Dangerous Thinking

I keep coming back to the central pillar of Mr. Bush's speech Tuesday night. I think we can all agree that the reasons we got into the Iraq war have been shifting like the very desert sands it has been fought upon since day one. The President initially told Congress in his formal letter as required by their resolution that Iraq posed a significant threat to the US through the use of of huge stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction, with a little "aiding and abetting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11" thrown in for good measure. By the time it became obvious that there were no such weapons or links to 9/11, we were already waist deep in the conflict, so talk of justification was dropped in favor of redefining the "mission". Since the mission of removing Saddam from power was accomplished in about 6 days, we needed another mission definition. It became, in a nutshell, spreading the light of democracy and freedom and liberty to the oppressed Iraqi people. Well, since the elections there have already happened and things have gotten substatially worse, the mission must be redefined yet again. Now it is to "deal with terrorism and extremism abroad, so we don't have to face it at home."

Forgetting for the moment that, according to the CIA's recent report, our invasion of Iraq has itself created more terrorism and extremism in the region than there ever was before, I have elected to examine this new "mission" more closely. When asked to define the make up of the terrorist insurgency we face in Iraq, Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld identified 3 groups:

Former elements of Saddam's regieme ("the Ba'athist Dead-enders")
Criminal elements ("Remember, Saddam emptied the prisions right before we rolled into town....")
Foreign Fighters (Jihadists)

If we are to take this as accurate, then I highly doubt that the terrorists and extremists we must deal with before they come to us are members of the first 2 groups. It seems to me that Saddam's former pals' main goal must be to regain power, something that will certainly not be achieved by coming to the US and blowing themselves up in a food court. And the criminal element we are to believe is fighting merely because they are a criminal element. If that is true, then it is surely much easier to pull off whatever turns them on within the chaos of Iraq itself.

That leaves the Jihadists. So let's restate the mission using what we have learned:

"We are in Iraq because if we don't fight the jihadists there, we will have to fight them here."

The intelligencia among you will surely spy numerous problems with the mission when it is stated this way. It requires that we believe the jihadists would much rather pour into Iraq and fight our well equipped military rather than strike our relatively unprotected citizens spread all across the globe. While this in itself is certainly a stretch, it also flies in the face of the President's own reasoning. From his speech:

"The terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania."

If we follow this line of logic then to these terrorists, killing the citizens of Iraq is just the same as killing Americans. If this is true, then just how is it that these men, women, and children came to be seen on par in the jihadists' eyes with Americans? Or is the jihad now to "just kill anyone you can find?"

Clearly the shifting reasons/circular logic ploy creates significant problems for itself when questions are asked.

Furthermore, if our mission is now to fight jihadists overseas before they come to our shores, what about all those clever jihadists that aren't pouring into Iraq? 15 of the 19 hijackers that allegedly perpetrated 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. What about all the jihadists there? Or in Syria? Or Egypt? Or Iran? Or is our mission merely to defeat the ones who obligingly traveled to Iraq to get blown up by a US tank?

My point is that by outlining our mission in such mind-bogglingly vague language we have allowed the President to set for us an impossible goal. It is absolutely inconceivable that our armed forces could possibly defeat all of the "terrorists" abroad. Not only are they spread throughout dozens of countries, but each one we kill creates a recruiting opportunity for bringing in many more. The War on Terror, much like the War on Drugs, is not a war that any sane person would think could be won with any finality. It is merely a pretense to funnel monies and power to certain areas without requiring further justification.

I also submit to you that by intentionally setting up an impossible goal for our military forces, President Bush has deliberately undermined (through the inevitable demoralization of soldiers fighting a war they cannot win, a war without end) our war on terror. O'Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh all agree that anyone who undermines our war on terror should be labeled a traitor and treated as such.

Well......?