Posted on 06/07/2004 8:31:04 PM PDT by dirkgently
SINGAPORE -- The United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday.
The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed ''zealots and despots'' bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them.
''It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,'' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference.
His remarks showed a level of concern about the long-term direction of the U.S.-led global fight against terrorism that Rumsfeld rarely addresses in public.
The Pentagon chief usually lauds the efforts of U.S. troops, denounces terrorist networks and urges other countries to join the effort to stop terrorist acts.
Saturday, he went further, saying that while terrorists must be confronted, the bigger problem is the extremist Islamic ideology that produces them.
''What you have is a civil war in that religion where a small minority are trying to hijack it,'' he said.
Later Saturday, in Bangladesh, Rumsfeld discussed that South Asian nation's possible interest in sending peacekeepers to Iraq after an interim government in Baghdad takes political control June 30.
After meeting with Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan in Dhaka, the capital, Rumsfeld told reporters the two had spoken about Iraq and Afghanistan but not the specifics of peacekeeping in those countries. Rumsfeld also had talks with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and senior generals.
U.S. defense secretaries rarely visit Bangladesh, but Rumsfeld wanted to draw attention to the mostly Muslim nation as a model of the moderate Islamic country that denounces terrorism. While thousands of anti-American protesters took to the streets of Dhaka on Friday, there was no sign of hostility when Rumsfeld's entourage drove through the capital Saturday.
His public talk of failure doesn't help the argument for staying the course. He should not be pleading that case in a public forum with an re-election campaign going on.
Second head like that today; earlier, "Bush Fears...."
Pouring it on, they are.
we probably should find another source other than the Sun-Times
Yes , another source...smells strange.
''It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,'' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference.
BTTT.
That is because you dolts in the administration won't recognize radical islam as the problem. We are certain to loose unless this "religion of peace" BS stops.
ping
He was answering a question brought to him by Russ Babage:
Q: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned in your presentation from the campaign against global terrorism the importance of preventing a new generation of recruits flowing to the terrorist cause. I wonder if you’re satisfied with the strategy to defeat the national terrorism, is it in fact sufficiently coherent and coordinated to win? In particular, are you satisfied that the coalition’s political warfare operations have gained sufficient traction to prevent new recruits from signing up to the terrorist cause?
Rumsfeld: I’m certain we have not been successful. As the Prime Minister, I forgot whether he mentioned it in his remarks or at the dinner table, but clearly, if the schools that are teaching young folks are teaching them terrorism and suicide bombing and hatred instead of mathematics or science or language or things that can help them become productive members of the society, we’ve got a problem. The world has a problem. And it’s quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this. I think it’s very difficult for people who are not part of that religion to provide the leadership because what you have is a civil war, a struggle in that religion where a small minority of people are trying to hijack it and to focus it in a way that is hostile to civil society. Not the majority, by any means, but we as free people have not developed the skills to counter that. We’re not focusing on it. We’re focusing on law enforcement, we’re focusing on terrorist networks, we’re focusing on trying to defend against terrorist attacks, but terrorism is simply a technique being used by extremists. It is not the problem in and of itself, it’s a weapon that’s being used.
The rest of the world has not successfully organized, trained, cooperated, in a way that we have put, for example, President Musharraf is trying to improve the school systems in Pakistan. It takes money. There’s lots of money flowing into the madrasas schools that are teaching terrorism, but it takes money into those schools to get them to teach mathematics or science or languages. And the rest of the world needs to participate in that. President Musharraf, in my view, has stepped forward. He’s opposed terrorism. He’s actively trying to be helpful in the global war on terror, and yet simultaneously in that part of the world we see more terrorists being trained.
It is something that’s going to take cooperation and I don’t frankly see a coalition that’s organized to do it – whether they’re reluctant or willing either one. I don’t see any existing international organization that’s organized to do it. I don’t even see very many countries that are focusing on it. And it’s worrisome. It worries me because if people talk about a global war on terror or a global insurgency or a struggle between people who want to destroy the state system and people who want to defend the state system, I don’t see an effort going into that.
