An Emboldened Enemy
Posted on
Thursday, February 22, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Over the last month since the President revealed his "new strategy" for Iraq, proponents of this surge/escalation/last-ditch desperate attempt have hammered the media with endless soundbites repeating the same criticism of opponents. Like some deranged mantra of unintended earnest idiocy, this oft-repeated meme has been gobbled up by the increasingly propagandized media and regurgitated whole onto the American public. Congressional proponents and punditry puppets have all fired this staccato three-word mantra like buckshot in attempts to discredit opponents, to make opponents of the plan seem like sympathizers with the enemy and in such fashion, remove all criticism by painting all criticism as somehow unpatriotic. Those words, sprinkled in the Kool-Aid flavored speeches of Congresspersons and the hate-filled tirades of neocon sympathizers like William Kristol and Bill O'Reilly, are that public criticism of the plan and the President will "embolden the enemy."
To respond with my trademarked profanity, that is horseshit spewed from the festering gobs of a pack of raging douchebags.
Let's put aside for the moment the logic that this surge will actually target THE TERRORISTS!!1! such as Al-Qaida who are supposed to be our main enemies in the War on Terror™. Let's just swallow for the moment the lie that adding 20,000 troops to Iraq will target THE TERRORISTS!!1! It won't, and anyone who has bothered to read anything other than neocon propaganda for more than five minutes will see through this lie.
How much more bold do you think these people can get? The Al-Qaida terrorists, while craven, brutal and bloodthirsty, are nothing if not bold. 19 of these people entered a hostile country illegally, despite some of them being listed on watch lists as known terrorists. They lived among a people whose lifestyle they believe is morally reprehensible, in a culture they see as the greatest evil on the face of the planet. They got jobs and they trained to fly aircraft. They took ordinary box cutters through airport security, got on four separate planes and commandeered those planes with said box cutters, then flew those planes into buildings, knowingly killing themselves. What would they have to do to be considered more bold? Would they need to mail an itinerary of their suicide bombing runs to the CIA and FBI, strap on a bomb vest and walk down the street in broad daylight wearing nothing but their vest before walking into Capitol Hill and addressing their final goodbyes to the C-Span cameras in Congress?
They do not fear death, not their own hand, and not by our military. In point of fact, they want such a death. They want a war with the United States. They want a war between Western culture and Islam, because they want our military and our corporations and our meddling diplomats out of their Holy Lands. They want Israel out of Palestine. They want Shi'a and Sunnis to kill each other, because they want their brand of brutal, stringent Wahabbi/Sunni Islam to be the dominant, final Islamic dogma. They want the US to stir up enough trouble in the Middle East that heretical Shi'a and secular governments are toppled to be replaced by stricter Sunni governments. Osama bin Laden likely cheered when the US attacked Iraq, because the it removed a secular power he considered a heretic, and replaced it with chaos, a chaos that now pits Shi'a against Sunni.
This enemy can't get any bolder. Our military does not frighten them because they want a warrior's death in battle on an individual basis, and they want a political victory that sees the Muslim world sympathetic to their cause and hostile to the American cause. This enemy could not hope to achieve the chaos and destruction without the aid of a mighty military power, and the US has given them that chaos and destruction. They lead the US around by the nose, constantly stinging the giant just enough to get him fighting mad before melting away. They are the matador dismantling the bull, and the bull is too maddened with blood lust and dreams of historic grandeur to realize it's being led to its slaughter.
As for opposition to the surge emboldening these terrorists, that's also a horseshit statement because the surge wouldn't target Al-Qaida anyway. All reports indicate AQ doesn't even contribute to 5% of the death and devastation in Iraq. No, the surge would be used to kill Sunni insurgents at the urging of the Shiite majority in control of the Iraqi Parliament, and the latest propaganda scapegoat, al-Sadr's Mahdi army, a Shiite militia that is fiercely anti-American. In the process, Sadr will be portrayed as an Iranian-backed terrorist despite the fact that he likely receives little if any support from Iranian sources. No, the militias who would receive Iranian support, like the Badr Brigade, are all the militant arms of the majority Shiite political groups in Parliament, including that of Nouri Al-Maliki.
