Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Iraq & Afghanistan Bush On Iraq: "Just Be Patient"

The continual drift of this thread away from the original topic suggests to me the need to start a new thread. I am going to start one. Let's see if that is successful. Why Jihadists Attack Americans

You are displaying a naïve view of the situation. The radical Islamic faction has spent the last 30 years organizing and gaining support with more influential and wealthy of the Islamic community. They have proven that they can attack us anywhere in the world. To limit the engagement to Afghanistan is just not realistic. I would compare that to looking for something that you lost in the front yard in the back yard because the light is better there. These Islamic factions were training in multiple countries and all of these countries needed to be addressed. Yes, it is a stretch for our military but it is one that has to be done in order to contain and, eventually, defeat this enemy to what we, here in the USA, hold dear – our freedoms.

You claim to have patience but these radical Islamic terrorists declared war on us back in the early 1970’s and only token responses were taken until 2001. Yes, this faction of Islam has shown great patience but so has the governments of the world but let us be at least a little realistic, how long should we continue to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that this situation doesn’t exist? Do you really think they will just go away? That is where I believe you are being naïve.

EnDallas, I think that last post was directed to me, although it may just have been a reply to the last post? If so, can you clarify for me where we are in disagreement? How is it I am being naive? Just asking for clarification, because the response does not appear to jibe with my previous points.

hmm ... lets see.


Who can attack us? All Islamists? The primary Islamists attacking the US is the AQ. Most of the other Islamists have contained their agenda to local issues in each of the countries for which they represent. To claim all Islamists or even all terrorists are attacking the US is erroneous and certainly misleading.


Afghanistan is where the AQ had taken up residence. So yes why would one want to look elsewhere? So you think it is more realistic to say invade Iraq which had no Islamists prior to invasion? If you say yes then go back to original assertion regarding naiveté.


So are you advocating invading all countries in which there are Islamists? I think you are blurring any distinction between the various groups of Islamists .... some of which are violent and some are not. It is in this lose of granularity that one becomes confused regarding who the "enemy" is and what their agenda is. For a very small group, the agenda has global ramifications, where as most are strictly local in nature. This doesn't make them any less dangerous but it does offer an element of clarity which enables one to define methodologies for attacking the problem.


I suspect the reason our government ignored the problem is the oil was flowing without interruption.


Do ideas die?

There are several ideas about this. One is that all movements run out of energy and die of their own accord. Could be. We see this is our society all the time. Another is we can invade all those countries and install pro-American governments. There is one idea which would work however it is so politically incorrect no one dares mention it, but I suspect all the neocons have been thinking about it for some time.


Why have you singled out just the Islamic terrorists? I would think it more appropriate to talk about all terrorists.


You are thinking like terrorists actually possess a nation. How do you defeat an idea?

I was especially amused by the analogy of "looking for something that you lost in the front yard in the back yard because the light is better there", in view of the Administration's choice to abandon the effort to address al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan in favor of attacking Iraq. I would add the analogy of hunting down a rat with an elephant gun, as it is also eminently appropriate IMHO.

i agree Rporter.

the notion of a decisive military victory is deeply entwiend with the concept of interstate war (of the ww2 variety) this conflict is a completly different model/ paradigm.

im currently re-reading Rupert Smiths the Utility of force.

treating thsi conflict in the same manner, militarily, conceptually and in US propaganda will only lead to - if not defeat, certainly not victory.

the people are both the prize and the battlespace, unless that is realised and worked towards, this conflict is going to continue to flail about unsuccessfully for the US.

in iraq the iraqs were treated as the enemy rather than the prize, leading to much of todays difficulties.

This thread was initially started to address the President's repeated call for "patience." The argument that someone is "burying their head in the sand" is appropriate, if misplaced. There is definitely naiveté involved, it's simply the target that was misidentified.

