A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Monday, June 07, 2004

Jesus Backflipping Christ

Now he tells us:

The United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday.

The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed ''zealots and despots'' bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them.

''It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,'' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference.

Have the neocons been living in a cave in a vacuum in another dimension?

The continuing, unbearable, dehumanizing living conditions of the Palestinians gave rise to suicide bombers and galvanized Muslim opinion against Israel and her sponsor. So we backed the party in Israel that has done the most to further humiliate and oppress them.

Then, all on our own, we launch an invasion of a country whose regime, whatever its faults, had actively worked against radical Islam, and which we already had by the throat. We took far too few steps to foster goodwill towards our policy here, abroad, or in Iraq. Besides the civilian casualties that inevitably accompany military action, because we didn't bother to properly research the situation on the ground, thousands more were killed and wounded. When we bungled, such as in our decisions not to protect the Iraqi national library or to disband the Iraqi army, we shrugged off our culpability for, and the seriousness of, the consequences and blamed the victims.

We knew the problem was Islamic extremism. 9/11 was a flaming bag of dogshit left on America's front door, as were the Cole bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the first WTC bombing in 1993.

Maybe some attempt on our part to signal that we were not the enemy of Islam might have been appropriate. There is no way to know at this point. Attacking known terrorists, as we failed to do properly in Afghanistan, is always good policy. But it's obvious that the absolute worst kind of response on our part was to inflame opinion among the Muslim rank-and-file, a result virtually guaranteed by our actions towards Israel and in Iraq.

That we have gained nothing but near-universal ill will in exchange for the thousands of casualties and billions of dollars spent in this endeavor is stupefying. That our leaders claim they didn't see any of this coming is unpardonable.

via Digby, who wields the flaming sword of righteousness.

posted by David at 6/07/2004 09:13:00 AM ::

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