I should have reiterated that we’re talking about their strategy for quote-unquote winning the quote-unquote War on Terror (or should that be their quote-unquote strategy?).
No matter the cost, eh?
But when it comes to making it so radical Islamists aren’t plotting attacks, what should we be doing that we aren’t?
Now that the War on Drugs has been won, the end of the War on Terror cannot be far behind. Both have been great value for money as well.
What?
The neocons, Pearle, Cheney, Kristol. Armitage,Yoo, Bush and the rest call themselves conservatives. I guess we have to do it too.
Gotta say I agree. OP sounds like he stopped understanding the conservative strategy in the war on terror about 5 and a half years ago and just got around to telling us.
So I’m a little slow. Do enlighten the doofus.
The conservative strategy is simple: Victory!
I could only guess at their motives for their strategy. It doesn’t remotely resemble how I would handle the situation.
To be fair, things are going much more swimmingly in Iraq now than before.
That oil we died for should be flowing freely into America anytime now.
What I don’t understand is why we didn’t pursue OBL into Pakistan. The War On Terror is real (at least to me), but it’s been twisted to cover other actions that have little or nothing to do with it.
We should have taken a harder stance with Pakistan, because it’s clear to me that even though Musharraf was a perceived ally, that he was walking his own tightrope between alliance with the West and the fundamentalist Islamists that live in his country.
I think we should have simply said fuck all that and gone in there anyway, if in fact we had hard intelligence that supported such an action against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives that had anything at all to do with 9/11.
We didn’t go into Iran or Egypt, we went into Iraq.
FoieGras-
I’m going to ask how familiar you are with the political situation re: Pakistan-India, China-India, US-China, Iraq-Other Arab Nations, especially OPEC.
FWIW, The American Conservative magazine endorsed John Kerry for President in 2004 because Bush was, well, not a conservative.
As to the OP, I think Michael Moore laid out the rationale well before the War on Terror actually begin. Say what you will about Moore, but he displayed a nifty act of prognostication in his movie, Canadian Bacon, a 1995 scripted comedy.
In this comedy, the American military industrial complex is racking its brains to come up with a new enemy to re-energize their industry following the end of the cold war (ultimately, they decide on an ill-fated war with Canada). At one point, there is a meeting with the President (played by Alan Alda) and his top advisors. As they run through the list of traditional enemies, they realize that they are all dead, mollified, or inconsequential. At one point, there’s this little discussion:
Secretary of State: We were thinking, what could be a bigger threat than aliens invading from space?
General Panzer: Ooh boy! Scare the shit out of everyone. Even me, sir!
U.S. President: Jesus, is this the best you could come up with? What about, ya know, international terrorism?
General Panzer: Well, sir, we’re not going to re-open missile factories just to fight some creeps running around in exploding rental cars, are we, sir?
Again, I remind you this is 1995, and a (funny) fictional movie. But I think the general message - that war is business, but business needs customers to stay afloat - does more to explain the “war on terror” (which, we told, would not end in our lifetime) than any discussion of freedom, liberty, democracy, or other empty promises ever could.
Well conservatives, are you going to let that stand?
Last time I checked, Iran was full of Persians, not Arabs.
Egypt was bought off (wrongly, IMO, given that it now fosters Mohammad Attas) by Camp David. The U.S. is paying their government a couple of billion dollars a year to keep them from launching a war on Israel.
Well, as expected, the thread has basically been ruined by the usual suspects. The short version, if you want a serious answer, is that it’s not a “Conservative” strategy at all.
Let’s step back a minute. Way back when, a group of prominent liberal thinkers favored a more muscular approach to American foreign policy. They were more or less Kennedy-ites or FDR-Rooseveltians, and they disagreed with evolving “the USSR-is-here-to-stay-and-let’s-kotow-to-our-glorious-masters” ideology. However, they were essentially driven out of the Democrats and wound up joining the Republicans, although they differed on just about everything (still being liberal).
Neocons believe that maybe a semi-isolationist foreign policy once worked, but with the rise of global ideologies endorsing terror and destruction it was no longer feasible. Fight them over there or fight them here. This was originally about confronting Communism, but they consider the dangers of Islamic terror, too, and well before 9-11. But the goal is not to punihs or destroy or make an example of anyone per se, but rather to minimize threats.
Pres. Bush is not a Neocon. In fact, he’s not a doctrinaire conservative of any stripe. That’s hardly unprecedented. For whatever reason, however, he did adopt a couple Neocons as advisors. (For the record, Wolfewitz is, but I don’t think any other Bush advisors are.)
Jump to 9-11. The invasion of Afganistan was essentially a Neocon strategy. We had no ability to stop attacks - defensive thinking could never guard all possible points of entry. The only answer as they saw it was to eliminate the threat over there. That said, the situation was hardly under our control and we had a lot of issues with the complicated troubles.
