Nov. 7, 2007
Losing The War On Terror — Everywhere
The Nation: From Ethiopia To Pakistan, Bush's Foreign Policy Is In A Meltdown
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New Terror Threats Possible
After recent political instability in Pakistan, some analysts now claim that al Qaeda could take advantage of this situation in planning attacks against the U.S. Bob Orr reports from Washington.
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Bush: Trend In Iraq Changing
In an address to U.S. troops fresh from basic training, President Bush said the trends in Iraq are moving the right way. Jim Axelrod reports.
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Averting A Nuclear Crisis
Pakistan's status as a nuclear power is under scrutiny after Gen. Musharraf's declaration of marshal law. Harry Smith speaks with terror expert Michael Scheuer about the region's political turmoil.
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President Bush speaks on the Global War on Terror on Thursday, November 1, 2007, at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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Pakistan In Crisis
Political strife, protests and violent attacks torment nation struggling for stability.
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Bin Laden & Al Qaeda
Where al Qaeda operates, who's been caught, how they're financed and a timeline of attacks on Americans.
You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush Administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums vis-a-vis Iran, much of the remainder of foreign policy in what the neocons used to call "the arc of instability" began to thoroughly unravel.
In the Horn of Africa, U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a disastrous occupation of the Somali capital, harried by a growing Islamist insurgency. Despite endless shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration's Middle East peace conference, to be held at Annapolis, is already being dismissed as a failure before the first official invitations are issued. Meanwhile, the Turks are driving the administration to distraction by threatening to invade and destabilize the only moderately successful part of the new Iraq, its Kurdish region (while the Iraqi government in Baghdad calls on Iran for help in the crisis).
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently landed in Tehran and brazenly indicated that any U.S. attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. He then convened a local "mini-summit" and formed a regional Caspian Sea-based alliance with Iran and three energy-rich former SSRs of the departed Soviet Union implicitly directed against the United States and its local allies. On the day Secretary of State Rice announced new, tough sanctions against the Iranians, Putin commented pointedly: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end? It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand."
Meanwhile, one country to the east, the resurgent Taliban has, against all predictions, just captured a third district in Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border -- and, as the most recent devastating suicide bomb indicates, attacks are spreading north. And then, of course, there's the president's greatest ally in the Muslim world, Pakistan's ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Remember Bush's nightmare scenario, the one that guaranteed a surefire "preventive" attack from his administration: an autocratic and oppressive ruler with weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear ones, presiding over a country that functionally offers a safe haven for terrorists? Well, that's now Pakistan, whose security forces are busily jailing hundreds of lawyers, while the Taliban, al Qaeda, and extremist Islamists, well armed and backed by their own radio stations broadcasting calls for jihad, are moving out of safe havens in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and into Pakistan proper to fight. And there's essentially nothing the administration can do, except mouth platitudes and look the other way. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context Web site has pointed out: When it comes to nuclear Iran and nuclear Pakistan, we have been living in "a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined." Now, not much imagination is needed at all.
Strangely, from Ethiopia to Pakistan, despite all the signs, all the predictions, the Bush administration, as far as we can tell, expected none of the above. How often can it be caught off guard by the consequences of its own decisions and actions? Eternally, it seems. The possible collapse of the president's foreign policy across the entire arc of instability was first written about by the always prescient Juan Cole at Salon.com. He commented that, "like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf." And he ventured a prediction: "The thunder of the bomb [that blew up as former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home] in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his 'war on terror.'" Over at TPM Cafe, Todd Gitlin was the first to offer a wry, if grim, suggestion, as he considered Bush's "failure to crush the Taliban & Co." from Tora Bora 2001 on. "Talk about dominos," he wrote. "How about this for a Democratic slogan: Who Lost Pakistan?"
With the price of crude oil threatening to hit $100 a barrel and prices at the pump surging over $3 a gallon domestically -- while, on the nightly news, experts mutter about oil at $150 a barrel and gas at $4 a gallon by next summer -- a meltdown might be in the works. Invaded and occupied Iraq, like some festering sore, remains at the heart of this spreading disaster, the end of which is nowhere in sight. The U.S. military, the sole instrument with which Bush's top officials and his neocon followers imagined they could launch their "expeditionary" sorties around the globe, as if they were so many nineteenth-century British imperialists, has proved incapable of responding to such an essentially political situation. The president might as well be using a hammer to ward off gnats. No wonder, as retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and historian of early twentieth century Germany William Astore made clear recently, the military and right-wing politicians are already preparing their own exit strategies in the form of stab-in-the-back explanations of what happened that will shift all responsibility from them to the American people. As he puts it: "Is it possible that our own version of this [myth], associated with Vietnam, enabled an even greater disaster in Iraq? And, if so, what could the next version of the stab-in-the-back bring in its wake? Only time will tell. But consider yourself warned. If we lose Iraq, you're to blame."
