The story I would like to hear the President tell tonight
Just in case anyone is listening
By AcademicElephant Posted in War — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
ABC News has a story detailing an al Qaeda (Iraq) plot to send terrorists to the United States over the summer in the hopes of hatching an attack on our homeland (thanks RCP). The good news is that we took the order from Ayman al Zawahiri to Abu Musab al Zarqawi to plan such an attack seriously, and started to watch for the pattern of behavior displayed by the 19 9/11 hijackers and by the 11 young Egyptian men who disappeared from Montana State University, of all places, and were eventually apprehended and deported. The bad news is that others may have slipped through the cracks, or that there might be some in the pipeline who are savvy enough to show up occasionally at their designated schools. Because of course there are others--the question is just when they'll show themselves.
And this is the story I would like the President to tell tonight. The details are easy for all Americans to follow from the cities to the heartland--after all, this plot was to be hatched in the middle of fly-over country, so no one is safe. We've learned something important from this episode, which the revered Richard Clarke calls in the ABC report "the first hard evidence al Qaeda in Iraq was trying to attack us here at home." I would only quibble with Mr. Clarke's verb tense, which I think should be in the present. When AQI is emboldened, their priority is "to attack us here at home." And that has to be the bottom line tonight. That while reasonable people can disagree about the strategy of the surge, the anti-war Democrat plan for a "phased withdrawal" is the worst possible option and puts us all at direct risk.
Read on...
Mr. Bush's opponents like to indulge in hypothetical speculation about how safe we would be had we not invaded Iraq. He might indulge in some rather more fact-based speculation on this topic tonight. The fact is that we would be threatened no matter where the members of AQI, who are for the most part not native Iraqi, found themselves. No, we did not foresee Iraq becoming an al Qaeda focal point, but it has and for all the hand-wringers out there, keeping AQI occupied in Iraq is not the worst thing that could happen to us in this war. There are, as far as I can tell, three probable venues for them and two slightly less-likely ones had we not gone into Iraq. For example, maybe they would have stayed together in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and made common cause with the Taliban. Maybe they would have pretty much done what they have, and made themselves the proxies of the rogue Iranian state. In this role, they could have gone to Lebanon and swelled the ranks of Hezbollah. Or maybe they would have gone to Iraq anyway, and either blackmailed Saddam or, as is more likely, allied with him against the US. And of course, Saddam would be the wild card in each of these scenarios. What, if any, oversight would there have been over him? And is there any serious person out there who believes that if left unchecked, with the United Nations in the condition that it is, Saddam would not be pursuing a nuclear weapon at this point? How would he be meddling in Afghanistan, especially if the Taliban/al Qaeda forces there were strengthened by the operatives currently engaged in Iraq? In any event, none of these three alternatives are appetizing, but they would have been logical enough for al Qaeda members looking to do harm to the US in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan.
The two other, less-likely alternatives send this merry band a little further from home and would take more effort on their part. That would be to move a large group into Europe--probably Paris, although Berlin, Madrid, Rome and London would all have their appeal as well--and to start attacks from this new base. Alternatively, Latin America could become the new home-away-from-home, with northern Bolivia as a natural sanctuary and Hugo Chavez a complicit source of weapons and money. For various and obvious reasons--notably the value of the cultural and financial targets that would be in their easy reach and their increased proximity to us--these less-likely options are even less appetizing.
I'm not saying that fighting al Qaeda in Iraq is an ideal scenario, and neither should the President. The American people need to face the reality of what is going on in this conflict. It's terrible and violent, and is making the challenges of fostering democracy in that country exponentially harder. But review those alternatives. What's missing here altogether is an appetizing option that's not a fantasy. You know, one in which al Qaeda stays put in mountain caves and leads the simple life. Even if the occasional unfortunate were to get stoned to death in the (former) soccer stadium, that's just their way and in this scenario, what happens in Kabul stays in Kabul. Unfortunately, what we learn from both 9/11 that pre-dates the Iraq invasion and the AQI plot that came after it is that no such thing would happen. If we don't engage them where they emerge--and at the moment we happen to know that they're in Iraq--they're going to take advantage of the lull to come here. These are not misunderstood freedom fighters that we have provoked. They are a clear and present danger to our national security.
This is a simple narrative, and the ABC story provides a compelling illustration of it. I assume there were intelligence reasons the plot was not fully made public before, but now it has been, tonight would be an opportunity for the President to reveal additional details, and so to explain once again why supporting the mission in Iraq is so vital. Cheaper health care and reduced oil dependency are all fine and well, but they're going to seem rather irrelevant if a dozen AQI terrorists take it into their heads to detonate a dirty bomb in Washington or New York. Iraq is the elephant in the living room tonight, and it's Mr. Bush's pachyderm. I hope the President shines a strong light on it, and what the conflict means to all of us. If he exploits this "hard proof" of an AQI plot against the homeland, the anti-war faction will have a much more difficult time defending its position. And even if fat and happy Americans aren't listening too closely to tonight's speech, there's someone else who has indicated in recent days that he's watching Mr. Bush's Iraq policy closely. And if the President tells him on no uncertain terms that we're on to plots like this and are going to make them as logistically difficult and expensive as possible, it might make him think twice about launching one, what with the returns being so uncertain. Seems to me that this is worth a shot.
