9/11 Post

All blogs need a 9/11 post.

Here is pretty much the summary of where I sit on post 9/11 politics.

In 2003, I disagreed with President George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. I did not protest, because, quite frankly, the Constitution puts such powers in the hands of the president and Congress. My big hope in 2003 was that Congress would authorize Bush to use force, and that Bush would have used that threat to stop Saddam Hussein from arming terrorists in Lebanon, and funding Palestinian suicide bombers. Above all, I had hope that Bush would have pushed for reform of the UN (especially in light of the corruption of the oil for food program).

Saddam, of course, was premiere thug of the third world. He had committed genocide. He had used WMDs on his own people. His game in the WMD inspections was to give the first world enough data to prove he didn’t have WMDs, but he also worked to maintain the illusion that he was flagrantly skirting the UN resolution. As I understand post war inspectors found caches of old WMDs and they found a great deal of capacity to produce WMDs, but they did not find the WMDs. Regardless, Hussein had set out to make his compliance appear grey.

Bush invaded Iraq on a medium grey, when I wish it was a dark grey.

I will give Bush this credit. Pick up a map of the Middle East. If there was a democracy in Iraq (It doesn’t even have to be all that pro West). If there was a stable democracy in Iraq, the battle for the heart of the Mid East would pretty much be won.

The big problem I saw was that setting up such a democracy takes several years. It would probably take a decade or more.

We made a commitment to Iraqi people when we invaded. Our commitment was that we would leave the nation with a properly elected government and stable security infrastructure. Abandoning the country before their army and security forces are trained in a failure.

The second big problem is that the American Left. The American Left loves dictatorships like Iran. Invading Iraq without clear provocation means that the far left has the opportunity to rip this nation apart ... which they are doing and they are doing quite well. We in the western world fail to understand the extent to which Leftists in America and Europe both influence and support the dictatorships of the world. I had professors who praised Ayatollah Khomeini during the embassy hostage crisis. Many of the Mideast Studies programs in American Universities are very anti-West and anti-democracy.

The left is extremely adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The left has done everything possible to encourage the sectarian violence in Iraq. It is possible that they will create a situation where the US won all the battles, but lost the war. They’ve won this type of game in the past.

Bush thoroughly and totally underestimated the difficulties of the propaganda war. The Democratic Party has taken a massive jump to the left. America’s youth are radicalized, the immigration community is radicalized. At a time that the US could use a opposition party, the party has flipped out.

There is still hope. I was listening to a panel of Democratic pundits. Their assessment was that if the Democratic party fails to win big in 2006; It would be time to go back to the drawing boards and rethink strategy.

I would support an opposition party. This monstrosity run by Howard Dean and John Kerry is a disaster in waiting.

Anyway, my worst post 9/11 moment was the Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad. Today is a the day that I am extremely proud of those Americans fighting for an independent Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if Bush was not justified in his actions, his decision to invade Iraq made a commitment. The best men are those that stand up to fulfill such commitments when the times are down and the future looks bleak.

BTW, isn’t it odd that I am sitting here thinking of a bleak, bleak future when the economy of the world is humming as never before? It is a time that our worst problem ist that the booming economy has pushed up the price of gas. Our second worst problem is that there are so many jobs in the American economy that people are streaming across the borders and we don’t have a way to stop them!

The economy is not bleak. The reason the future is bleak is because, despite our prosperity, Bush lost the propaganda war. When the winners of the propaganda war (Howard Dean, Hugo Chavez, John Kerry, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and ilk) get into power. It is then that things will turn bad.