October Thread #2: Decision 2004

[yaronsh]

OK, some of you folks have managed to suck me into this. (JFTR, I did try to nudge this thread towards photography - see my post of a few days ago.)

Q: Which US President first used the term, "War on terrorism"?
A: Clinton, in 1996. Richard Clarke was put in charge of coordinating this effort. The battle truly heated up after the African embassy bombings and the consequent US bombings of Al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan. Both Clinton and Bin Laden predicted escalation beyond that point.

Incidentally, you may remember Clinton's bombings of alleged Iraqi WMD program sites in the late 90's, after Saddam Hussein defied inspectors. And our involvement in the Balkans was partly motivated by an Al Qaeda plan to try to set up an Islamist state in Bosnia.

By 2000, the Clinton administration had a set of plans for dealing with world terrorism. However, Clinton did not want to hand the next president a war, so he decided to hand the next president the plans. Well, Bush got the plans, and even kept Richard Clarke - and proceeded to systematically ignore the plans, Clarke's continuous warnings, and increasingly urgent intelligence reports. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

That is, until Sept. 12, 2001. Suddenly, Team Bush took to implementing the Clinton plans, haphazardly and with a vengeance. They jumped headfirst into Afghanistan, without knowing what they're getting into. The result: Al Qaeda is still alive and active, albeit dispersed; Bin Laden is still at large; and Afghanistan is in a state of chaos and warlordism, elections or no elections. On the home front, Clarke's idea of a White House office of homeland security was bastardized into a beaurocratic Depart of Homeland Security. New futile security measures were instituted at our ports to augment the old futile security measures. The Patriot Act was pushed hastily through Congress, then used to trample wildly on everyone's civil rights, from library users to legal immigrants. States and municipalities were mandated to pony up security resources, but did not receive corresponding funding, adding to the pressures of the No Money Left Behind Act and the various funding cuts resulting from the tax cuts.

And then there's Iraq.
When Bush put those ultimatums to Saddam Hussein, they were a self-fulfilling prophecy: We all knew Saddam Hussein would challenge them, and we all knew we'd have to go in when that happens. In fact, we all knew it was a done deal ever since Team Bush first began mumbling about Iraq. So don't talk to me about WMDs or UN inspections. Those were excuses. Now Team Bush has changed its excuse to the harboring of terrorists and a 9-11 connection, both of which are known to be bull (but yet some people choose to believe it).

Personally, I did not think Saddam Hussein had WMD's, but believed he was planning to produce them (even that's questionable now). And I am not naive, I knew we'd have to go in eventually - the sanctions, inspections, and no-fly zones were merely stop-gap measures (that's another topic). But there was no imminent threat by a long shot, and it was just about the worst time to get into an expensive war. We needed the money and resources here at home. Despite official numbers showing only a brief, shallow recession, Average Joe's personal economic portfolio was in a state of deep crisis. And we needed to keep our military focused on the prize.

On top of this, once again, Team Bush went in without knowing what they're getting into. The results are similar to Afghanistan, but worse: Chaos, warlordism, and mounting US casualties. And - talk about pork - the amount of pork in the Iraq budget is greater than the GNP of many countries.

And then there's the world opinion factor. Not that a country should make security policy based on world opinion, but when world opinion of us has turned 180 degrees over the course of two years, something is deeply wrong with our foreign policy. Getting from the level of support we had after 9-11 to the level of despise we face now takes skill.

- Yaron