|
Is this your idea of peace & human kindness? |
|
|
|
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be liberals! |
|
Or mail checks to: Or you can use: |
|
|
Posted on 04/05/2004 9:53:28 AM PDT by Eurotwit
THE similarity struck everyone right away: Mogadishu, October 3, 1993; Fallujah, March 31, 2004. But we cannot permit these two outrages to be similar in their effect. At this key moment, the Bush administration has to ensure that the reactions to Fallujah and Mogadishu go down in the history books as studies in contrast, not in similarity.
Mogadishu triggered, in a few months, the withdrawal of US troops from Somalia and victory for those who killed US soldiers. Slaughter in Rwanda followed in a few months - a slaughter The Economist (on the 10th anniversary) has called "the purest genocide since 1945 and perhaps the single greatest act of evil since Pol Pot turned Cambodia into a killing field". The Economist further noted that the "West's reluctance to get involved was largely a consequence of America's shambolic intervention in Somalia the previous year". Or more precisely: a consequence of the US's humiliating retreat from Somalia.
Mogadishu encouraged Osama bin Laden in his judgment that the US was a "weak horse", a nation that could not take casualties. Mogadishu therefore deserves a place of dishonour at the head of a decade of failures to respond seriously to attacks against US soldiers, diplomats and citizens.
From Mogadishu to the Khobar Towers, the African embassies and the USS Cole, US passivity helped bin Laden make the case to prospective jihadists that their cause would prevail. Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and a decisive response. And now Fallujah.
It would be unfair to dwell on the lame comment by one US commander on the day of the atrocity: "Should we have sent in a tank so we could have gotten, with all due respect, four dead bodies back? What good would that have done? A mob is a mob. We would have just provoked them. The smart play was to let this thing fade out."
Really? Unprovoked by the sight of a tank, in the following days terrorists in the Fallujah area continued their assaults against US troops and Iraqis working with Americans. In any case, the alternative to inaction on March 31 did not have to be a single tank. The US could have sent many tanks, along with air support, to disperse the mob, kill those who didn't disperse, intimidate onlookers and recover the bodies of the dead Americans. And the US could immediately have put a price on the head of the killers and those who desecrated the bodies.
Still, since that first day, the responses of the Bush administration and of US commanders have been commendable: assurances that the US will not cut and run, and commitments to punish those involved, and to re-enter and pacify Fallujah. We expect a strong - even overwhelming - military response along those lines in the coming days.
It has been George W. Bush's great achievement, since September 11, to break the bad habits of the 1990s.
The President's critics now claim that any president would have done the same after the attacks on New York and Washington. This is by no means clear. The pattern of passivity ran deep. The temptations of accommodation and wishful thinking are still strong.
Indeed, they are so strong that the administration arguably hasn't broken as sharply with the failed policies of the past decade as it should have.
The size of the military has not been increased; there was a reluctance to send ground troops into Afghanistan in November-December 2001 and to commit enough ground troops to Iraq; there seems to be an unwillingness to hold Iran accountable for sheltering al-Qa'ida leaders; there is an aversion to pressuring Saudi Arabia.
Still, the Bush administration has shown real strength and impressive decisiveness in taking on terrorist groups and states. We trust that US troops will soon move to uproot what seems to have become a kind of terrorist sanctuary in Fallujah and to ensure that those who seek to drive the Coalition from Iraq are thwarted and indeed routed.
If the atrocities in Fallujah lead to a deepening of the US commitment to victory in Iraq and to a sharpening of the Bush administration's sword in the war on terror, then we will have properly honoured the sacrifice of those who died on March 31 in Fallujah - and a decade earlier in Mogadishu as well.
William Kristol is editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard in Washington, DC.
Kill them all, let Allah sort them out...
|
Is this your idea of peace & human kindness? |
|
|
|
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be liberals! |
|
Or mail checks to: Or you can use: |
|
|
By BASSEM MROUE (AP) Iraqi police officers patrol downtown Fallujah, Iraq, Friday April 2, 2004. A top U.S. military... Full Image FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops in tanks, trucks and other vehicles surrounded the turbulent city of Fallujah on Monday ahead of a major operation against insurgents following the grisly slayings of four American security contractors last week.
Explosions and gunfire could be heard coming from the center of the city. Streets on the outskirts were largely deserted.
----------------------------
I do believe the nut cutting has already begun.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
