Posted on 07/26/2006 9:31:27 AM PDT by OrthodoxPresbyterian
I never said that I wasn't in favor of knocking these others off.
My personal opinion is that we should already have overthrown Iran, and that NK should have been well on it's way to a takedown.
Iran is simply another of the nations that aided and abetted the 9/11 terrorists (al qaeda.)
Well...
I would suggest we start pulling American troops out of Iraq immediately. The accusation that a Christian is a "Collaborator with the Foreign Occupation" holds at least a bit less water if... there isn't any Foreign Occupation.
While our own US Government has never been able to prove that Salman Pak was used to train the 9/11 hijackers, the theory (which is at least plausible) has never been disproven, either. Suffice it to say there are conflicting claims; and while I don't really care much about UN resolutions, Saddam needed to terminate all ties to terrorism as of 9/11 to comply with the "with us or against us" doctrine. Turning over Abu Nidal on September 12, 2001 would have been a good start, for example.
So, assuming that saving a few tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars by secretly overturning Executive Order 12333 and assassinating Saddam & Sons would not have worked, let's say (for the sake of argument) we had "Just War" cause for a full-scale military invasion.
OKAY, so we went after Saddam Hussein. Invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003, and captured Hussein on December 14, 2003.
That was over two years ago, now.
So, then, the question is: Of the factions vying for power in post-Saddam Iraq, whom do we support?
Or, to put it another way.... Given the above Choices, how does the US occupation AVOID supporting "the Bad Guys" (considering that they're ALL "the Bad Guys")??
No matter which faction we support, they'll be targeted as "collaborators" by the others; and the Christians will be targeted as "collaborators" by all of them.
Once the US troop presence is removed from the equation, the Iraqi Christians make less obvious scapegoats -- the Christians aren't in contention for dominance of post-war Iraq, and don't want to be; so, if you can't get propaganda value from tying them to the American Occupation, there's not as much tactical or PR "value" in killing weak little Christians when other, powerful enemy Islamic factions are vying for power. So, let the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites fight it out amongst themselves... ideally, of course, I'd prefer they not kill anybody; but if they're going to kill somebody (and, being Muslim, they are), I'd prefer it to be eachother rather than the local Assyrian Presbyterian pastor.
Beyond that, US Churches can send Prayers and Money to the Assyrian Churches; but that's a job for the Church, not the State. I think that US Troops did about the best job they could as of December 14, 2003 -- and two-and-a-half years later we are now, militarily, hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousand of lives way, way, way past the point of diminishing returns.
IMHO.
Best, OP
OTOH, I'm delighted with Alito (well, as compared to most of the USSC, anyway). It's almost as if George W. Bush, in spite of himself, managed to for once not screw over his Christian base on a critical issue.
Between Alito and Roberts (I'm less confident of Roberts, but whatkinyado) I'd almost be willing to forgive Bush, say, a trillion dollars in deficit spending (aren't I generous with taxpayer moolah). Unfortunately, Bush has several trillions of debt beyond merely the one to answer for, and the US Creditors holding those debts won't be "forgiving" any of them.
Oh, well
I doubt if we have the power to take on North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq AND Afghnaistan. To hear the neocons say it, though, they're spoiling with a fight with each of those countries.
You don't have to believe me, but we certainly have the military capability of taking on all those others you have mentioned.
You are mixing the military campaign with some new requirement to nation-build afterwards.
We DON'T have to get involved in nation-building. It was not my first choice in Iraq. I would simply have knocked them off and any other successive government that continued to attack us. After a while, one would have come along that wanted a bit of longevity.
But, I'm not the President and he saw value in an eventual democracy in the middle of the fertile crescent, and he saw value in drawing islamo-fascists to Iraq to fight them.
That's part of the equation. We can't afford for Iraq to become like Afghanistan or Somolia, a power vacuum allowing bona fide terrorists to operate with impunity. Once you take out their only real government, well, you broke it, you bought it.
Not necessarily. There's no law that says we have to nation-build.
We didn't bother at all in the Mexican War. Sometimes the intent is to do nothing more than kick someone until they stop being a pest.
When did that happen?
1830's wasn't it?
Other examples of wars where there was no nation-building, just kicking the bad guys: The 67 & 73 Jewish Wars against the neighboring Arab states. The Falklands War between Britain and Argentina....circa early Maggie Thatcher (80ish?).
The Iran/Contra thing where we kicked Ortega's teeth a bit.
Those were much less complicated.
Go in, cuss, break some stuff and leave.
Surprisingly, Israel has better relationships with those nations not occupied, than with those that were. Jordan and Egypt sometimes even seem to swap spit with Israel. Lebanon and Syria, on the other hand, are a bit out of sorts.
Every God-approved war of Jewish self-defense following the founding of Israel in the Old Testament, no?
For that matter, if you kill Fagin the Thief when he's breaking into your house (Exodus 22:2), does that mean that you incure a Biblically-reciprocal obligation to adopt poor Oliver Twist? (We'll leave out consideration of Voluntary Charity, which is always nice and good; I'm talking about a theonomically-required moral obligation).
