Bush vs the World: (Do you Freepers want PEACE or not!)

WASHINGTON -- The non-American world -- and almost 60 percent of Americans -- does not share president Bush's freshly minted conviction there was a link between Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. In last Tuesday's State of the War speech, Bush referred to the connection several times. "We fight today," he said, "because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand." This is now being referred to in "allied" countries as "disinformation" or "propaganda." The most charitable explanation is "strategic deception." But who is being deceived? Them or us?

Small wonder China now has a better image than the U.S. in European countries that are still bastions of freedom and democracy. Poland, according to the latest Pew Foundation Survey on Global Attitudes, was the exception that stuck to its pro-American guns.

If you don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us, none of this matters. But if you do care, it's profoundly disturbing. The Europeans still support the war against terrorists, but not the new strategy that holds Iraq is now its main battlefield.

President Bush has redefined the entire rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's now the world's principal theater for a crusade against transnational terrorism, a little like the Spanish Civil War circa 1936-39 when Hitler and Stalin used their surrogates to duke it out in a different kind of clash of civilizations.

When the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community planned for war on Saddam Hussein's bloody tyranny, al-Qaida was not part of the equation. WMD was the leitmotif writ large. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found didn't really hurt the administration's case, as every other major intelligence service in Europe and the Middle East also got it wrong. But Bush's Iraq-al Qaida link was introduced post-facto as a rationale for what now appears to many recent visitors as a stalemate, costly in blood and treasure, that could go on for several more years.

Iraq did not become a breeding ground for terrorists until after U.S. military intervention. From left to right in Europe, including the U.K., it is a firmly held view that al-Qaida received a new lease on life in Iraq, courtesy of the intervention by U.S. and coalition forces. In Canada, whence this reporter just returned, Iraq was never seen as part of al-Qaida's global network. And Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a close and trusted adviser of the president, will have a hard time convincing anyone otherwise. Her assignment, which is to improve America's image abroad, becomes more challenging by the day.

The Afghan war dislodged al-Qaida's bases and scattered its fighters to a dozen other countries. Operation Iraqi Freedom then liberated Iraq, which gave al-Qaida a fresh opportunity to regroup and attack the U.S. and its allies. Since then, Iraq has been a boon to al-Qaida. It has acted as a force multiplier to recruit fresh jihadis from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the rest of the Muslim world. The daily visuals on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabyia, CNN and FOX News drove up the number of wannabe jihadis in the Muslim suburban slums of major European cities.

The link between Iraq and al-Qaida did not exist prior to U.S. intervention. It does now. Because pro-al-Qaida terrorists believe -- or have been proselytized to believe -- they can do to the U.S. in Iraq what Osama Bin Laden and thousands of mujahideen (freedom fighters) did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden last message made clear al-Qaida's strategy is to force the U.S. to spend itself into bankruptcy. Bin Laden firmly believes the "muj" resistance in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As evidence, America's detractors in the West cite the time lapse between the exit of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan Feb. 15, 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9, 1989 -- nine months.

Al-Qaida spent an estimated $500,000 on the attacks against Manhattan's Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Since then, the U.S. has spent about $200 billion on myriad defensive measures against the next attack, widely believed to be a mass casualty WMD nightmare, and the meter is still running. Clearly such a ratio is unsustainable.

Throughout the 1980s, the recruitment of guerrillas -- which the Soviets called terrorists -- all over the Muslim world led to some 40,000 Afghan Arabs being trained by the Pakistani intelligence service, all funded and equipped by the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

Today, al-Qaida's recruiters and supporters are encouraging a new generation of unhappy Muslim campers to move from the dole in Europe to the role of martyrs in Iraq. The Time Magazine (7/4) interview with a volunteer suicide bomber in Iraq should help the public understand the religious zealotry of those who pray for our destruction. We demonize them as animals. They demonize us as the fount of all evil.

For the thousands of pro-al-Qaida web sites, chat rooms and blogs, Iraq is now a cause celebre that has allowed the movement to garner worldwide support from a global network that is political, religious, ideological and spiritual -- undetectable to spies-in-the-sky or on the ground, but easily discernible from open sources, from the Internet to the kiosks of any major European city, to the madrassas (Koranic schools) of Mindanao in the Philippines to the mosques of Madrid to the conversations of Muslim cab drivers gathered on Fridays outside the Saudi-funded mosque on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Belmont in Washington, D.C.

The Internet alone has recreated in Iraq a virtual Afghanistan under Soviet and then Taliban rule. Iraq is now both a training ground for "holy warriors" and the battle space where they can ascend to heaven after blowing themselves up.

