Marching on Damascus?
Some callers to the talk show I hosted Friday on WBAL wanted to expand the United States military's role in the Middle East -- to seek and destroy Islamic terrorists in all their dens and caves in Iraq and beyond. They defended our continued role in Iraq, said it would lead to freedom and to contagious democracy there and, more, that it was necessary to fight the war on terrorism -- and had been effective that way.
Since 2001, the US Treasury has given up billions in taxpayer dollars, much of it to fight the war in Iraq in the name of fighting terrorism. The foiled plot in Great Britain, the arrests of these suspected terrorists -- none of them, as far as we know, Iraqis and all of them British Muslims
with ties to Pakistan -- points up an essential problem with the U.S. commitment in manpower, money and blood to the war in Iraq -- it is not about terrorism. If the war in Iraq is about fighting terrorism, about making American citizens safer from the ugly and violent forces that brought down the WTC on 9/11 and almost brought about another attack this month, many of us just don't see it anymore, haven't seen it for years. Some never were convinced. This explains why American citizens' support for the war is now half what it was when the war got underway -- 36 percent, according to the latest CNN Poll, compared to 72 percent in 2003. We don't see the payoff.
But, look, if you want to believe that the war in Iraq has been and continues to be an effective combat against international terrorism, fine.
I say this to those who want to march on Damascus: If you want to fight an all-out war against Islamic terrorism in every country in the Middle East and Central Asia -- then support a military draft, for men and women, and let's get on with it. Right now, American society wants it both ways: The freedom to carry cologne and Ipods on a jetliner and have our for-hire, all-volunteer, underpaid military serve double and triple hitches in the deserts while the sons and daughters of the vast majority of middle-class and affluent Amnericans don't even come close to sacrifice.
Comments
What bugs me Dan is the number of people I hear preaching from ivory towers along your lines, but who claim we also put Saddam into power. If we put the man into power, he became (or maybe was) evil and did evil things, then why wasn't it our responsibility to subsequently take him out of power?
We're building schools, hospitals, roads, and providing new industries that supply jobs to Iraqi citizens. I think that's how you stem the tide of terrorism and to pretend that an Saddam-led-Iraq wouldn't have posed a threat to the US is pretty fool-hardy. Saddam never blinked at our air strikes, why would he suddenly love us tomorrow? The best way to stem terrorism is to nip it at the roots of society--education, gainful employment and providing a real reason for living. That's what we're doing in Iraq.
You articulate these very same things at home in Baltimore saying we stem the tide of violence by helping rehabilitate (gainfully of course) drug dealers, etc. Yet when we do this internationally in say Iraq, you're convinced it doesn't have any effect? Please explain this one to me.
Posted by: Bryan | August 13, 2006 10:42 PM
To hell with Damacus. Go to the source ...Tehran. Until you take out the cabal that is orchestrating and funding world wide terror nothing will change for the better. This Chamberlain approach towards these slimeballs is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Posted by: Larry | August 14, 2006 10:48 AM
The War on Terror hasn't been about terrorism since we focused our efforts outside of Afghanistan, and maybe even before that. Osama bin Laden, anyone?
A larger flaw in the WOT is this idea that by planting a flag in Iraq all terrorists will move to fight us there. Since when is taking on a country's full fledged military a terrorist tactic? Terrorists will continue to attempt to attack us at home - in civilian locales - and any attempt to sell the Iraq-insurgency-civil-war as a WOT is incredibly disingenous if not outright deception.
Posted by: Mobtown Matt | August 15, 2006 3:55 PM