Why don’t we cross over into Pakistan? For the same reason we ultimately invaded Afganistan: our security. Pakistan is not now our enemy, but strong elements within would like it to be. It is in our interests not to give them any excuse, and we are pushing it already with drone surveillance and remote attacks. Any serious attack into Pakistan would require vast numbers of forces, who would have to cover huge areas and deal with the pakistany military - and that is a country with a hundred or so million people.
Likewise, why wouldn’t we respond to Iranian efforts to “help.” Simple: we really don’t think they were serious, and would likely use any knowledge or influence to betray us. Any “help” they gave is likely to backfire because the Mullahs’ interests are directly opposed to ours. Iran is part of the problem, supporting terrorism across large portions of the globe from Syria to Sumatra.
The point of invading Iraq was more complicated. Though very difficult and slow, the strategic goal was to alter the perceptions of the entire Middle East. truth be told, the Middle East just plain sad. It produces virtually nothing of value; the sole industries of note are oil and some tourism. But they produce nothing of greater value, have no significant value-added, service, or high-tech fields, have horrific education opportunities, and create virtually no art or literature. And they are ruled by idiot wanna-be Hitlers. Well, we wouldn’t care, except that this was feeding islamic terror. While I don’t think poverty itself makes people into criminals or terrorists, poverty is one aspect of a failed culture, which is what we were facing. And that failed culture led people to embrace extremism as a means of reclaiming a worthwhile self-identity.
Probably we’d have liked to get rid of the Sauds more than anyone else. But that was problematic, since they were kinda-sorta our nominal allies (even as they were bribing terrorists left and right). Next targets were Syria and Libia. But Libia had been quiet for a while and Syria had not given us a casus belli at any time. Iraq had promise though. A lot of peope didn’t like that we failed to take out Saddam beforehand. Plus, his piss-poor assassination attempt on Bush I kinda pissed us off. There was a lot of historical baggage which we could take avantage of. Iraq was almost literally the crossroads of the Middle East.
But the purpose of the invasion was not to fight Islamic terror direfctly. Instead, it was a flank attack. We were trying and are succeeding in showing the Mideast that they don’t have to live with third-rate nations and no future. It’s slow, because our target is not a man but a movement.
No, we did the exact opposite. We produced what amounts to an enormous propaganda machine showing the people of the ME that “democracy” means mass suffering and death; chaos and anarchy. Exactly what the dictators have always claimed. We’ve silenced reformers all over the region by turning Iraq into a hideous example. That may not be what we intended, but it’s what we did.
Sadam made Bush’s daddy look bad, and Bush coupling lies about terrorism with lies about Iraqi WMDs used tax payers, and the lives of our troops and a couple hundred thousand Iraqis to get even.
So only in one country it’s “take the fight to the enemy”; over there it’s “don’t upset the Muslims”; while over there it’s “start a fight and the enemy will come”.
Well that’s quite a big mistake they made then. There was a possibility they could have built upon the newly established dialogue to gradually steer Iran back towards the community of responsible nation and maybe head of a nuclear confrontation. But we didn’t have confidence in our ability to avoid being tricked by them. So I guess it’s ‘bombs away’ then?
Are you sure conspiracy-theory laden Islamist extremism doesn’t play a role? Or the Sunni-Shiite split? Or sympathy for the Palestinians and the Muslim claim on Jerusalem?
Nothing to do with either physically eliminating terrorists nor draining regional support from them.
Terrorism doesn’t have flanks, General. By now it’s time to show some metrics that our effort in Iraq, and the other policies you listed, are resulting in fewer terrorists and/or less support for terrorism in the broader Middle East. And you seem to be saying we’re appeasing them with democracy–only not really because we’re not going to invade any more Muslim countries–are we?
If neccessary. Different strategies are used in concert to acheive the optimum effect which is practically possible.
:rolleyes: Hardly. I don’t believe that Iran was in any way, shape, or form willing to become a “responsible nation.” Period. Their leadership is a grossly corrupt theocracy, one short step above the Nazis. However, we had and have no real intention of attacking them.
All of that is involved on various levels, but I doubt anyone, including the MIddle-Easterners themselves, could give you a full account of how everything meshes together. Some of it has been worked on in various ways, but
Yes, it does on the latter point, although indirectly. It’s an attempt to change the fundamental situation. It doesn’t ultimately matter what happens now so long as 25 or 50 years from now the people have a new ability to grow their economy, acheive more education, and find some success.
Of course it has flanks. Everything has flanks: a vulnerable rear which it can’t effectively guard all the time. Terrorism’s flank (Yes, it’s a metaphor. Deal with it.) is the dysfunctional social system which gives people few options. That is what is being changed.
Perle. Abrams. Rumsfeld. Feith. Kristol/PNAC.
Rumsfeld is definitely not. Perle and Abrams, maybe.