During the intifada, Israel was the target of one or two suicide bombers a month. Iraq sustained almost 150 in one recent month.

Feigned shock and surprise seems to be the emotion du jour on the Left. What do you mean that invasion of Iraq may have been a policy option as early as 2002? We were never notified! Their latest antics call for pretending that September 11th and the Iraq War are two separate and totally unrelated events, until two nights ago, when President George W. Bush contrived to make them one.

There's been quite a bit of discussion of late about what liberals did or didn't do in the aftermath of 9/11, and what they did or didn't know. In their narrative, we were solidly united, until George Bush started a completely unannounced and unexpected war. And so, the Coalition of the Deaf and Blind came into being, dedicated to flushing down the memory hole the new hawkish thinking about terrorism and national security in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In light of these histrionics, it might be helpful to examine the world as it actually was in September 2001, and what President Bush said, in his own words, about what lay ahead in the war on terror – in a time when 90% of Americans and 80% of Democrats supported his policies.

The night of September 11, 2001 was not one for bold, sweeping policy pronouncements. Nonetheless, the President gave his first hint that this conflict would not be limited to those who perpetrated these acts, but to the states that supported them:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

In the days that followed, there would be much discussion of the name used to define this struggle: the war on terror. There was nothing inevitable or automatic about how our war aims were defined. In fact, it would have been easier had the President limited his objectives to a Clintonesque "We will find the perpetrators and bring them to justice," followed by a particularly intense round of sand-pounding in Afghanistan, and a ticker-tape parade down Broadway six weeks later, bringing this whole chapter in our history to a swift conclusion. Given America's mastery of lightning fast quasi-wars – Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf (still then the archetype), Bosnia, Kosovo – this would have been the obvious and conventional route. But, in a moment of decision, the President concluded that this time, something different and greater was called for. And he did something that you wouldn't have expected, committing us to a long struggle to eradicate terrorism broadly defined, not just mitigate it. At the time, Democrats overwhelmingly supported this.

Another hint that this would be a big war, more like the Cold War than the Persian Gulf War, came in President Bush's radio address the Saturday following the attacks:

Victory against terrorism will not take place in a single battle, but in a series of decisive actions against terrorist organizations and those who harbor and support them.

We are planning a broad and sustained campaign to secure our country and eradicate the evil of terrorism. And we are determined to see this conflict through. Americans of every faith and background are committed to this goal.

The President's September 20, 2001 address to a joint session of Congress was the foundational statement of this war, and it was applauded by virtually all who today form the Coalition of the Deaf and Blind. In it, the President stated that nation-states would not be off-limits in this war:

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

And, in a crucial passage, punctuated by bipartisan applause, the President explicitly declares that this war will extend beyond al Qaeda:

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. (Applause.)

In another passage surely missed by the Coalition of the Deaf and Blind, the President prepared the country for a long and difficult war, and put the country on notice about what we should expect:

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Though necessarily broad, the September 20th speech was a remarkably prescient foreshadowing of everything that has happened in the last four years.

Over the course of the eight months that followed, these very thoughts were amplified and refined in the doctrine of preemption announced at West Point on June 1, 2002. When that speech was delivered, the President's approval rating stood at 75%, and even in last year's campaign, a majority of Americans supported preemption. And yet, the Coalition insists that all of this is somehow news to them.

But, but… Saddam Hussein didn't attack us on September 11th! There was no Iraq-al Qaeda connection! Leave aside just how dubious that latter claim is – (cough)Zarqawi(cough) – and calmly re-read the President's speeches from that September. The President didn't say al Qaeda – he said all terrorism. What about this do you not understand?

From the fedayeen in Nasiriyah, to the "foreign fighters" from Egypt and Saudi Arabia found dead in the battle for Baghdad, to today's al Qaeda-driven insurgency, terrorism has been the sole means of waging war against American troops. It was Saddam's – and Zarqawi's – only war plan. Call us crazy, but is it that unreasonable to assume that: A terrorist after the war = a terrorist before the war? The debate over whether Ba'athist Iraq was a terror state as defined multiple times by the President in September 2001 is pretty much over. And yet liberals remain under the impression that Saddam was the Iraqi Robert E. Lee, an honorable and worthy opponent who obeyed the rules of warfare, and had nothing to do with terrorism.

Only a member of a coalition of the deaf and blind could actually believe that.

Patrick Ruffini

FR thread can be found here.

Lando

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