Bush-whacked!

Submitted by john w mcginley (United States), Oct 3, 2007 at 13:23

It is clear to me that a strategy of preemption (involving both military action and active intrusive intelligence gathering) is the only strategy which will be successful against such a diffuse threat as global Islamo-facism. And it is true that the recent court decision may prove to be a disaster in the sense that if it is sustained it may lead to a "domino" effect involving subseqeunt and more "disarming" court decisions.

Still, the question has to be asked: what has happened between 9/12/01 and now which has transformed a citizenry with high resolve to "to what it takes" to a citizenry which, at best, is quietly cynical about these things and, at worst, masochistically enthused about dismantling all aspects of the preemption strategy. Yes, there are those who are re-living what they -- falsely but nonetheless with incredible grandiostiy -- perceive to have been their "victory" in bringing about a defeat for our country in Vietnam. But that faction could have been easlily marginalized by an Administration which would have been more honest and more astute.

They real culprits in this whole demoralized mess are President Bush and the architects of our decison to invade Iraq. By doing what they did in Iraq and, worse, HOW, they "did" (i.e., didn't in fact) what they did the Administration shamelessly frittered away the greatest asset we had in the war angainst Islamo-fascism: Herewith the bill of particulars:

a). President Bush and his closest cronies had a fetish about Saddam hussein resulting from what they perceived to be unfinished business from the Bush-H administration and also from Hussein's attempt to assasinate that former president when he visited Kuwait. This blinded them from making the right assessement about the Hussein regime in the war against islamo-fascism. In effect they made dismantling the Hussein regime the center-piece of our country's resolve and in the pprocess skewed our country's resolve in a direction which was tangential to what was truly important.

This fetish also led these culprits into pressuring the intelligence agencies to present exaggerated claims about "weapons of mass destruction." The culprits then jingoistically paraded such exaggerated claims (which they temselves had demanded of the intelligence agencies) making them the "causus belli" for invading Iraq.

b). "A" above is not worthy of an American Administration. But what was and is unforgiveable about their conduct is to have undertaken their mission with insufficient force. Liberating the Iraqi people can be morally supported in its own right even if it was not the best way to pursue the struggle against Islamist fascism. But to have SO INCREDIBLY LOW-BALLED THE AMOUNT OF TROOPS THAT WOULD BE NECESSARY to achieve the objective is obscene and, again, unforgiveable. A clear and unambiguous victory in Iraq -- even if the enterprise was undertaken with deception with regard to its true motivation -- would have sustained the American people in thier resolve. But what happened in fact just makes the "center" of the American citizenry embarrassed and cynical by the whole undertaking. The "ex posto-facto" Surge will have proven to have been too little too late. And the American people understand this. Our country has become dispirited.

More could be said. The bottom line is that a combination of self-deception and incredibly poor military strategy by the Bush Administration has virtually evaporated the resolve of the American people relative to the War on Islamo-fascism. I generally cringe when I think of a Democratic victory next year. I suspect things will be much worse than they are now when hillary becomes President. But there is one potential bright light. I speak of Candidae Obama. He appears to be a man of both principle and intelligence. If the right would stop jerking its knee for a moment and actually listen to the man it would find a man who has, for the most part intelligently, evolved in his grasp of the danger which our country is in. He has the potential to evolve further on these matters and I believe he will. Further, as a Democrat, he can unite our citizenry better than even the best of the Republican candidates. Enemies are not defeated by knee-jerkers.

John W. McGinley

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