Posted on 09/17/2001 2:12:43 PM PDT by LenS
The first step in any war is simple: Define the enemy.
America's enemy is the Islamic Axis: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Afghanistan and the groups they fund, support and direct. These groups include the cells of Osama Bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO.
The next step is to define short-term dangers and long-term goals.
The greatest immediate threat the Axis poses is an attack using nuclear, chemical or germ warfare. That is why America's first concern can't be chasing after Bin Laden or invading Afghanistan. Before that, it must disarm Axis countries that are on the verge of gaining unconventional weapons.
That means Iran, Iraq, Syria and whatever others are found to be getting close.
U.S. Must Invade
This can't be done through diplomacy or fancy footwork. The U.S. must invade these countries (if there is time), dismantle their unlatched governments, disperse their armies and seize their arsenals. Think of it as the German model.
If there isn't time, if one or more of the Axis regimes seems capable of attacking with nukes or germs before U.S. forces get there, these regimes and their infrastructure, arsenals and leadership will have to be destroyed by whatever means necessary: the Japanese model.
Either way, it is only after America has done what it takes to protect itself from mass murder can it concentrate its full energies on achieving the one strategic goal that makes sense: total victory.
I can hear the protests. Total victory? In the postmodern world? Impossible.
Like hell it is. If America had gone to war in 1941 asking self-defeating questions it would probably have lost. When a war starts, you never know how it will end, but you can't fight it unless you have complete confidence in your ability to prevail. And up against the Islamic Axis, whose most formidable military member is probably Iraq, that confidence is fully justified.
Yes, say the experts, but won't war with the Axis embitter and radicalize the world's billion Muslims? There are two answers to this: Probably not, and who cares? Probably not because the majority of the world's Muslims live in places like Indonesia and Bangladesh, where there is no discernible spirit for a jihad against the Great Satan. Who cares, because the masses in Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Iran (and perhaps Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) are, for the most part, already so full of hatred that nothing America does now will make it worse.
Okay, let's say the U.S. defeats the Islamic Axis, then what? Can America occupy the entire Islamic Middle East?
Yes, it can. After the war the U.S. and its allies will be obliged to run the Middle East for a while in the same way they occupied and governed Germany and Japan after World War II. That occupation can end when the Islamic Axis countries accept, as Germany and Japan accepted, the basic rules of democratic government and international behavior.
The experts scoff. According to them, what we call democracy and civilized behavior is nothing but a construct of the West, foreign to and incompatible with Islamic precepts of religious authoritarianism and jihad.
Slandering Muslims
That argument slanders Muslims by making them out to be uniquely and irremediably warlike and barbarous. Turkey, a reasonably open and peaceable Muslim-majority nation proves otherwise, and I think there can be more Turkeys, But if I'm wrong, if political Islam is inherently aggressive and hostile, then in the age of weapons of mass destruction, Islamic governments can't be left to their own devices in the name of political correctness.
When America achieves total victory over the Axis Powers, it will still face Islamic terrorism and enmity. But no government will be in a position to fire a nuclear missile at New York — and terrorists deprived of diplomatic, financial and military sponsorship will be far less likely to kill us. It really doesn't get any simpler than that.
Now, let's get the Europeans on board, and we can have ourselves a serious fight.
It is an Axis and it must be defeated fully.
What other scenarios? How about China using our preoccupation with, and committment of troops to, this issue and this part of the world to invade Taiwan behind our backs. This could be done in concert with a North Korean invasion of S. Korea, just to really give us a big problem.
This is why we need to mobilize. Not necessarily to the extent of WW2, but along the same lines, and in such a manner that it could be scaled up to those levels (i.e. 40% of GNP) in the event of a true emergency like war with China/North Korea/Russia. Bringing along powerful allies like the Brits, French and Germans (the latter 2 if they still have any gonads, which is appearing less and less likely as time passes) and Israelis (the latter for use in taking out Syria in a few days and distracting Saddam) would lessen our need to mobilize, though not preclude it entirely.
Just my 2 cents.
And no, I'm not a tinfoil hat type, but stranger things have happened before (remember the Nazi-Soviet pact before WW2?).
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