Having democratic elections does not promote terrorism. That is a rediculous notion. Equally rediculous is the assertions that the only way to combat terrorism is by having a big fight. Quite the contrary - this is the one method that is almost certainly guaranteed to fail. What terrorist cause has been beaten by war? ever?
Pompey's assertion of Roman supremacy destroyed Post-Carthaginian Mediterannean piracy in the 1st century BC.
Scipio Africanus totalled Carthage in return for the unconventional tactics of Hannibal.
The Thuggees were beaten by your own British troops in India, to everyone's relief...
Terrorism, by its own definition, crosses the lines that exist to preserve civilization as a whole - and it tends to erode the support of its own people because it respects nobody's rights, not even the people's on whose "behalf" it is being undertaken. How many Iraqis are being murdered and bullied by their Arabic cousins?
Yes, Spain is allowed to withdraw its troops. I'm not arguing that. I will argue that such withdrawal is counterproductive to the current effort and situation. If the Iraqi people, so recently liberated, see that the West can be driven away so easily - will they not lose heart? Will they not lose faith in democracy?
Isn't the democracy in Iraq our best hope for a stable, peaceful relationship with the Islamic world? If the extremists are allowed to isolate the moderates in Islam, if the forces of democracy are easily beaten off by cowardly acts and despicable thuggery (a word you should know, my respected English friend) then what hope do they have of preserving themselves? If we abandon them like Chamberlain abandoned the Sudentland, to the tender mercies of Bin Laden and his crew - then we have not only failed, we have doomed ourselves. There is no retreat at this point. We either win or lose. All the cards are on the table. We either advance democracy into a globally accepted form of government, or we look forward to the long slow decline into annihilation.
You do ask the correct question. Why do they hate us so that they will kill themselves to hurt us a little? My belief is that they are desperate beyond human reasoning. They have no outlet for their political frustrations. In their homelands, they are not permitted to rally, dissent, vote out their chieftains. If they could, perhaps they would not seek outlets in violence and bombings. In Iraq, coincidentally, the marchers are now permitted to rally for the first time in 30 years. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, one of the most repressive and politically backwards regimes in the world.
I say we cannot abandon them, the Arab peoples who look nervously towards our reaction, now. Kerry would abandon these people who have put everything on the line to get a stake in democracy in the Middle East, in the name of "political pragmatism", surely one of the most despicable phrases in the English language. In the long run, Kerry's half-assed "political war" would get MORE British and US troops killed. The UN, while a useful communication organ, is too political to administer the nation of Iraq at this point. Hell, it even has its own child abuse scandal in the refugee children areas. It's a bureaucracy of bureaucracies - it exists to preserve itself. If you can fix the UN, then maybe I will trust it more to do the right thing. But Kerry already thinks the UN is the answer, he already puts his faith in it, he already believes it capable of things that bluntly it has never proven itself able to do. His Spanish counterpart is insisting that the UN get political control of Iraq - simply to be able to shuffle the responsibility of maintaining order onto somebody else, probably the poor Belgians, the same ones who dropped their blue berets on the tarmac in disgust following the UN's noted failure in Rwanda. Do we really want to give the UN the same "control" that views a soldier's sacrifice with political horror? That actually insists that its troops NOT EVER FIRE THEIR WEAPONS to defend the helpless?
On a current thread, God was denounced for not acting to stop child abuse. Well, what do we think of an organization that had soldiers standing idly by while butchery on a massive scale never before seen, not even matched in intensity and fury by the worst of Nazi depravity, and DID NOTHING? Would you put your faith in such an organization if it continues to insist that it will bring peace, as long as nobody actually resists? The UN is virtually useless as a political entity, while being unmatched as a forum, but as far as being able to even enforce its own resolutions? No, it cannot. Why SHOULD God act to save us when we put our faith in something that refuses to value the innocent - and only values a soldier's life because it is a political capital back home? That abandons troops behind enemy lines and wishes they would just "go away" after flying over and seeing mass graves? That would make peace with ethnic cleansers? That hath no moral, save, Live to Run Away Another Day?
Bush, while certainly a rich Texan, has no illusions about the fact that America is alone, and always has been. We are composed of Europe's rejects, Africa's abused, and a blend of oppressed Natives. We are the gutter of Europe, fit only to be abandoned in our hour of need. Our language is a bastardized blend of German, French, Spanish and English. Our ideals are the ones that got us kicked out of Europe four centuries ago - and no wonder the elite of Europe still regards us with disdain.
BTW: Do they spell "ridiculous" differently over there? Is it a "colour grey" vs. "color gray" thing? Because another British fellow I talk to does it too...
CZAR
