Scott Ott and the Obama Doctrine
Posted by Moonage on 28 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: 2008 Congressional Races, terrorism
Scott Ott has been one of my favorite authors for quite some time. Here is yet another reason why:
Afghanistan is a convenient refuge for the moment for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When our military secures it, and freedom’s song is finally sung among these long-tortured people, what then? Will the enemy surrender for lack of refuge? Is there nowhere else from which he can stage his attacks?
Our enemy is not constrained by geography or politics. His central command center is the human heart, so his places of refuge are legion. You can destroy his arms depots, level his training centers, interrupt his funding, pick off his lieutenants one by one. This we can, and must, do.
But to pretend that you can corner him in Afghanistan, and arrest him or snuff him out, is worse than naive. It’s a willful ignorance that will bring us into submission. This is the Obama Doctrine.
Now that is the heart of why I hate to hear the “Bush lied, people died” garbage. When John Kerry ran against Bush, it was the same argument. “There are no terrorists in Iraq”. It morphed to “There WERE no terrorists in Iraq until we got there”. Bottom line, there were terrorists in Iraq before we got there. IMO, that is a huge part of who we’ve been fighting since. Iraq was documented to have been involved with several terrorist organizations in 2000. Now, 200 is the year I picked because Bush wasn’t president yet. There was no overt political sentiment against Iraq even though Clinton bombed them. So, if there were all these terrorist groups operating IN Iraq and with Iraq’s support, why does Obama think Afghanistan is the central focus of the war on terror? Because there were no overt ties to Al Qaeda / Osama Bin Laden in Iraq. And, since Obama and Kerry were openly opposed to any military conflict, that was their out. We had no beef with the other terrorist organizations. So, Obama just needs to be more specific. In his words, the only terrorist organization we apparently have an issue with is Al Qaeda. The rest of the terrorist organizations get a pass.
That’s not very comforting to me. Now, Al Qaeda was basically a quiet bunch not doing too much since Russia collapsed in Afghanistan. We had helped Al Qaeda in their struggle with Russia. We were sort of friendly with Afghanistan. In very real terms, we should have been friends with these people. Then, for no real reason, and no real provocation, and with no warning whatsoever, our “friends” in Afghanistan decided to murder thousands of innocent “friends” just so they could say they could do it.
That, Obama, is what you are dealing with. My biggest fear if Obama is elected is that he captures Bin Laden and executes him. That terrifies me because I know what the message will be when it happens. “Mission Accomplished, the War with Terror is now over”.
And, then, we’ll be stunned and shocked when the next 9/11 happens.
2 Comments »
on 28 Jul 2008 at 1:40 pm 1.Jeff said …
Gee, I seem to remember another ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner a few years ago after we had ‘won’ in Iraq.
The problem is that we are not going to eliminate terrorism. There will always be those people who think its the only way to get what they want. I was all for going into Afghanistan and eliminating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. I saw no reason to go into Iraq. Were there terrorists in Iraq? No doubt. Were they something to worry about at that time? Probably not. Did we make the situation worse by invading. Definitely. When we did that we gave the existing terrorists the best recruiting tool they could ever have. Of course, I keep asking why the terrorists fought us. If I were a smart terrorist I would lay low for a couple of years. Let the US think they had won and after they pulled out all their troops we could come out of hiding and overwhelm whatever forces remained. In fact, Im sure some are looking forward to the day we start pulling troops out.
As strange as it may seem, Im torn between whether or not to pull our troops out. On one hand I dont want to see any more american lives wasted, on the other, after what we did to the country, we have some responsibility to make sure its self sustaining and can defend itself after we leave. What good would it do to leave if Iran decided to move in after we left? We really stirred up a hornets nest when we invaded.
on 28 Jul 2008 at 2:13 pm 2.Moonage
said …
I don’t see it that way. First of all, the assumption has to be made that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists. The assumption had been made that Bin Laden was no threat to us since we had supplied him the tools he needed to fend off the Russians. The assumption at the same time was the terrorists in Iraq were bad terrorists because they created their own autonomous enclave within Iraq to train other bad terrorists intent on destroying our allies in both Afghanistan, Israel, and attempting to destabilize the Chechen and Georgian areas of now-friendly Russia. So, even before Bush was elected, we had deemed Iraq as a terrorist sympathizing government. The assumption that there were no terrorists there in the first place and they came in because we are there is wrong. What we did was cause the total collapse of military and police capabilities within Iraq by winning much faster than anyone expected. This created a military void that the existing terrorists within Iraq attempted to fill. To assume they were not recruiting before is also incorrect. Whereas they were targeting other Muslim governments such as Iran and Pakistan, they turned their focus on the suddenly very weak Iraq. That is the war we’ve been fighting since 2003. These are not new recruits, these are experienced terrorists that ansar al-islam, Mujahedin-e-Khalq, PLF, and many more were training within Iraq well before this conflict began. Even Clinton attempted to strike at a couple of them before this all began and our military had repeated clashes with them as well as the Iraqi military. So, the assumption there was nothing going on within Iraq before 2002 is the false-assumption that has been stated repeatedly to justify the argument we never needed to be there in the first place. Given our domestic justification for going into Afghanistan, I have no doubt whatsoever that if we had continued to ignore Iraq, those terrorist organizations operating autonomously within Iraq would have joined forces with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and made things much more difficult in Afghanistan. In essence, we’d be fighting the same people in a different location. Being as Iraq is a greater economic prize, those forces focused on Iraq and basically left Afghanistan to defend itself until we are out of Iraq. Given all that, the assumption that if we simply leave Iraq it will make Afghanistan a walk-over is horribly flawed. The same war will continue against the same people in a different location. And, the assumption that if we get out of Afghanistan and Iraq the Muslims will simply forget all that happened is even more danerous. We haven’t been attacked domestically since 2001. Is that because of chance luck or is it because we took the war to their soil instead? Rather than focusing on New York City and Washington DC, they are forced to focus on their homelands. I have no problem with leaving Iraq, but I do have a very serious problem with a candidate telling the world we’re leaving regardless of whether the original intent of going was accomplished or not. The Iraqis simply returning to pre-2002 normality is not the goal we need to be pursuing. We need Iraq to truly secure their borders and refuse to allow terrorists within their borders to pose a threat to the rest of the civilized world.
Then, we do the same in Afgghanistan.
Then, we do the same in Somalia.
Then, we do the same possibly in Iran.
Then, Kenya……..
This thing is far from over regardless of what Obama says. He may think otherwise, but he’s wrong.
Now, some things have happened that Bush is not getting any credit for, but are substantial in preventing several of the steps above from being necessary. Primarily, several countries that were known terrorist states such as Libya have seen the economic light and are actively rooting out terrorist cells within their own borders. If all the other smaller countries that deal with terrorist cells such as Venezuela see the light that is the fact that terrorists almost always bite the hand that feeds them, then maybe we’ll see world peace a lot sooner.