We Tried, We Failed
Reader comment on item: Tempering Ambitions [in Iraq]

Submitted by J.A. Morris (United States), Nov 11, 2006 at 20:59

For starters, the Clintonistas refused to acknowledge that serious national security threats existed or that America was in any way threatened by the Islamic world. Despite Bush being at the helm on 9/11, he still refuses to perceive that an Islamic threat exists except among a few radicals. No one wanted to deal with "Islam" or confront its history of murderous violence. By ignoring the 1993 WTC bombing, the bombing of our troops in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of 2 Embassies and the bombing of the USS Cole, the Clinton gang was grossly negligent. During the Clinton years, Clinton ordered the bombing of Christian Serbia (who posed no security threats to the U.S.) and Ms. Halfbright toasted champagne with Kim Jong Il.

9/11 obviously changed a lot of our perceptions as our cozy secure world proved beyond any doubt that America could easily be attacked. So we had no choice but to go to Afghanistan, clean out the Taliban and hunt for OBL. On the threat scale, Saddam Hussein was more than a mere nuisance. Every nation on earth including the US believed him to be a threat with WMD's. I reluctantly supported the invasion of Iraq but had serious regional geo-political concerns. The thrill of seeing Hussein literally plucked from a filthy hole was enormously gratifying.

But here's the reality. We can never deliver functioning democracies to Muslim nations. I hoped we could. Both Afghanistan and Iraq have constitutions that are decidedly Islamist and no laws may conflict with the Koran. Sharia law prevails in both nations. Both nations are doomed by their culture and religion to be violently tribal and we can't change that but that is the precise 1400 year old history of Islam. We demanded that the Palestinians have democracy and they democratically elected Hamas. In Algeria, elections resulted in a victory for Islamists and a ruthless civil war waged between the military and the religious lunatics. In Turkey, the Muslims elected an Islamist leader (Erdogan)who had been in prison for agitating for Islamic law. For whatever reasons, democracy and tolerance are unable to take root in the Muslim world.

Back to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a ruthless genocidal maniac who maintained peace, Muslim style. As a minority Sunni, he viciously oppressed the Shiite for decades and stole the entire oil wealth of the nation. With Iraq exploding daily because of ethnic/religious violence, it's clear that some in the region are agitating for a failed Iraq, notabily Iran.

What will probably happen is our worst nightmare. Shiite Iraq will merge with Shiite Iran to create the mother of all Shiite nations (66 million Iranians plus 25 million Iraqis). Considering that the combined oil wealth of both Iraq and Iran is sufficient to hold the world hostage to Iran's demands, this will be very problematic, catastropic actually. Iran, which already controls/funds Syria (a Sunni majority nation) will solidify existing areas of influence, including Lebanon, and will create the proverbial Shiite Empire ruled by Tehran - the new Persian Empire.

Also, Iraq is an artificial nation that was created with the stroke of a pencil by British Arabist Gertrude Bell at the demise of the Ottomen Empire following WWI. It doesn't have the historical and national longevity of Syria or Persia or Turkey. Also, if Iraq literally dissolves, you can be sure that the Kurds will emerge fighting for their own nationhood. This will explode into a regional war as Turkey and Iran vie for more real estate, especially Iraq's oil wealthy regions.

The problem with the middle east and the Muslim world is that we do not understand them, how they think, how they react and how they perceive us. We foolishly assume that they are just like us and other folks around the world. They are not. They always end up with leaders like Saddam Hussein, Qadaffi, the House of Saud and Assad. Why? Because they only understand raw terror and brute force which is precisely how one earns respect in the Muslim world.

Reagan bombed Libya and Qadaffi stopped terrorizing the world. No one heard so much as a peep out of him for several decades. In the crazy quilt mosaiac of the Muslim world, respect is earned through fear. No one respects that which they don't fear.

Wars only end when someone is militarily defeated or the pain of continuing is unbearable and someone capitulates. The Israelis blundered badly by not wiping out Hezbollah and now the entire Muslim world has lost respect for a nation that they once greatly feared. Hezbollah will be back but the next time they will have more accurate and longer range missiles.

We cannot win in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a noble experiment, I don't regret it but we failed. We need to find an honorable exit. The Taliban is ruling most of Afghanistan and Karzai is, for all practical purposes, the mayor of Kabul. Our "friend" Musharaff the closet Islamist who orders attacks on India cut a deal with the Taliban and OBL types in his frontier region. The Pakistani Army will not enter those places of tribal lawlessness. Moreover, Pakistan's intelligence is loaded with jihad Islamists. Our "friends" the Saudis financed Pakistan's nuclear program.

Historically, the Muslims have not peacefully co-existed with anyone except in a slave master relationship (if you wanna call that peace). If we are truly worried about national security, we need to commence divorce proceedings with the Wahhabist and most of the Islamic world. If we don't need Muslims in America achieving a critical mass as they have in Europe or we will experience Paris type rioting across the nation. We will live in terror of them and capitulate to their every demand just as Europe now surrenders to Islam.

Bush has massively encouraged Muslim immigration in the U.S. In fact, in 2005, the number of Muslims legally entering the U.S. exceeded the sum total of the preceding 20 years (NYT). This is very dangerous and is the equivalent of inviting Nazis into our country during WWII. Moreover, the Bush open border policies have resulted in hundreds of thousand of "Other than Mexicans" crossing our borders and many have been identified as Islamist, Hezbollah etc. It is generally estimated that only a very small percentage of illegals are even caught. Therefore, we have no idea how many Islamists Bush has welcomed into America. Even more interesting is that OTM's are immediately released under the Bush "Catch and Release" program.

The war on terror? What a joke. But what isn't a joke is that the Bush Administration has used the WOT to hack away at civil liberties while using the braindead GOP Congress to grant him unaccountable absolute powers that no President should ever have.

I confess, I'm an idiot. I voted for Bush in 04 because the alternative was even more terrifying.

But where do we go from here and how do we find an honorable exit? Staying the course is no more than a death sentence for our soldiers. They aren't dying for our freedom and dying for Iraqi freedom is a total waste of our noble military.

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