if she was raped, was legal for him to kill her. This has no basis in either the Qu’ran or the Hadiths. So where did this and other “Honor Crime” penalties come from?
They came from the pre-Islamic tribal culture. They got folded into Islam by the religious and political leaders over the centuries. That’s where the illiteracy came in handy.
“The Prophet Mohhamded said this…”
“Er…” *flips open a Qu’ran*, “No he didn’t.”
“Shaddup!”Sort of like how much of the Catholic dogma of the Middle Ages came into being. There is no basis in the Bible for indulgences, or even confession, but the somehow, there it was.
“God said if you give us money, you get to cut down on your time in purgatory…”
“Errr…” *flips open a Bible*, “Damnit, I can’t read Latin. Well, if you say so...The thing is Islam is about 1427 years old. When Christianity was about 1500 years old, it was tearing itself apart with
the Reformation. Maybe it’s time for Islam to go through something similar (hopefully less violent): A reformation to cut out all the bullshit and pull it into the 21st century. It can work, Indonesia is proving it. The problem is that Islamic nations in the Middle East face constant pressure from the outside, from the West, and that polarizes them and makes them cling to what they know, no matter how bad it is (see: people who still support George W. Bush).
Which brings us to Iraq.
Being lied to get us involved in the war there leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth to say the least., but having broke it, we bought it, as General Powell so eloquently said and now we have to decide what to do with it.
The problem I have is that I don’t think *we* can fix it. We have screwed up on so many levels there. There was Abu Ghraib and other heinous outrages. We did not train our troops to be an occupying force which has exacerbated an already confrontational situation. The rebuilding was a failure on two levels:
Baghdad is still struggling to have reliable electricity city wide. We simply have not accomplished what we promised. And by employing America companies and American contractors, we have given the Iraqis no stake in the rebuilding process, nor any jobs. It was American civilian contractors who were the first targets of insurgent violence, something everyone seems to ignore but I think speaks volumes. We also took their jobs from them in the oil industry which is 95 percent of their economy, as well as 9 million dollars worth of missing oil and funds. Snatching people off the street, invading homes.
We fucked this up, royally.
And it’s not the soldiers fault, it’s the policymakers fault. The policies they instigated in Iraq have turned anything good we could have gotten out of invading Iraq into ash.
I don’t think the levels of resentment at our presence will allow us to building anything lasting there unless we plan to be occupying this place for the next 50 years, which is simply not a commitment I am willing to make with Iran and North Korea going nuclear, Afghanistan still stumbling next door and terrorism on the rise worldwide. There are far too many irons in the fire right now to make the level of commitment Iraq requires for the amount of time it requires. And no matter what poll you want to believe, the escalating violence shows pretty clearly that there is a significant portion of the country that wants us out of there.
And isn’t that what we were trying to give them, the freedom to make their own choices?
Can the current government survive us leaving? I have doubts. As we saw with the British experiences earlier in the 20th century, government imposed on the people from a foreign power, even if elected, doesn’t last very long and maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe we need to let them go, let them fight it out and decide for themselves. A government chosen by the Iraqi people is bound to be far more stable than anything we put in place, if only for the reason it won’t seem like a puppet government, and if they chose their own government, they have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. They will learn that freedom is best treasured when earned, not given.
What we have to understand is that their freedom is to choose their own path. If they want to set up a theocracy after we leave, that it their right. If that path is Civil War it would be incredibly sad for the average Iraqi on the street, but they would hardly be the first country to do so. Maybe the country splitting up into three nations, Sunni, Shiia and Kurd, would be a good thing. The Kurds could have homeland at last.
I’m not talking about yanking everyone out tomorrow, I’m talking phased withdrawal. We’ve been training Iraqi troops for three years now and have only been able to hand over two provinces, maybe if we gave the standing government a timetable, they might get their act in gear.
“As of January 1st, 2009, you’re on yer own…” Maybe if they didn’t think the America would be around to shore them up indefinitely, they might actually find a way to make peace with the factions and find stability enough to survive our leaving.
Something has got to change, because what we are doing right now is not working, for us and for them. If someone can come up with something better than this or “stay the course”, I would be very glad to hear it because if for one am tired of seeing the place where human civilization was born become the place where it may be going to die.