If we can’t answer the question are you winning or losing the global war on terror, because we know only what we’re being successful at – the things I listed. The numbers of people captured, the numbers of people killed, the numbers of terrorist events stopped. We know those things. What we don’t know is what’s coming in the intake. How many more of those folks are being trained and developed and organized and deployed and sent out to work the seams and the shadows and the caves? And each year that goes by has a growing likelihood that they’re going to have their hands on increasingly lethal capabilities.
The civilized world doesn’t know the answer to that question. And so your question’s right on the mark. The answer is I’m certain we don’t have our arms around that piece of it.
I like Rumsfeld, but I wish he'd apply some basic reasoning here. If Islam is churning out terrorists and assassins faster then we can kill or capture them, it's high time we all realized that this invisible army of terrorists are NOT a few 'zealots and despots', but rather it consists of most of Islam. You kill one and they find two to replace them. You capture six and they find 10 to replace them. Islam itself is the enemy of Western man, and Christians in general, and Jews, and Hindus. This phenomenon of the "multiplying terrorists" indicates they not just a few 'bad apples' within.
We are at war, against them.
We will beat the fascist Islamics, but we cannot ignore that the socialists are at war against us, as mightily as are the fascist Islamics.
You can actually, in the United States, find more followers of Islam, who are in support of beating the fascists, than you can find socialists who are in support of fighting the fascsists.
That is because the socialists are the fascists, even more than the fascist Islamics.
"The left" is fanatical; read the papers; open your eyes and ears.
In the United States, the leftists restrain themselves at certain points, only because they do not want to expose to the public eye, who they are.
Are they telling the truth?
No, they are not telling the truth.
We are being attacked by both.
Terrorism is a function of piracy, and they are the oldest of economic means on the planet --- and they are the oldest of weapons used by fanatical socialists and Islamics.
Are the fascist Islamics manufacturing their own weapons?
No; they get almost everything from ... that's correct: socialist countries.
What are we doing to those socialist countries?
Nothing.
What are we doing to resist the socialists in this country?
Nothing; rather, we are federally funding a level of leftwing agitprop that exceeds by several hundred billion dollars, the amount spent during the Vietnam War.
Americans need to wake up.
We should have been preparing --- not merely material, but observation and training for reserve emergency civil defense.
We are not doing that anywhere on the scale that you might imagine.
The liberal media are not looking into it; I can only guess, that is because they'd like President Bush to go down with some major city.
Are there observation towers at the diagonal corner posts of the major airports, manned 24/7, keeping track of airfield perimeter activity?
No.
Are there the same observation towers at our major fuel depots across the country?
No.
Are there a couple people, positioned diagonally across the perimeter corners of our hospitals and public schools, with cell phones, operating in 2 hour shifts?
No.
Are there observation posts on top of the tall buildings, situated to track with the human eye, the avenues in and out of our cities?
No.
Are the tank cars on the railroad trains examined and then are the trains watched as they go through the downtown areas?
No.
Has the air fleet of Cessnas and other State Police aviation been expanded so that we have more and a quicker ability to assess what is happening?
No.
Are we building more fire engines?
No.
More ambulances?
No.
Bridge bulding kits pre-positioned and extra teams trained to re-build and put up emergency bridges on short notice?
No.
Has the public been advised to carry extra fire extinguishers, two gallons of water, extra bundles of first aid supplies, etc., in their cars?
No.
Please, stop kidding yourselves that there are Homeland Security People and the F.B.I. and the T.S.A. who know what they are doing.
Inside the airport terminals, they are actually doing a fair job.
Outside the buildings at the airport, where the fenceline is not watched --- there is not even a camera watching the fence --- it is only 100 feet to the nearest Boeing 757. It is unguarded. There is a maintenance ladder leading up to the forward hatch, opposite the enclosed ramp that comes out from the terminal concourse. The starboard aft freight hatch is open. A team of terrorists can jump the fence and take over the plane within 3.5 minutes.
