Part 4 of 5 Why the Iraq War is the Right War in the Right Place at the Right Time

Part 4 of 5. 

 

Same Admonitions as before. 

 

My opinions are in Red and subject to disagreement. 

 

The words in Black are facts from the Historical record.  You can’t disagree, unless you counter or question with other good sound documented facts. 

 

George W Bush

The exhaustion from 8 years of all things Clinton and the Gore “Stiff as a Brick” Presidential campaign led to the Win/Loss/Win by a Supreme Court 5-4 vote of GWB (The Magnificent).

 

Controversial, not universally loved or even accepted as legitimate by the electorate (who didn't really elect him) and with the economy drifting badly GWB took office.  He fumbled.  He tried to do some things.  Rattled some sabers.  Tried to find the bathroom.  He was not well respected by international friends or enemies.  They saw the divided country after the election as impotent and anemic.

 

Clinton had dismantled some of the intelligence and military power as a result of the end of the cold war.  It seemed reasonable to everyone (including Conservatives).  There was little reason in the 7 months of a new Bush administration to suspect what might happen next.  There were memos, but there were memos every day.  The paint wasn’t even dry in the White House hallway.  Condi was trying to find new shoes and a chair for her office.  Donald was proposing to downsize the military for more efficiency, Cheney was trying to keep his heart pumping and Colin was thinking about retirement.

 

The big issue of the day was an ever worsening economy as a result of the dot-com boom and bust and its negative transfer of wealth and corporate scandals (Enron and Worldcom).  Not a pretty situation but Bush was proposing plans.  Tax Cuts, Incentives etc. 

 

THEN

 

9-11   The World Changed.  War was declared on us on our soil by an organized country-less force of radical Islamic fundamentalists more brutal and abandoned to hate and destruction than we could have imagined was possible.

 

This wasn’t a government like Japan, Italy or even Germany you could reason with and who might surrender to preserve its people if we demanded it strongly enough . (Read that A-Bomb)

 

This was a terrorist matrix supported by nebulous people who openly declared they would destroy us, and everyone else in the world who didn’t agree with their stated objective: to bring down thru terror “corrupt infidel” economies, cultures and governments worldwide and seize control of assets (oil) to amass a power base.  What made these terrorists even more fearful was their utter disregard for human life including their own.  Ruthless is a weak word in this regard.

 

Since the millennium there have been hundreds of terror attacks worldwide by these gangsters. Many of these acts were before the Iraq war And some prior to 9-11. A partial list includes:

 

• The Two Bali Bombings, one in a nightclub, one in a coffee shop
• The Bombing of the Sharm el-Sheikh hotel region in Egypt
• The bombings in Saudi Arabia
• The bombings in Manila Philippines
• The train bombings in Spain
• The Underground Bombings in Great Britain
• The Beslan School Bombing
• The Theater Attack in Russia
• The Checyn Revolutionaries bomb airplanes in Russia
• The Sudanese Executions of Christians by Muslims armies
• The execution of Van Gogh in the Netherlands by a Muslim extremist
• The most recent bombings of the Hotels in Jordan
• The riots in France, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.

 

Most of the countries on which there have been attacks on have little to do with Iraq.  And there have been reported a number of plots that were foiled by better and better intelligence.  Most recently in Australia.  Is any of this is Iraq War Related? Much is just a desire on the part of insane Islamic fascists to destabilize and demoralize the world?

 

This list above does not include any of the bombings in Israel by Fundamentalist Palestinians or hundreds of Iraqi suicide Bombings and IEDS.  Iraq and Israel are active fronts in the war on terror.

 

Some of this is a frontal attack on Christianity by Islamic Fundamentalists.

For example executions of Christians in Muslim Indonesia by Islamic mobsters.  3 little 13-year-old Christian School girls on their way to school were beheaded a couple weeks ago, another was beheaded last week and her head was deposited on the Church’s doorstep. The perpetrators have been identified, and the government out of fear won’t arrest them.  Terrorists win when governments allow terrorists to prosper at the expense of it’s populace.  It plain and simply fear, not agreement.  That’s the cost of real cost of unopposed terror.  Defacto control of the Government.  I pray it doesn’t happen here.  Some voices in the media and in politics seem to be trying to take us there.

 

There have been no shortage of old Westerns with this theme.  High Noon.  Some of the Spaghetti Westerns.  Sheriff pulls in to town to oust the bad guys.  Bad guys come to town and terrorize the citizens.  Sheriff asks for help in facing down Bad Guy gang.  Citizens respond to him like he’s Little Red Hen.  Not me, not me.  Oh they hate the terrorism, but they haven’t been personally threatened just yet.  Maybe if they do nothing the Bad Guy Gang will leave them alone.  Of course they don’t.  Then the sheriff decides to take them on.  A few (minority) of the folks agree to help.  Most of the rest hide behind windows and walls waiting to see who wins.

 

This is being played out in America, in Indonesia and in Iraq.

 

This American Life http://www.thislife.org/ has a good illustration of this dynamic.  Click on the Archives and then on the Oct 28^th program. I think you can listen for free. It’s “act 2” that tells the story although the whole program is good.   Ira Glass of This American Life is no Conservative. He cried real tears on the air when Kerry lost.

 

For a long time the Populace of Iraq hid behind windows and doors waiting to see who would win.  Now that we are, they are coming out, joining the army and police, voting en mass, and even asking the US to think about leaving soon.  This is very good but never would have happened without the Sheriff taking on the bad guys.