As I have noted before, the enemy has shown patience. Unfortunately, it was the impatience of our rather petulant leadership that got us haring off after the wrong target. There is a very small and somewhat dedicated core of individuals who are interested in attacking the west, and more particularly the United States, and seek a new Caliphate. While they now go by the rubric "Al Qaieda" that was not always the case. It was popularized by our leadership, which is the subject of yet another thread. The President's impatience, however, has resulted in their gaining credence that they did not have in the Arab world, and has damaged not only our national reputation, but weakened our ability to do the very thing that we most need to do.

Even now, however, the threat that they pose is so grossly exaggerated that it boggles my mind. Yes, they made a spectacular, successful attack on the United States on 9/11, and have made other attempts that have been less successful. But the threat to our infrastructure and population from that has been truly minuscule. We have amplified its importance multifold. It is much like a fear of flying in a commercial aircraft. It seems scary, but statistically the risk is vanishingly small. Nothing, however, succeeds like instilling fear. Unfortunately we have two enemies that are using terror to seek our compliance. It's just that one of them is supposed to be on our side.

Had we instead shown a little restraint I believe the threat that does exist would already be contained by now. The problem is that the President has only been willing to use one tool in his "war on terrorism." The term itself is a misnomer. He has no imagination, and no patience. The military option, on the large scale that it has been employed, was not only foolhardy, it was probably the most counterproductive action that we could have taken. The Iraq war is probably the worst mistake this country has ever made diplomatically. It is not that military force is not sometimes necessary. It obviously is or I would not continue to wear the uniform. But it is only one of a number of tools at our disposal and a very blunt instrument.

If instead of the headlong rush to war, the President had exercised some forethought (something he continually lacks), we could have limited our exposure nationally, curried favor with our allies, targeted our force carefully, and kept our eye on the real threat. In Operational Law I teach the concept of "Military Necessity" - the 'why' of the use of force in international law. Sometimes military necessity means exercising patience and not attacking the target immediately because it would be counterproductive to your overall objective - giving away your position, using up your resources, moving into an indefensible postion, etc. It is not so much that the Iraq war was an illegal war (a term, by the way, that does not exist in international law), as it was an unnecessary one.

Afghanistan is a very different case, as are Pakistan, Syria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and other havens of terrorism. Each requires a particular balance of tools and force. To the extent that Iraq was a threat, it was clearly containable by other means. Perhaps, eventually, it might have been necessary to introduce forces, but it certainly was not so in 2003. It was the impatience of the President that precipitated the crisis, and virtually everyone outside of his cabal saw that, understood that, and expressed it: the military leadership, our allies, the U.N. It is supremely ironic that it is now he that is calling for "patience." Would that he had exercised some himself.

This remains as untrue today as was 5 years ago when the Bush administration and its media allies engaged in a campaign of manipulation and deceit in order to con a gullible American public into supporting the un-necessary invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Yours,
Issodhos

I will submit that the truth lies in the middle between EnDallas' post and the rest of the Ranters.

It is true that in the mid-1990s, there a foiled attack from the Phillipeans (...or Indonesia) which showed that there were plans to blow-up planes over the Pacific. This is one example of how the terrorists could be "everywhere."

Least we forget Bali, Madrid, and London.

However, these terrorist groups are small and not in gigantic numbers as the conservative media and the White House portends there to be...

A scared populous is easily controlled - ergo the terrorist color chart that the Administration once used to "control" us Americans until we correctly identified that the colors of the chart correlated with Mr. Bush's poll ratings: Low poll ratings of Mr. Bush in 2002 and 2003 correlated with "terror alert" announcements and mainly "orange" and "red" alerts.

Rick there are numerous groups with their own parochial agendas, histories and circumstances. they have all been blended into one "narrative" for political purposes. also blened into the mix are polar opposites such as Iran and Syria, al-qaeda and hizbollah, as is they were part of the one grouping with a common goal.

one would think the smart policy would be to divide them, but as Mr Bush Himself said, speaking the truth for once: "I'm a Uniter"