Wednesday, December 02, 2009

On Ending War in the Middle East

I started this blog a little over 3 years ago with an aim to add my voice to the growing throng who wanted to stop Bush’s illegal and immoral war in Iraq. My premise was, and has always been, that the very presence of American military in Middle East countries was reason enough for the Islamic world to take up arms against America.

Indeed, the presence of American troops in Osama Bil Laden’s own country’s capitol city, Riyadh, during the first Gulf War, was enough to set him off on a path that ultimately led to the 9/11 massacres.

We are Infidels.

To the Muslim world, we, through our troops, represent the very ideals that led the Crusaders to conquer Jerusalem and “the Holy Land.”

And the best way to recruit more devout Muslims to the cause of Islamic extremism is to continue a military presence in the Middle East. In their countries.

But here we are, still engaged in Iraq. Thankfully that seems to be winding down and I look forward to the day that the country can be turned completely back to Iraqi control so that they can devolve once again into a dictatorship.

That seems to be their comfort zone, so give it to them.

Now I think that even back then I advocated that the Afghan War was “the good war” because it was the one where we were fighting and defeating the very people who attacked us.

But that’s not the case now, is it? The enemy, al-Qaeda, is in Pakistan. And the war in Afghanistan has shifted, just as it did in Iraq. In Iraq’s case the cause for war shifted from a search for WMDs that they surely had poised to harm us, to a decapitation of their foul, foul government. In Afghanistan it shifted from a search and destroy mission to eliminate al-Qaeda as a viable adversary to a decapitation of their foul, foul government, to defending the foul, foul government that we propped up in its place.

In short, the mission in Afghanistan is now not only wrong, but more wrong than the mission in Iraq was.

These are not worldly people in whose country we are fighting. All they see is an American presence in this decade replacing the Soviet presence in the decade of the 1980’s. We explain to them that we are only there to help them. Know what the Soviets were telling the Afghans 30 years ago? Exactly the same thing.

What the Mujahadeen did to defeat the Soviet army back then is legendary in Afghanistan. Who helped them to do it is a mystery to them.

Maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan is not in our national interest. It serves no useful purpose other than to prop up a lot of greedy corrupt government officials and their families as well as the family business: the opium trade.

It makes what we did in Vietnam to prop up that corrupt government, and their opium trade, pale in comparison.

I support the troops. I want them to come home as quickly as humanly possible without the loss of one more American life.

I deplore the fact that the Obama Administration has bought into the Pentagon’s plan for peace in the Middle East.

Obama had a plan. It involved engaging with our adversaries constructively. We voted for that plan. It’s time to execute that plan.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obama is a coward.

Hal said...

Oh yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

A guy stands for election, a black guy. For an election before an American electorate that is, in the millions, racially biased, morally corrupt, and armed to the teeth.

This, the elected United States President who has experienced the most death threats of any before him.

And "Obama is a coward . . ."

You, Anon, are an utter and complete twit.

How have you been able to live with that?

Deniably, I would guess.

Anonymous said...

I think O'Bama always claimed the wrong war was in Iraq, not Afghanistan. This looks consistent.