ByTom Engelhardt
Reprinted with permission from the The Nation.
| If you like this article, check out www.thenation.com for more investigative reports, timely editorials and incisive columns |
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See all 59 CommentsI believe that all those in congress who voted for the war and still support it should be sent to Iraq to fight. If they are too old or physically not able, then they can be used in a support role over there.
In addition, all citizens who feel the war is justified should also be made to back up their support by being sent over.
Nothing that a bit of tar and feathers could not remedy.
Terrorism has nothing to do with why we are in Iraq, or for that matter, Afghanistan. The "War On Terror" was created as an excuse to do things that had already been planned.
Intelligence and police work are how terrorism is effectively countered. James Bond foils terrorist plots, not Rambo.
Now we have nuclear-armed Pakistan about to fall into the hands of extremists. We could have helped to prevent this situation by applying pressure to our "friend" Musharraf to restore democracy to his country. Instead, we wasted our political capital on Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, I keep hearing talk about "winning" or "losing" Iraq. There were really no defined objectives in the first place, therefore, if we "won", how would we know? At what point have we "lost"
It is a terrible strategy, one that not only failed but caused a lot of death destruction worldwide and damaged the USA and the Constitution.
We must learn the correct lesson: this is not the failing of a lone bumbler, it is the failure of the policy of favoring rich and elites, corporate profit and military force.
The architects of the failed policy would like us all to think it is the President who is flawed, but it is really their policy failure we must remember and not repeat.
Innumerable thousands of Iraqi children follow Americans soldiers everywhere in groups of 10-30, laughing and chatting with our boys, yelling "Mister, what your name?", bouncing with excitment and admiration. This is not about begging for sweets, its about adoring our soldiers'' unique compassion, courage and competence. Those 6-15-year-olds, so discounted by the media, moves and shakers, are the real future of the Middle East. Kids know goodness when they see it, and intuit that sooner or later their American heros will win, and the whole human race will win with them.
No bright flash.
Everything Bu$h Touched Melts Down
Now that is TRUTH!
%u201CConcentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.%u201D %u2013 President Ronald Reagan
%u201CAll tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.%u201D
%u2013 President Thomas Jefferson
%u201CRepetition does not transform a lie into a truth.%u201D %u2013 President Franklin Roosevelt
My God do people actually believe this spew? This must be a joke post.
Posted by taxguydave at 02:16 PM : Nov 07, 2007
Things like, say, using an endless string of attacks on sovereign nations as an excuse to declare a national state of emergency and cancel elections, thus making George W. Bush president for life?
never fails too much power in the wrong hands
& they get to thinking they know it all & can control it all !
be it nineteenth-century British imperialists or
twenth-century Americian imperialists
British, Americian or any other nationality
the little guy is just cannon fodder for the
rich & powerful
That is the very least they can do.
Excellent article.
On the contrary--failures are GREAT for a country if the people learn the correct lesson. In this case, it is that the conservative takeover of America, started a couple decades ago in the Reagan era, has FAILED. A bunch of radicals tried to undermine and alter the founding values of the USA. Their pro-business, pro-rich, pro-military, anti-tax, anti-big-government, anti-rights, anti-science agenda has failed on every front. Now they may try to blame Bush saying he didn''t do it right, or blame the American people saying they were not supportive enough. But it is all a smokescreen to distract people from remembering in bold terms--this is a philosophy that we tried and it dfailed and we should never try it again.
Yep a lot of that here today. With the TV writers on strike I think some people are writing jokes in the hope CBS will pick them up as temporary help.
Uh, no. Failure may be a good teaching tool for children, and can teach individuals humility. But for a government, especially one that has responsibility for the welfare of over 300 million citizens and commands a nuclear arsenal that can wipe out mankind 5 times over, failure is not a teacher. It''s a disaster. There is no "do over" when people''s lives are at stake. I stand by my original statement.
