Posted on 12/09/2006 12:31:19 AM PST by JohnHuang2
The almost instant reject of the central recommendations of the ISG Report by key officials in Iraq and Israel, and serious observers of the war is a refreshing bit of resolve. The criticism is withering and deserved. "A fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results," writes Eliot Cohen in today's Wall Street Journal, a piece I hope the editors make available to the public generally. He continues:
War, and warlike statecraft, is a hard business, and though this is supposed to be a report dominated by "realists," there is nothing realistic in failing to spell out the bloody deeds, grim probabilities and dismal consequences associated with even the best course of action. Indeed, some parts of the report read as sheer fantasy -- Recommendation 15, for example, which provides that part of the American deal with Syria should include the latter's full cooperation in investigating the Hariri assassination, verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah, and its support for persuading Hamas to recognize Israel.
"All conducted under the watchful eyes of Unicorns," Lileks adds in reviewing the ISG's many pronouncements on what needs to happen.
Cohen and James are hardly alone in condemning the report as a massive bit of unintentional parody. Watching the replay of the ISG's press conference last night, with solemn pronouncement after solemn pronouncement from somnambulist after somnambulist, I was struck by how absolutely feckless this entire exercise was. Because the ISG was not serious about the nature of the double-headed enemy --al Qaeda-allied jihadists and the Iranian mullah-led Shia radicals and their Syrian thugocrats-- it could not be serious about the way forward.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Neville Baker and Lee Chamberlain BUMP!
Baker's been trying to play god-diplomat in the middle east for years, hoping to get the palis and israelis to play nicely together. This report is nothing more than his tired old vision foisted upon us yet again. Same old playbook.
You can not run a war by consensus. What on earth ever made those "realists" think it could be?
Pearl Harbor occurred on 9/11. That decision was easy and uncomplicated. Here we must think carefully before deciding who will feel our wrath. Declaring war on Al-Qaeda would be like declaring war on the six aircraft carriers that launched the Pearl Harbor raid. Declaring war on "all terrorist groups" would be like declaring war on all Japanese aircraft carriers, or perhaps all Japanese warships and aircraft that had fired on us before the declaration of war.
The Pearl Harbor raid was only the biggest of a series of coordinated, devastating attacks from one end of the Pacific Ocean to the other. In the same 24-hour period, Japanese Army troops boarded the USS Wake Island, a gunboat anchored in a Chinese river, and captured the ship without a shot being fired. There was a submarine that surfaced off Midway Island and opened fire on our Marines with its deck gun. Japanese Army aircraft bombed our forces at Guam, Wake and the Philippines, and were followed within days by invasions in all three locations.
In those first 24 hours, all those attacks put together didn't cause as many deaths or as much damage as the Pearl Harbor raid. But they clearly communicated a comprehensive threat from an enemy that had made half of the world's surface into a combat zone.
Evidence of links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq is scarce. But there is no doubt that the terrorists who deliberately targeted and murdered five American students in Jerusalem in the summer of 2002 were sponsored by Iraq. There is no doubt that the terrorists who murdered Leon Klinghoffer and Robert Stethem in the 1980s were sponsored by Iraq.
Declaring war on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban would be like declaring war on the six carriers that launched the Pearl Harbor raid, plus the 16 ships that had escorted them, and ignoring the other attacks at Guam, Wake, the Philippines, Midway and China. We had to defeat the entire Japanese Navy and Army.
We also had to destroy the shipyards that built the warships, the factories that produced the aircraft and machine guns and artillery, and -- most important -- the training system that produced the pilots, the sailors and the soldiers. We had to declare war on Japan.
We have to declare war on not just the terrorist groups, but their sponsors as well. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq are only the initial campaigns of a war that will probably last 100 years. We have to destroy the training system that produces the young Muslim fanatics, who believe that the best way to die is in the cockpit of a hijacked Boeing 747, crashing into a skyscraper full of American civilians.
Declaring war on the entire Muslim religion would be like declaring war on Asia. Like the Muslims, there were millions of Asians (in the Philippines, China, India and even Vietnam) who were our allies. The vital contributions they made to the war effort saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. There were also millions of Asians who were neutral in that war, just as there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who are neutral in this one.
We must identify those radical elements of Islam -- whether they are secular socialists like Saddam Hussein and the Assad regime in Syria, or fundamentalist religious fanatics like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- who have been brainwashing young Muslim men to murder Americans.
And we must resolve to neutralize each of them as soon as they are identified.
You say we must "resolve to neutralize each of them as soon as they are identified."
May I say that I would prefer to kill each of them as soon as they are identified as an active combatant.
Right, Bryan. It's only 99% of the Islamic world that makes the other 1% look bad. Islam is as Islam does.
And now the democrats are off the hook don't have to come up with something besides dump on Bush about the War
All they have to do is shout implement the"""BIPARTISAN""" ISG reccomendations
Baker ( yeah a real friend of the Bush family ) Eagleberger and Meese all GOP operatives --Just GREAT
Very thoughtful - I agree
I wouldn't have let those 10 clowns wash my socks.
I would. If I wore socks.
Hahaha, excellent point!
Well, you just identified them. So, what do we do next, bomb them? I'm all for it. :-)
Hey, good to see ya, Bryan.
Some of these enemies, such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, had to be neutralized through direct military and police action. Hussein has been neutralized, bin Laden has arguably been neutralized (since he has gone to ground in the remote mountains of Pakistan and his training network has been destroyed), and many other individuals such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have been killed and captured through effective police action by our Muslim allies.
The "nuke 'em all" attitude isn't going to work. We can defeat some of them through overwhelming military and police action. But many, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Assad dynasty, may have to be neutralized by other means. Diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, perhaps a surgical airstrike here and there, but I don't see the US either nuking or invading Syria aor Iran, or North Korea for that matter.
I hasten to clarify that I would prefer effective diplomatic and economic action to any military action in such new theaters as Iran, North Korea and Syria. But we should be ready for military action if it should become necessary.
Excellent post.
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