I agree with you. There is no obligation to rebuild someone who was busy trying to murder your people.
David did expand the influence of Israel just about from River to River, but he certainly didn't rebuild the conquered areas. The custom I think was the reverse.
They paid tribute to him.
What a strange world ours is compared to his.
There's probably a lot of truth in "The Mouse that Roared"
Actually, the problem with Afghanistan was not that the terrorists evolved in Anarchy, but rather with Government support.
As regards: AFGHANISTAN --
As Dana Rohrabacher reported to Joseph Farah, President Clinton incubated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for at least three years, despite the fact that it was harboring Osama bin Laden, was responsible for growing 60 percent of the world's heroin and denied basic human rights to the nation, a U.S. congressman charges.
"In 1997, the Taliban overextended themselves," he says. "Thousands of troops were captured in the north. Much of their equipment was destroyed by the Northern Alliance. Nothing prevented the opposition from taking Kabul. The Taliban was more vulnerable than it ever was before."
The most overt source of Clinton Administration support came in late 1997, when the Clinton administration backed a plan to funnel money to the Taliban to reward them for fighting the War on Drugs, which eventually resulted in approval for a 1998 policy of funnelling $25 million a year to the Taliban government -- apparently viewing Taliban support in the War on Drugs as worth the cost of their support for a nutty fella named, ahem, Osama bin Laden. Tragically, this support for the Taliban continued into the Bush administration, which funnelled an additional $43 million to the Taliban in early 2001. As noted in the article, "The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters."
After the destruction of the Twin Towers, the US Government reversed its policy and went to war to depose the terrorist-backing Taliban. Opium production levels have since soared to the highest levels in history under the incompetence of the weak central government in Kabul -- but I think I'd prefer a weak central government which is unable to control opium production, to a strong central government which actively supported the worst terrorist attacks on the US in history.
As regards: SOMALIA --
Well, the place is a mess. Recently, a pan-Islamist group of fundamentalist militants siezed control of Mogadishu, and are actively contesting with the provisional "Central" Government in Baidoa, which enjoys modest international recognition and some sparse military backing from Christian Ethiopia (a situation which, unfortunately, gives the Islamists the "propaganda high ground" amongst fellow Somalis, who are mostly muslim).
The good news is, However, current and former U.S. officials told the New York Daily News that Osama bin Laden's terror network isn't firmly established in Somalia, though the country hasn't had a central government in 15 years. U.S. Special Forces teams have found no signs of a firm al-Qaida presence, such as terror training camps, sources said. "Probably our worst fears have not materialized," said recently retired CIA counterterrorism official Paul Pillar. If Anarchy is supposedly the most fertile breeding ground for international terrorist groups, Somalia isn't much of an example for the case -- a predominantly Islamic country which has been in a state of Anarchy for 15 years, and still US Special Forces can find no firm Al Queda presence on the ground.
It seems logical to me... if I had a hankering for committing heinous acts of international terrorism, I think I'd have a lot less time for my hobby if were involved in a low-level block war with the neighboring cul-de-sac every other day of the week.
So... how do these situations compare with Iraq, which has seen "Nation-Building" to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand of US Troops for the last three years? Well....
As Regards: IRAQ --
As a result of the elections certified January 2006, the new, "democratic" Iraqi government is now dominated by the UIA alliance between the SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) party, and the Dawa Party.
Well, who're they, you might ask?
Well, SCIRI is basically the Iraqi wing of the Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran -- YES, the fine people who brought us the 444-day Embassy Hostage Crisis in 1979!! Wonderful people, indeed.
And Dawa? The al Dawa party is also responsible for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and French Embassies in Kuwait on December 12, 1983 in which six people were killed. While based in Tehran the al Dawa party formed a terrorist wing called the Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad and al Dawa were responsible for acts of terrorism against Americans in Kuwait and Lebanon. Islamic Jihad was the germ of what would later become the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 marines while they slept was carried out by these precursor groups to Hezbollah. That attack on the Marine barracks has been tied directly to Iran through its surrogates such as al Dawa. Yes, the folks who bombed the US Embassy in Kuwait (killing six) and murdered 241 American Marines in their Lebanon barracks in 1983!! And the Bush administration has managed to put these people in control of the Iraqi National Government.
So let's all give a big round of applause for "Nation-Building", and "Islamic Democracy", yeah buddy, hoo-ray.
It works so bloody well, lemme tell ya.
(Apologies for the sarcasm... but, No, I don't think thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are really "worth it" to advance the political careers of the Iraqi wings of "the Tehran Hostage-taker Party" and "the Beirut Barracks-Bombers Party".)
best, OP
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I think we're going to have a substantial military presence in Iraq for a very long time.
Thank you for being the first to say it in this post. The writer of this article should consider his worldview before assigning "blame" for this matter
Are you saying that Jews were not opressed by the Roman occupiers? Or that Roman emperors were never murderous?
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