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Posted on 05.20.07 by J. Neil Schulman
Sometimes I wonder if people even listen to themselves talk. The Bush administration tells us that the United States has not yet achieved its objectives in the War in Iraq so American troops have to stay there until a stable Iraqi democracy can fend for itself against an insurgency fueled by al Qaeda-fed Sunni Muslims and Iranian-fed Shia Muslims: that the Iraqi InSurgency has to be fought with an American Surgency. The Democratic Party opposition tells us that, because of this InSurgency, the Bush administration already lost the War in Iraq so it’s time to cut our losses and bring American troops home. Neither the Bush administration nor its critics see the obvious fact that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a total victory, and any discussion of whether American troops should stay or go have to follow from that fact. The United States was attacked on that date by an al-Qaeda cell that killed more Americans than the Empire of Japan’s multi-carrier air attack on Pearl Harbor. On September 14, 2001, President Bush stood at Ground Zero and promised the American people through a bullhorn that the people who brought down the World Trade Center would soon hear from us. They heard from us. American troops sent the Taliban scurrying into caves because they refused to hand over al-Qaeda director, Osama bin Laden. These days the Taliban dare to scurry outside their caves, occasionally, but they’re still out of power in Afghanistan. Then President Bush said the next threat was Saddam Hussein developing Weapons of Mass Destruction that could end up in the hands of terrorists whose future attack on the United States could take out entire American cities. So the United States found a bunch of United Nations resolutions that Saddam Hussein wasn’t complying with, and used it as the casus belli for a U.S.-driven invasion to remove Saddam Hussein, his sons, and his Baathist Party from its one-party rule of Iraq. It took about three weeks for Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship to collapse, and on May 2, 2003, about five weeks after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, President Bush stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared “Mission Accomplished.” On July 22, 2003, United States forces killed Saddam Hussein’s two sons, Uday and Qusay, and on December 13, 2003 Saddam Hussein was captured by American troops. On January 30, 2005, the Iraqi people went to the polls and voted for a new government On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Whether you want to say that the United States had its victory when Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government collapsed — or when, with his sons already dead, Saddam Hussein was captured by American forces, or when the Iraqis voted themselves a new government, or when Saddam Hussein no longer had a functioning head that could resume office — we won that war. And if the objective of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein and one-party Baathist rule, so that Iraqi WMD’s no longer represented a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, that mission was accomplished by May 2, 2003 at the earliest, and by December 30, 2006 at the latest. President Bush, it’s way past Miller Time. You won, and won, and won, and won, and won. If our next strategic objective is to disable further Islamic-radical attacks on us “kuffars” in the West, then Sunnis and Shia killing each other isn’t something we want to put our troops in the middle of to police. Sunni and Shia have been at war with each other for a millennium, and the only thing that can possibly get them to stop killing each other is to unite them in killing a “Zionist-Crusader” alliance. For most of Islamic history, Christians hated Jews as much as Christians hated Muslims. So when, after World War II, Christians decided that a couple of millennia of Jew-hating might have been a poor idea, when the Nazis took Jew-hating to the next level, the Muslims saw a peace between Christians and Jews that scares them senseless. It’s not just that Israel is a Jewish State planted in the middle of Islamic turf that terrifies the Muslims. It’s that Israel is a modern, Westernized Jewish State that exists by sufferance of over a billion Christians. The presence of Infidels in the Middle East is what drives Islamic terrorism. We Infidels are still there because of remnants of a Great Game for domination of the Middle East that stopped making strategic sense when the British Empire collapsed, when the Cold War ended, and when Japan, China, and Russia became trading partners of America and Europe. We don’t need Middle Eastern oil. American energy independence is ours any time we decide to take it. Short-term we can pump and refine all we need from our own supplies in Utah and Colorado, and long-term we can switch to alternatives – everything from bio-diesel to solar-power satellites and — one of these days – Mr. Fusion machines. We don’t need to defend Israel from Syria or Iran. All we have to do is let the Sunni and Shia get back to killing each other instead of us – let al Qaeda fight Hezbollah. Mr. Bush, you’re the President who Won the War on Terror. Please brings our troops home from Iraq and declare a domestic State of Emergency that suspends the numerous federal, state, and local impediments to domestic oil and coal production and refinement. We don’t have to stop the Iraqi Insurgency for our own security, or for Israel’s. We can accomplish that merely by doing what Americans do best: minding our own business. Mr. Bush: Make Oil, Not War. Filed under: Guest Columns | Report Bad Link Bookmark this post in Furl or Del.icio.us | |
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