Good luck, Mr. President.
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one of the most voluminous collections of KnownFacts™ and Defeatist-Talking-Points™ I've read in quite a while.
I don't suppose you'd like to back-up any of that screed with actual facts and citations?
- In the meantime, I'd like to posit one simple question, because the Iraq Study Group's recommendations are a recipie for certain defeat:
- What are the ramifications of defeat in Iraq?
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“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
I need to make sure to click the Reply To This Tab.
Re: what will make us safer? by reverter
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“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
I know it's tough to remember at first, but it really does help when trying to sift through comment-heavy posts.
the countless number of times I've pointed to this feature of Redstate 2.0 precisely because of its inherent benefit.
In my own defense though, I plead partiality to some of the features in RS-1.0. The Comment Box remained invisible until you summoned it. Although, I realy do like the edit feature in the current version. ;)
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“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
The ABC story is indeed chilling. I would question, though, what course of action at this point will in fact make us "safer." While I originally supported the invasion of Iraq, having bought into the basic neocon premise that Arab civilization had become so dysfunctional that only violent intervention from without stood any real chance of beginning the process of political reform that would eventually result in the more hopeful, free and modern societies that tend not to produce alienated, suicical, West-hating religious fanatics, I've concluded in the years that our execution of that invasion, and the subsequent occupation, has been so incompetent as to actually make the situation in Iraq even worse than it was under Saddam (a circumstance, I confess, which I lacked the imagination to visualize in the realm of the possible before it actually happened). For this dismal state of affairs the responsibility is clear: our president, vice president and former Secretary of Defense blew it, big time.
So what now? The claim we've heard recently from our president, vice president on down that nobody has offered a decent alternative is, of course, false. The Iraq Study Group, among numberous others, have put forth quite well thought out plans for phased disengagement that would move U.S. soldiers to Iraq's borders and various key bases, allowing us to protect our strategic interests and guard against a much wider conflict while putting responsibility for Iraqi security, and the avoidance of even greater conflict, where it has to be -- in the hands of Iraq, Iran and Syria. The latter two, in particular, are getting quite the free ride today, watching the U.S. sap our strength in a deadly no-win situation, and even fanning those flames, while not dirtying their own hands and enjoying the knowledge that no matter how bad things get, it is the U.S. military (and, ahem, the Iraqi people) who will bear the brunt of the violence, not their own soldiers or their own nations. I regard with some joy the prospect of the Iranian and Syrian governments realizing that the U.S. really is leaving, and that if Iraq really does explode, it will be they who will face potentially devastating destabilization.
Meanwhile, what hope does our current "surge" path have of actually accomplishing any positive results? My reading tells me, slim to none. We (still!) aren't sending nearly enough troops to Baghdad. We don't have nearly enough credibility among the Iraqi people as peacemakers or political brokers. And, most important, we lack any sort of coherent "enemy" to fight. This isn't a civil war we're facing in Iraq -- there aren't two organized sides fighting it out, with the winner inheriting a subdued country. Iraq today is descending into sheer chaos, and I see no way for an occupying army to fashion anything resembling security, let alone democracy, from such circumstances. Saying we have to "win" this war implies that we're fighting someone. We aren't. The Iraqis are fighting one another, with our soldiers serving as pointless, hopeless referees. It's a terrible, terrible situation, but one caused by our own President's failures, and one highly unlikely to be remedied at this point by any remotely feasible amount of military force.
Given all these facts, I regard sending more (but not enough) 21-year-old American men and women into this maelstrom for no rational purpose as little short of criminal. If Iraq really is the central front in the war on terror, the decisive battle in the great ideological struggle of our time, then our President should go on TV tonight and announce, as CIC, the resumption of the draft, so that we can send another 200,000 trained and heavily armed soldiers into Baghdad. Anything short of that, frankly, is at this point a joke, and in my opinion, anyone who denies these very grim facts is in denial, and represents a danger to America's interests, which in this very dark hour require honesty above all else.
We aren't going to "win" in Iraq anymore, folks. The situation has degenerated to the point where we truly lack the power to do that. All we can do is attempt to create the conditions whereby, over a period of years, the Iraqis and their neighbors can begin to "win" a stable nation, and stable region, for themselves, if that's what they want.
Will we get hit in the meanwhile? Maybe. Will the chaotic hellhole of Iraq actually breed far more terrorists because of our failure there? Quite possibly. But let's not delude ourselves that this situation is the fault of anyone other than the failed, frail, scared, overmatched president who will stand before us tonight and make the vast majority of Americans laugh, and/or cry, by telling us of his plans to "win." Too late, Mr. Bush. Way, way too late.