Republicans Have Lost the War on Terror; Democrats Will Win It

Republicans Have Lost the War on Terror; Democrats Will Win It:
Listen up, lily-livered Dems. Here are the details of how to counterattack and get out of the Republican box of, “You are for the war, or you are for defeat.” None of it is complicated:

1. The Republicans have weakened the United States and made us all less safe.
2. The Republicans have done this by starting a war in Iraq.

3. We are not in “a war on terror.” We are in a war on the murderers of 9/11.

4. The murderers of 9/11 were al Qaeda and its radical Islamic sympathizers.

5. Afghanistan was a good war because that is where the murderers of 9/11 were.

6. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had no links to al Qaeda. Iraq was a nasty bad, evil regime — like many others around the globe. But attacking Iraq did not get us closer to killing or stopping al Qaeda.

7. So Iraq was an optional war. But even worse, the war in Iraq detracted our resources from the real battle — against the killers of 9/11.

8. In fact, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the consequent — and entirely predictable — dissolve into civil war and lawlessness has created in Iraq a recruiting hotbed for al Qaeda. In other words, our war in Iraq created an Iraq-based threat to America that never existed before.

9. The sectarian and ethnic division in Iraq, coupled with the warlike culture on all sides, assures that with the lid of dictatorship pulled away, there will be a long, bloody civil war. We can’t win a civil war in a strange country where not side wants us. Staying in means we lose. We can only win by pulling out.

10. In the Cold War, we defeated a much more dangerous enemy than al Qaeda. The Soviet Union was a thousand times stronger than al Qaeda is.

11. How did we win the Cold War, and how can we defeat al Qaeda? Containment. Tough, hard, patient work that takes generations. Surround the enemy, more or less, and let them see your system — for economic and democratic progress — work, so that the enemy can generate real change, that is, change from within.

12. Containment takes real tough people, strong enough to take a long view and not need to prance around the deck of an aircraft carrier. People like Eisenhower. Not impatient, unconfident bullies like W.

So no, Democrats, you are not “against the war on terror” if you vote to get out of Iraq eventually. In fact, that is a vote to start — five years too late to be sure, but better late than never — a real war on the murderers of 9/11.

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I think this misses the point of what the republicans try to do. losing the war on terror or at least entering into a state of perpetual war production is ideal for the republicans. war production economies keep the people working on the war machine, removes the radical elements from your own society, removes democratic practices in favor of heirarchical control economies and in the end produces more war. This is the fundamental structure of what Ike called the Iron Triangle. It isn’t meant to produce peace. It is meant to produce profits for certain people.