Quote:
Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
If the terrorists who attacked us weren't connected to SH and Iraq, how is it that you can say in one breath that it is significant that nothing has happened here since 9/11 and in the next say, Osama is planning his next attack on our shores?
The fact is, because of the type of attacks they engage in, we are not safer over here. They're just waiting til we get lazy again. But you can't live in a constant, indefinite state of fear, despite Cheney's best efforts. That's why terrorists choose these kinds of attacks. It's very difficult to defend.
After 9/11, for like 6 months, security was tight at my building. Everyone had to be credentialed to gain access. Security was visible and posted all over -- not just at every entrance. Now, I could swipe anyone's access card and go up because security just doesn't pay attention anymore. It's all bullshit anyway. If someone wanted to blow the building up, they wouldn't be trying to get upstairs. They'd plant the bomb in the areas everyone has unlimited access to.
Bush isn't taking the war overseas. He is engaging in this war to make people feel better. He is saying, "I'm going after those damn Ay-rabs," and watching people line up behind him happy in this fiction of safety. When he wants to energize them, he scares them. When he wants to build himself up, he talks about safety. People eat it up because they're stupid.
You can't fight a worldwide network by picking one location and trying to take it over. That makes absolutely no sense. After 9/11 we had the sympathy and support of the entire world. Every country wanted to help. Bush took that and turned it all the way around. If there are terrorist cells all over the world, it seems to me that the best plan would have been to take advantage of the good will that we had from other countries after 9/11 -- use it to hunt terrorists down and destroy them. You don't destroy that good will and, at the same time, create recruits by engaging in a crusade in a country that posed no imminent threat.
I don't want to hear the SH was a bad man argument. If that was the rationale for taking him out, Bush and friends would have used it as the justification to go to war before we went to war. We took him out because Bush wanted to take him out. 9/11 was the excuse.
TM
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I noted the internal contradiction when I wrote that post. Bush's plan has a flaw in it - it assumes the radicals will fight in their own yard and never look over here again. To a degree, Iraq is an effective distraction to keep the crazies busy. Loads of Arabs who'd be training in camps to attack us are instead working for freelancers like Zarqawi in Iraq. Bush is betting that the extremists will always take the easier avenue. Its a short sighted plan, but it does work a quick fix for a little while.
I think Bush's plan might have been near sighted, but I think that Iraq, combined with Afghanistan, have kept the terrorists either disjointed or on the run. Thats bought us some short term security. How long that will last is another question. My suspicion is not long.
But none of this changes the fact that we haven't been attacked in 3 years, for which Bush does deserve credit. And it cannot be disproved that the Iraq distraction did not play a part in keeping such attacks from our shores.
I disagree that Bush just wanted to make people feel happy. with this Iraq war. You allude to his real motivation in your post - Bush had this war planned BEFORE 9/11. He is guided by ideologues who really believe in this "New American Century" project, a neocons wet dream which is actually little more than the old British theory that "If you democratize the savages, they'll behave." Well, there is a case to be made that the British did civilize an awful lot of savages, but the British also left Iraq with their tails between their legs. They never got their arms around the place. No one has.
The war was not a grudge match. Its an academic notion come to life.
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