 

This is a global terrorist movement that was on track to become a World War with or without the Iraq war.  The Mobster Islamists have decided to take on the civilized world.  In this way it’s like the Nazis in WWII.  They are deluded madmen who must be stopped.

 

To even imagine that worldwide terrorism will stop or subside or that we will be insulated from it in America by pulling out of Iraq is naive at best and inane at worst.

 

When 9-11 happened the adversary was Osama bin Laden.  He had been sheltered by the Taliban Regime in Afghanistan.  It was a fairly easy task to take out the Taliban and close down training operations in Afghanistan.  Finding OBL has become a mission without closure.  In my opinion, he is dead.  He was reported to be ill requiring dialyses. We haven’t heard anything him since late 2004.

 

I won’t spend much time rehearsing the timetable of facts and assumptions before going into Iraq, the reasons for or wisdom of.  I will state as a settled fact that that everyone from all sides of the political spectrum from the midpoint of the Clinton administration to the start of the war believed that Saddam had WMD’s and was a threat particularly if he joined forces with the Al-Queada gangsters. 

  

We are there and we have done the right thing in my opinion.  We have engaged the enemy head on.  He’s slippery but he is knowable.  It’s not OBL anymore.   Getting OBL or his dead body now would be a non-event.  It might be satisfying but he is irrelevant in the global terror picture.

 

What I find appalling is those who did support the assumption of WMD’s in Iraq, who now say they never really did.  I don’t have an argument against those who were always against this war.  I just hate turncoats, no matter what side of the aisle they come from.  Hence my struggle with McCain. 

 

A more sinister archetypical foe has emerged from the fading shadow of Osama bin Laden.  Abu Musab Zarqawi.  He represents the worst type of these killers.  And he like the many headed monster HYDRA LERNAIA.  If we kill him there are 10 more.  But we must kill him and the others and the others and the others ........  This is not a play nice situation like McCain would want.

 

Zarquawi's story is instructive:

 

Profile: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is Iraq's most notorious insurgent - a shadowy figure associated with spectacular bombings, assassinations and the beheading of foreign hostages.

              

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Who is he?

 

He first appeared in Iraq as the leader of the Tawhid and Jihad insurgent group, merging it in late 2004 with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

 

The video-taped beheadings of foreign hostages that made Tawhid and Jihad infamous in 2004 have become less frequent since the group's merger with al-Qaeda.

 

Bomb attacks on Iraq's Shia-dominated government and security forces have continued apace, however, with many of the bloodiest strikes of 2005 blamed on Zarqawi's group, now renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq.

 

According to BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera, Zarqawi's increasingly bloody attacks on the Shias are alienating many in the insurgency, including some Sunni Muslims who are its strongest backers.

 

A letter released by US forces in 2005 - allegedly authored by Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and addressed to Zarqawi - appears to support this.

 

In the run-up to the Iraq war in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Zarqawi was an associate of Osama Bin Laden who had sought refuge in Iraq.

 

 

How he got to Iraq:

 

But after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, Zarqawi went back to Jordan with a radical Islamist agenda.

 

The next stop on his itinerary was his old stamping ground - Afghanistan.

 

He is believed to have set up a training camp in the western city of Heart Afghanistan, near the border with Iran.

 

Students at his camp supposedly became experts in the manufacture and use of poison gases.

 

It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with al-Qaeda.

 

He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base, though the report that he lost a leg in the attack has not been verified.

 

US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda's behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.

 

He is thought to have remained with them for a while - feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.

 

Things He is Doing:

 

In October 2002, Zarqawi was blamed for the assassination of US aid official Laurence Foley in Amman.

 

Months later, in 2003, he was named as the brains behind a series of lethal bombings - from Casablanca in Morocco to Istanbul in Turkey.

 

It is in Iraq, though, that he has been most active. In it, Zarqawi appears to share his plans for igniting sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there.

 

Attacks are now a daily occurrence in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi is behind them all, he is seen by the US as the biggest obstacle to their hopes of progress in Iraq - their most dangerous enemy in the country.

 

But this is about more than Zarqawi and the many-headed monster he is part of.  These are gangsters, mobsters, true evil personified, worse than the Nazis by twice. Out to kill you and your loved ones. They must all be cut off and killed, one at a time or in bunches.  But they must be crushed.

 

There is a tipping point, if we stay strong and determined countries like Jordan and yes even the French will begin to grasp the vision, people in Iraq and even Iran will start to see success.  They will develop gonads.  They will come out from behind their windows and walls and take up the battle.  Only then will the world win this global struggle against an evil more insidious than we have ever faced.

 

To back away will only mean we will fight this battle with far more casualties than we have now but they will be innocent civilians in the USA on our soil. The US has endured more casualties to date in this war on US soil then in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.  That will change but if we don’t win you, your children and grandchildren will live in fear of terror.

 

To do this, we had to pick the time and place to engage this enemy.  We had to smoke them out.  This is old-fashioned battlefield warfare.  We must pick the time and place to engage the enemy.  They would rather we didn't. We have to take a beachhead.  We must stand somewhere other than on US soil.  That place is Iraq.  It is an ideal location, symbolically and internationally.  Thank God (and George Bush) we finally stopped running away and took a stand.

 

Last Section: Why It’s Worth the Blood and Pain.  Why it's worth the sacrifice of every Man and Woman who has died. A peek behind the curtain of a future Iraq, Middle East and World if we prevail.