And I also stand by my criticism of this article. Its sole purpose is to list (yet again) the failures of the current White House. It does not inform, and it puts forth no alternatives. All it basically says is "hahaha Republican stooges, we told ya so, nah-nah-nahnah-nah". That is why people like the article''s author will never hold elected office. It''s the subtle difference between the pessimistic jerk that spends all day telling us about problems we can already see, vs. the thinking person that says "let''s try these things and see if that gets us where we want to be".
Criticize Bush if you want, but at least he got off his derriere, ran for office, and made things happen. Maybe right things, maybe wrong things, but he at least DID IT. What has the author of this article done of benefit to our country, or even his readers? What have any of YOU done?
The same poster complains that Nation is always criticizing, and never offers any bright ideas for improving things. Pickup ANY copy of Nation at your newsstand, zoopster. You''ll find more than enough constructive, bright ideas. You''ll have to ask CBS why they pick the selections they do!
This is a white house in denial, a delusional president who belongs to the nuthouse rather than the white house and a VP whose only concern is to line his pockets and his friends from the spoils of war, a war that was craftily put together and sold to the American people as a war on terror.
But we all know now it''s a war that''s really all about money, oil, and no-bid contracts.
When you have a vice president who''s directly benefiting from a war he created, you know we''re in big trouble.
Stand by any statement you like, but it is incorrect. Any enterprise worth doing involves some risk of failure. The key is to be clear on what is being done, how well it worked, and learn the lessons the process offers. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it--that quote is not about success.
And what has failed here, in a spectacular fashion, is the philosophy started 25 years or so ago in the Reagan era. The agenda was a radical attempt to reshape America as pro-business, pro-rich, pro-corporate, pro-military power, anti-rights, anti-democracy, anti-government. It is important to be clear-eyed and clear-headed in learning ant remembering the lesson: this philosophy does not work. It should not be repeated.
"What has the author of this article done of benefit to our country, or even his readers?"
He has done a huge service to his country: to witness, document, and analyze the failures. If we are to avoid future failures we need to learn these lessons before the next election.
Good point. I have not read print version of The Nation. However in answer to your question above, there''s no need to ask CBS or any other outlet, because we all know the answer. Bad news sells.
From the Merriam-Webster website:
xenophobe: one unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin
The level of fear and hysteria from dedicated liberals toward this administration is hysterical to the point of xenophobia, in my opinion. If they are to be believed, we will be living in a fascist state where anyone who is "different" will be hauled away to be waterboarded in Gitmo within the next 12 months. That fear is unreasonable. My rights since GW took over in 2001 have not been hindered. I can still say or do anything now that I got away with 8 years ago. I do not fear my government.
What I fear, are Muslim radicals detonating a nuke in my city, just to show me how much they resent us. I fear anyone whose hatred is so blind that the threat of imprisonment or death is not enough to stop them. What I fear most though is that someday those people will carry out an attack so horrific, with a death toll so massive, that we might have to commit an even more horrific act to protect ourselves. That we might have to abandon principles gained over 200 years of strife and suffering all for the sake of self-preservation. That is my fear.
Sorry, but I saw no "analysis" here, only diatribe. It will mean exactly nothing in 12 months'' time when the new prez takes over. Real history is supposed to record events and analyze causes and effects, not promote agendas; and this smacked of agenda. Period.
I prefer to look at ALL of the events, positive and negative, and come up with my own conclusions. As I said, I have rights. My government hasn''t taken them from me. I have a job, something I would have had a lot of trouble finding during the Carter years. I could start a business if I wanted, without worrying about being taxed punitively just because some lady on welfare with 12 kids can''t have the nice things I want. In the America you''re talking about (pre-Reagan), guys like the founders of Microsoft, Google, Dell, eBay and Yahoo would not even exist because all their wealth would be taken from them and redistributed to those "less fortunate". Where would this country be without those companies (and others) driving innovation and entrepreneurship? In a world of hurt, that''s where.
So let''s rewind the tape and review what happened in late 2001.
We had Osama Bin Laden trapped at Tora Bora and begging forgiveness of his followers for getting them blown to smithers. Then we didn''t send in enough manpower to police up the remnants and haul OBL maggoty @ss to New York to pay for his deeds. OBL escapes into the wild country between northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan.
So what do DarthnGeorge do next to bring that scumbag to justice?
