Response to and Editorial in The News Harold, Panama City, Florida
RE: Up Against Fanaticism By Phil Lucas, Executive Editor, Panama City New HeraldWhat a shame it is, then, that instead of attacking the fanatics who attacked us, in Saudi Arabia, or instead of putting a lot more force in Afghanistan (several US Commanders in Afghanistan, including Tommy Franks, were really pissed when he got orders to send men and equipment to Iraq that we needed to find Bin Laden), Bush and his Cabal kept insisting that we attack a relatively secular regime which the US had installed because he was best of bad choices. We kept saying he had weapons, which he did not, and had ties to Al Qaeda, which he actually hated. Iraq was not a threat. And yet, here we are, bogged down, fighting a bunch of fanatics who had nothing to do with the attack on us. Meanwhile, Bin Laden keeps making tapes encouraging all his stateless buddies to attack us.
My question is, are we going to go around attacking all the bad guys, or not? Are these wars of liberation going to liberate the North Koreans? The Iranians? The Saudi Arabians terrorized by the Wassabi sect that the Saudi Royal Family (and Bush's lifelong oil buddies) has been funding for years? When will we step into African countries where the WMDs are hundreds of thousands of machetes?
And what of the messOpotamia we've made? Iraq is arguably more of a terrorist state now than it was under Saddam. And the argument that it's better to fight them there with our forces than here with the FBI? What the hell makes you think they're going to stay there now? This ain't the middle ages. Globalization allows Bin Laden's buddies to ship old Russian nukes from Uzbekistan to the US in shipping containers that we don't even scan.... Just think what 12 terrorist with assault rifles and a few 18 wheelers of ANFO can do. Every day a huge train full of chlorine gas goes right through the heart of Washington DC, and the company that runs it, which used to be run by Treasury secretary John Snow, has not been forced to go around town, because they say that would cost too much.
Meanwhile, we cut funds for first responders and sent $50 billion to Iraq. Then we sent another $87 billion to Iraq, while running up the biggest deficits in history. Now our kids will have to pay for this misdirected, bogged down, un-planned for occupation and rebuilding, while our Social Security goes broke, bridges are collapsing, school ceilings are falling in on kids' heads, and Halliburton is spending most of the money earmarked for rebuilding on security. Paid mercenaries making plenty of taxpayer money protecting convoys of over-priced fuel for troops with big targets on their backs.
Crusade? Indeed. And anyone who thinks killing more of them will scare them into stopping is dead wrong. Most of the insurgent recruits are Iraqis who were happy we "liberated" them. Now they're just mad that the great power that toppled Saddam in two weeks can't get the water and electricity working in one year.
If we want to win the hearts and minds of Arab moderates, I suggest we stop killing their children first.
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