Random thoughts on Iraq and terrorism.

Coming off the heels of George W. Bush’s narrow “victory” in 2000, my friends and I often discussed issues that were important to us, political and social.

We focused a lot on Bush’s plan for national defense during his first few months in office. Not once was Islamic terrorism ever mentioned as a threat. In fact, for the first time in years, al Qaeda was de-emphasized in the State Department’s annual threat assessment in April, 2001.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/04/30/terrorism.state.dept/

Over and over, we were told that ballistic missiles from North Korea were the gravest threat to the United States, and most of us knew better. As a traveling engineer early on in my career, I often lamented about the pathetic security measures I saw at the many airports I passed through. I even once or twice talked about the Debt of Honor scenario where hijackers could use aircraft as missiles.

Progressive or conservative, we all agreed that radical Islamic terrorism was our biggest security threat. We agreed that the military needed to be fundamentally transformed from an enormous force designed to stop columns of Soviet tanks to a high-specialized, technologically-advanced force designed to infiltrate terror networks and neutralize the threats.

Believe it or not, those discussions gave birth to the name of my new website...we sarcastically joked that the non-functioning “missile defense shield” should be code-named “Operation Sombrero” because it would act like a giant hat protecting the country from the sun.

Not long after that, we experienced September 11, 2001. I was working in Texas, about 20 miles outside Houston. I remember getting into the construction office on my jobsite just in time to see the first tower collapse and not being sure if it was live footage or not.

The next hour or so, I was in a daze because I knew we were at war. I decided that if we were under attack by suicidal terrorists, a gigantic power plant/chemical refinery was not the place to be. I got in my truck and went to Wal-Mart to purchase the following items:
- Four 2.5-gallon jugs of drinking water.
- Ten cans of tuna.
- Two loaves of bread.
- Two boxes of .45 caliber ammunition for my Glock 21.

I honestly entertained the idea of an all-out war (or worse, rioting) through the streets of America. I’m very thankful that it didn’t come to that.

I was angry. The basest of human emotions, raging vengeance, came over me. I wanted to kill every fucking raghead I laid eyes on. I didn’t need to wait for the news to tell me that bin Laden was a suspect, because anyone who was paying attention already knew.

This brings us to Bush’s “War on Terror.” It’s something you might call a “blivet” – something that looks great on paper, but is impossible to reproduce in real life. Terror is an abstract and shapeless concept, not a tangible enemy.

This wasn’t declaring war on Japan or Germany, which is straight-forward and well-defined. This was declaring war on a tactic, an ideology. The problem with that concept is that “terror” is an unconventional enemy. It has no uniform, it has no border, and your actions against it can cause it to multiply exponentially.

What separates thinkers from sheep is their ability to ask why, and their real desire to hear the answer. Why do people want to kill innocent civilians? Why do people want to kill themselves in the process? How did such sick and sadistic people get into positions of such power? Why do people follow them?

A lot of Americans don’t stop to ask why. They want everything in small morsels that are easy to swallow without chewing. Here is the enemy. Get really mad, then go kill the enemy.

Every morning on the way to work after 9/11 I passed a military recruiting office, and every morning I slowed down a little more. My mother knows me a lot better than I do, because without mentioning a word of this to her, each evening she automatically told me, “Don’t you dare sign up for this…don’t you dare enlist. I won’t lose you to this pointless shit.”

My mother is the only reason I didn’t enlist on 9/12. And on 9/13. And on 9/14. Going off to Afghanistan to kill the fuckers that did 9/11 seemed like what I needed to do, and she knew better. And she was right.

That buffer was what I needed to take a deep breath and start asking why. I did and still do believe that anyone who perpetrates mass murder against civilians needs to be brought to justice, and if it was up to me it would be brought by a supressed MP5 in the middle of the night.

But in the months following 9/11, I saw what Bush’s idea of “fighting terror” was. It was sending thousands of troops into an impoverished country and leveling it. Because of 19 guys with box cutters. Which brings us back to why “terror” is an abstract concept.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be Gandhi, but violence breeds violence. If a foreign invader kills your child (even if it is accidental and “collateral”), you are going to seek revenge. You are going to ask around and join up with whoever you can find fighting against this invader. Politics has nothing to do with it. Religion has nothing to do with it. Hating freedom has nothing to do with it.

A U.S. general in Iraq (sorry, can’t find a source) said, “for every innocent person we kill in Iraq, we create three new terrorists.”

That is a good segway to Iraq, because based on the information given to me by the Bush administration, I wholeheartedly supported the invasion.

http://www.operationsombrero.com/Articles/Blood/longwinded030328.htm

I’ve never made any attempt to disavow or delete that article. I wrote it and I have to live with it. But even then I was skeptical about how we planned to make Iraq rosy and cheerful when we where nowhere near doing it in Afghanistan.

We were told that Saddam had direct links to al-Qaeda and was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. This simply could not stand in my eyes. We had to take his ass out.

But I saw how we handled Afghanistan and watched Iraq unfold with a raised eyebrow. The months passed, and we began to learn that there was no WMD. There were no ties to al-Qaeda.

And even worse, I watched the handling of the war. We destroyed their power grid, their potable water supply and their sewage systems. We failed to secure the borders. We failed to secure conventional weapons caches. We failed to secure the museums filled with priceless artifacts. Our troops were tasked with guarding the oil rigs instead.

Even further on, we learned that not only was the entire war based on false information, the information was intentionally fabricated that way. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was raised to take lying very, very seriously. I do not tolerate it. There is no “another chance” when it comes to that…you lie to me, you’re done. For good.

You want to know if I think catching Osama bin Laden is important? Yes I do. You want to know why I didn’t sign up to do it? Because we are doing the exact same things today that created Osama bin Laden 25 years ago.

Somewhere in the rubble of Iraq, there is a 15 year old boy with a dead family who has resolved to dedicate the rest of his life to destroying the United States of America. There are thousands of them. In Iraq, we have created the greatest recruiting tool radical Islam could ever have imagined.

We can’t end terrorism by playing Whack-a-Mole for the next 50 years. It’s not a strategy, it’s a meat grinder.

You were right...

I was skeptical from the git go...being African American in the US will do that to you....

And the Nazi fervor that this administration used to go to war at any cost made me leary.....

You are right...this administration is creating more Osama's as every day passes...

Terrible cancers are destroying the children because of the depleted uranium waste..adults are getting 3-4 types of cancer per individual and their surviving children are watching their parents die...if they survive they will be bitter and regenful.....

We certainly don't want to play Whack-a-Mole for the next 50 years. Just look at how long another part of the same region has been playing the same game -- Much longer than that! And they live right on top of their enemy. If defeating terrorism were purely a matter of blasting the enemy back into the stone age, someone should have won by now.

Ideologies don't die that way. Look at Christianity. The Romans tried for centuries to extinguish nascent Christendom in the most ruthless ways. It only solidified Christians, until the Roman Empire eventually absorbed Christianity into itself and fell.

Lesson in there for the US.

It's a fool's errand, this WOT. There are effective ways to handle terrorism, and none of them include military action.

The best way would be to reduce the root causes of terrorism. (Which are usually based in socio-economic oppression resulting from bad rulers we support for our own selfish reasons, but also include unwarranted aggression. The US gov't knows all this). If you take away the legitimate gripes of the average person, radicals will find few recruits willing to follow them into jihad.

Truly defeating terrorism will require REAL, PROLONGED SACRIFICE on the part of the entire country in favor of respecting human rights abroad...something the Bush** regime (and the US gov't in general) is dead set against only because it will eat into their own wallets.

Believe me, if it benefited them but not us peons, they'd have done the right thing decades ago.