Manufacture phony intelligence and pump up the smoke and mirror machine so we are lied into a war in Iraq.
Real smart move there.
I guess OBL is just trembling under his blankets now.
Meanwhile Pakistan with all its juicy nukes is beginning to fall apart, the Turks are getting ready to invade Iraq also, the Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians and the Egyptians all loathe us because of DartnGeorge''s hamhanded laughable excuse for diplomacy. Excuse me, I erred. There is no diplomacy or a foreign policy. just two idiots who think think the world id their stage for a replay of the Gunfight at the OK corral.
Hint: the Earps they ain''t.
How often, indeed.....
Of course it did. That is what an opinion essay is supposed to do--it offers the authors analysis and viewpoint. It makes no claim to be "real history" (whatever that means).
"It will mean exactly nothing in 12 months time..."
On the contrary: it will mean everything. The idea is to see what a mess has been created by embracing this morally bankrupt and anti-democratic, pro-elite agenda. See the mess, mark it, remember it, not repeat it; Throwing the supporters of the radical agenda out is only the first (but important) step. In 12 months we will have accomplished the first step, then must start undoing the damage of the last few decades.
The fact that your definition is substantially different that that which is commonly understood we will, I guess, have to excuse based on your need to ramble on and on.
As for Bush "getting off his duff and DOING something", so did Jeffrey Dahlmer (spellcheck?), but we don''t hold up his activities as "accomplishments"!
as I said earlier be it British, Americian or any other nationality of colinial type mentality it will be pro-business, pro-rich, pro-military, anti-tax, anti-big-government, anti-rights, anti-science agenda
After reading the following I agree:
On the contrary--failures are GREAT for a country if the people learn the correct lesson. In this case, it is that the conservative takeover of America, started a couple decades ago in the Reagan era, has FAILED. A bunch of radicals tried to undermine and alter the founding values of the USA. Their pro-business, pro-rich, pro-military, anti-tax, anti-big-government, anti-rights, anti-science agenda has failed on every front. Now they may try to blame Bush saying he didn''''t do it right, or blame the American people saying they were not supportive enough. But it is all a smokescreen to distract people from remembering in bold terms--this is a philosophy that we tried and it dfailed and we should never try it again.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a pervert and a mass murderer. GW is a politician. Now some may, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, say there is no difference, but this is a serious discussion. It%u2019s unlikely that more than half the electorate would put Jeffrey Dahmer in the White House. And as for the mass murderer part, that is subjective. Lincoln presided over the most costly war in American history, resulting in nearly 1 million dead. FDR gave orders that resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 Americans as well as millions of Japanese and German civilians. Truman gave orders that resulted in the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities as well as the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. What makes Bush any worse (or better) than those guys?
I don''t mean to belittle the casualties we have suffered thus far in this war, but we lost more soldiers on D-Day than we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We lost more soldiers in ONE HOUR at places like Antietam and Gettysburg! What makes those sacrifices noble and the ones we''re facing now foolhardy?
Unlike you, I don''t accept that this war is about making a small cadre of people rich who were already rich to begin with. That''s just stupid. What I DO believe, is what goes on in the Middle East affects our society at large HERE. Without oil, our society would collapse. Period.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a pervert and a mass murderer. GW is a politician. Now some may, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, say there is no difference, but this is a serious discussion. It%u2019s unlikely that more than half the electorate would put Jeffrey Dahmer in the White House. And as for the mass murderer part, that is subjective. Lincoln presided over the most costly war in American history, resulting in nearly 1 million dead. FDR gave orders that resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 Americans as well as millions of Japanese and German civilians. Truman gave orders that resulted in the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities as well as the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. What makes Bush any worse (or better) than those guys?
I don''t mean to belittle the casualties we have suffered thus far in this war, but we lost more soldiers on D-Day than we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We lost more soldiers in ONE HOUR at places like Antietam and Gettysburg! What makes those sacrifices noble and the ones we''re facing now foolhardy?
Unlike you, I don''t accept that this war is about making a small cadre of people rich who were already rich to begin with. That''s just stupid. What I DO believe, is what goes on in the Middle East affects our society at large HERE. Without oil, our society would collapse. Period.
Posted by zoopster1 at 12:10 AM : Nov 08, 2007
There''s a huge difference between D-Day and Iraq.