You see, we aren't fighting the War on Terror in Iraq. We are caught in the middle of a number of civil wars, and sooner or later we'll have to pick sides in that war if we stay. It appears the side we will pick is Al-Maliki's, which is doubly ironic considering his ties and sympathies with Iran, a nation we are currently rattling sabres at left and right. Rather than emboldening terrorists who contribute little to the Iraq mess, we'll be emboldening Iran. But that kind of logic is probably emboldening the terrorists too. After all, they are surely plotting in their caves around a broadband Internet connection to my blog, with C-Span and CNN in the background while they put together Lite-Brites in the shape of a fictional character flipping the bird.
To respond with my trademarked profanity, that is horseshit spewed from the festering gobs of a pack of raging douchebags.
Let's put aside for the moment the logic that this surge will actually target THE TERRORISTS!!1! such as Al-Qaida who are supposed to be our main enemies in the War on Terror™. Let's just swallow for the moment the lie that adding 20,000 troops to Iraq will target THE TERRORISTS!!1! It won't, and anyone who has bothered to read anything other than neocon propaganda for more than five minutes will see through this lie.
How much more bold do you think these people can get? The Al-Qaida terrorists, while craven, brutal and bloodthirsty, are nothing if not bold. 19 of these people entered a hostile country illegally, despite some of them being listed on watch lists as known terrorists. They lived among a people whose lifestyle they believe is morally reprehensible, in a culture they see as the greatest evil on the face of the planet. They got jobs and they trained to fly aircraft. They took ordinary box cutters through airport security, got on four separate planes and commandeered those planes with said box cutters, then flew those planes into buildings, knowingly killing themselves. What would they have to do to be considered more bold? Would they need to mail an itinerary of their suicide bombing runs to the CIA and FBI, strap on a bomb vest and walk down the street in broad daylight wearing nothing but their vest before walking into Capitol Hill and addressing their final goodbyes to the C-Span cameras in Congress?
They do not fear death, not their own hand, and not by our military. In point of fact, they want such a death. They want a war with the United States. They want a war between Western culture and Islam, because they want our military and our corporations and our meddling diplomats out of their Holy Lands. They want Israel out of Palestine. They want Shi'a and Sunnis to kill each other, because they want their brand of brutal, stringent Wahabbi/Sunni Islam to be the dominant, final Islamic dogma. They want the US to stir up enough trouble in the Middle East that heretical Shi'a and secular governments are toppled to be replaced by stricter Sunni governments. Osama bin Laden likely cheered when the US attacked Iraq, because the it removed a secular power he considered a heretic, and replaced it with chaos, a chaos that now pits Shi'a against Sunni.
This enemy can't get any bolder. Our military does not frighten them because they want a warrior's death in battle on an individual basis, and they want a political victory that sees the Muslim world sympathetic to their cause and hostile to the American cause. This enemy could not hope to achieve the chaos and destruction without the aid of a mighty military power, and the US has given them that chaos and destruction. They lead the US around by the nose, constantly stinging the giant just enough to get him fighting mad before melting away. They are the matador dismantling the bull, and the bull is too maddened with blood lust and dreams of historic grandeur to realize it's being led to its slaughter.
As for opposition to the surge emboldening these terrorists, that's also a horseshit statement because the surge wouldn't target Al-Qaida anyway. All reports indicate AQ doesn't even contribute to 5% of the death and devastation in Iraq. No, the surge would be used to kill Sunni insurgents at the urging of the Shiite majority in control of the Iraqi Parliament, and the latest propaganda scapegoat, al-Sadr's Mahdi army, a Shiite militia that is fiercely anti-American. In the process, Sadr will be portrayed as an Iranian-backed terrorist despite the fact that he likely receives little if any support from Iranian sources. No, the militias who would receive Iranian support, like the Badr Brigade, are all the militant arms of the majority Shiite political groups in Parliament, including that of Nouri Al-Maliki.
You see, we aren't fighting the War on Terror in Iraq. We are caught in the middle of a number of civil wars, and sooner or later we'll have to pick sides in that war if we stay. It appears the side we will pick is Al-Maliki's, which is doubly ironic considering his ties and sympathies with Iran, a nation we are currently rattling sabres at left and right. Rather than emboldening terrorists who contribute little to the Iraq mess, we'll be emboldening Iran. But that kind of logic is probably emboldening the terrorists too. After all, they are surely plotting in their caves around a broadband Internet connection to my blog, with C-Span and CNN in the background while they put together Lite-Brites in the shape of a fictional character flipping the bird.
Labels: Bush Administration, Politics
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 11:07 AM
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