I've tried to call the F.B.I., but they are CLOSED --- the F.B.I. is CLOSED from 5:30 P.M. EDT until 8:00 A.M. EDT ... and this is a major metropolitan area.
Not to mention that at university, the loathing for the U.S. military and American Heritage and the basic foundations of our Constitution, and consequently the efforts by the students, to aid the Axis of Terrorism --- activities that are unlawful while fight for our lives and well being.
Because the current "leadership" refuses to address the simple fact that we are at war against the evil that lusts for conquest, the very conquest that President Reagan took aim at without fear.
That good man stood up on the beach and looked around at everybody hiding or running down the beach, and he said, "I am going up this hill; we are going up this hill; we are taking the beach, and we are moving inland. Because that is who we are and what we are doing here."
Amazing, isn't it, what a man can do, who stands up despite shot and shell, and sets an example of courage under fire.
You may not be at war, but I am at war, because I know what war is, and I know what evil conquest is.
If you want to believe that a person will attack you because he or she hates you, then you have not matriculated. There is much worse, and I, if not you, can see it, because I have seen it from my studies of enough bad behavior that is the want of people who seek to impose un-limited government upon the people.
Prepare yourselves.<P.God Bless you all.
He is probably right.
There are more people that are citizens of the United States who not only want us to lose the war but are actively fighting to help us lose than they were in France in 1940.
Why? They hate the way of life we enjoy. Such as freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience and the ability to own and possess firearms and most of all they hate President Bush.They believe that by helping the communists, mohammadans,socialists and u.n. destroy us they will curry favor with them and will fit right in with them.
Their blind hatred for everything good and decent has killed their ability to reason. If they had any reasoning ability they could see where every communist of socialists , including Hitler,has been put in power once they consolidate their power, they immediately execute those who helped them gain power[they do not trust or like those type individuals either]. As for the mohammadans, to them an infidel is an infidel whose throat is to be cut at the first orpunity.
If the United States is ever to be destroyed, it will come from the inside.
What do the people here that want to destroy our way of life want to replace it with?
1. Every sex act, no matter how decadend, perverted, and obscene, will be perfectly legal and practiced in public.
2. All privately owned firmarms will be confinskated.
3. All nacartocit drug use will be legal.
4. Only a priviledged few will be allowed to own private property.
5. All parental authority will be given to the State.
6. Everyone except Christians will be able to do what is right in their own eyes.
Correction, "this is why we must DROP THE H-BOMB"
This is a war for keeps, society vs. barbarism, the rational mind (excluding most members of gov'ts) vs. those who slaughter innocents from irrationality, consensus (even one ill-defined) vs. outright thuggery.
Or, am I deluded, and it's just a matter of the difference of degree and immediacy of power that both the one-worlders and the jihadi a$$holes wish to exercise over the rest of us?
Hmmmmm.......<,,,thinking about this...>
News Flash to ancient Dork; nobody has ever won a PC war. Burn the GD haystack and the needles will either melt or show themselves!!!
Absolutely chilling.
Rumsfeld is not animated by fear of loss of life from another strike against the homeland like 9/11. He fears the loss of an entire city. The loss of tens, or even hundreds of thousands from atomic or bio attack. I believe he realizes that if they can strike once and inflict this level of casualties, we must accept that they will be able to strike multiple times until the appeasers sell out our democracy.
Sometimes Rummy's celebrated "tell it like it is" style serves him well, this is not one of those times. This is a continuation of his "we need to be able to determine if terrorists are springing up faster than we can kill them" theme. It is doubtless meant as a challenge to redouble, or refocus, our efforts in the War on Terror, but the Secretary of Defense needs to remember that we're in an election cycle, and that anything he says can and will be used out of context to defeat his boss.
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