One was a war against an imminent threat to our borders, the other a war of choice, for personal and profiteering reasons. And the country was led into the war with fake intel and lies.
Even Afghanistan was a war of necessity, and no one was more happy to see the Taliban defeated than me.
But Bush and Cheney had other agendas on their minds, namely OIL and Halliburton''s bottom line!
No, they didn''t want Afghanistan, they wanted Iraq!!
When the prime instigator of a war is its chief benefactor (think ********), you have a problem!
Posted by zoopster1 at 12:10 AM : Nov 08, 2007
The comparison with Dahmer is very apt.
Bush/Cheney are no less evil than any of our serial murderers multiplied 2000 times.
And they''re getting away with murder because they also used the brainwashing techniques of the great cult leaders like David Koresh.
They terrorized the whole country into submission with their lies of yellow cake and "the next attack may be in the form of a mushroom cloud."
Any time there''s any dissent, raise the color coded threat level and attack the dissenters.
Brilliant strategy, almost as brilliant as Bin laden''s strategy to defeat us by bankrupting us with a permanent endless war on "terror."
I for one accept that we DIDN''T know for sure what Saddam had. And given the results of the last terrorist attack, I don''t think anyone was in the mood to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know I sure wasn''t -- in fact I wanted us to finish him off back in 1991. He had a lot to answer for (missile attacks on Israel, paying families of Palestinian suicide bombers, plotting the assassination of a US president, what his forces did in Kuwait, etc).
I am also pretty sure he wanted his capabilities to stay ambiguous. Not because of us; because of Iran. Remember them? You may recall they fought a little war a few years back... which Saddam started. If you were Saddam, would you want to clue 20 million crazy Shiites living right next door into the fact that your army couldn''t even secure a shopping mall?? I thought not.
Posted by zoopster1 at 01:05 AM : Nov 08, 2007
If you''re still looking for evidence, you''re dumber than I thought.
But of course you''ll also give Dahmer the benefit of the doubt too. Maybe he didn''t know he was eating human flesh.
LOL
And please, stop comparing our elected president with a serial killer. It really insults my intelligence. People are not being rounded up and shot in the streets. Dissidents are not being shipped to gulags, or thrown off the tops of buildings. That stuff happened in Saddam''s Iraq, not here. Even left-wing nutjobs are still free to say what they want without fear of being blackbagged by some secret police. So please, give your paranoia a rest.
You are losing your grip on society, mootbats.
Soon you will become nothing.
Posted by zoopster1 at 01:24 AM : Nov 08, 2007
Guess you''ll say that to the 4000 Americans who lost their lives.
Give your paranoia a rest!
As for the One_American, wrapping yourself in the flag does not make you a patriot.
It''s better to be a moonbat than a neocon with blood and money on his hands.
Well you have a point--most serial killers are loners and likely insane. The president is working within a large framework and carrying out a premeditated and deliberate agenda. The serial killer is the better person.
"People are not [blah]. Dissidents are not [blah], or [blahblah]."
So because it could be worse, therefore it is not bad. Faulty logic, and pretty desperate thinking.
The drive for those possessing excesses of both wealth and power to acquire even more is so pervasive and powerful that it is a rare individual who can avoid the temptation. Until one understands that phenomena, the conclusions they reach absenting this dynamic are going to be off the mark.
In a way, it''s a "game", and the passions unleashed are as powerful as those of the avid sports fan. Unless they "win" even MORE than they already have, they LOSE! It''s not about the AMOUNT of wealth (or power)! IT''S ABOUT WINNING!
Additionally, as Kissenger said, "power (and the wealth implied) is the great aphrodisiac". Once you have it, you need it even MORE or you feel emasculated.
Look at the excesses of the Keatings et al. Look at the excesses of so many fundamentalist charismatic leaders. Most of us in the "middle" desire more wealth that we have, and have reasonably logical reasons for doing so. But don''t get trapped into believing that those who already possess an excess of wealth are driven by the same dynamics that drive us. If you do, your misconception will lead to faulty conclusions - - which I believe in your case it has.
My hyperbole in using Dahmer in suggesting that "just doing something" was not necessarily healthy was NOT a COMPARISON of the two men, although I must confess that SOME of you that read it that way made some interesting points!
Someday, zoopster, I hope you will see that what you imagine to believe is "patriotism" is driving you to misconstrue both the content and the intent of those with a different mindset.
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