11/11/11

The date: 11/11/11— the 93rd anniversary of the end of the War To End All Wars. Today it’s Veterans Day, but we originally called it Armistice Day, to commemorate the end of that horrible war and honor the men who died in the trenches of Europe. It was in those days an international day of remembrance.

I missed out on the horrors of war by a few months as my four-year enlistment in the air force was over before Vietnam heated up. I consider myself lucky. I would have probably obeyed had I been ordered to Southeast Asia, but I would have come away from the war with the feeling that many lives were lost for no good reason. The same is true for both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns.

We cannot show greater disrespect for our men and women in uniform than to send them to die for no good cause. They are prepared to die for their country, but should only be asked to do so in its defense. As a people, we were too easily persuaded that both wars were just — at least initially. But in my mind the fight against terrorism was and remains a law-enforcement issue, and men who had no idea what war is redefined it. The last thing you want to do is tell returning vets that their sacrifices were in vain, that their friends died for nothing, but some of them are coming home with that realization on their own.

We have a special reverence for our fallen heroes, and we should never forget their sacrifices, even if we have a hard time sometimes admitting lives were wasted.

A solemn anniversary

What a terrible anniversary we’re commemorating today. And as we remember, we are reminded that questions still surround the attacks on the World Trade Center eight years ago.

Conspiracy theories still persist, but for the most part these theories have been dismissed. No one can seriously believe that anyone in our government was complicit in these attacks.

But we know that there were advanced warnings. We know that our intelligence agencies reported to the administration that an attack on American soil was possible, and we know that Osama bin Laden himself warned that a major attack would take place. He made this warning about three weeks before 9/11.

This leaves two possibilities: one, the Bush administration was not competent to prepare or defend against a terrorism attack — or, two, that they chose to dismiss or ignore the warnings. If the latter is true, one must ask why. Again, two possibilities: either they didn’t believe them, or they did believe them but didn’t think they would be as horrific as they turned out to be. If this is the case, why? Was it true that the administration, particularly Dick Cheney, wanted an excuse to ultimately invade Iraq? Considering the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the hysteria over Saddam Hussein’s alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks and the claims that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an immediate threat — both proven to be false, and possibly fabricated — one cannot rule out this possibility. An invasion of Iraq seems to have been on the administration’s agenda from the moment it took office.

The other possibilities are almost as bad. If the administration was indeed incompetent, as it seems to have been, perhaps on top of any other truth, then why was it ever reelected? Why wasn’t this incompetence probed? The same goes for the remaining possibility — that it did not believe the intelligence or bin Laden’s warning were credible. Given bin Laden’s history, why not?

The other major question surrounding this act of terrorism is the nature of our response. The destruction of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, an act of terrorism, was carried out by an American citizen. It was treated as a crime. There is a distinction between an act of war and an act of terrorism. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a crime, as were the attacks on the US Embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Regardless of the scope of the act, terrorism, unless state sponsored, cannot be considered an act of war in the traditional sense — and as we’ve seen, responding to them in that way has proven to be ineffective.

Waging war on or in nations in order to bring terrorists to justice has had the opposite of the intended effect. It has reinforced the terrorists’ mission, and it has created more terrorists. It has squandered thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly and cost billions upon billions of dollars. What’s happening now in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be irreversible, and it’s still too soon to be sure that Iraq is a settled, stable state.

It’s easy for people to become hysterical and ready to agree to anything in times of crisis, and it’s now ingrained in the American psychology that war is the proper response to an act of terrorism. But it’s not. Had President Bush announced that every law enforcement agency in the world would coverge on Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, he would probably have had Americans’ support for this approach. But instead he whipped up public sentiment for an invasion. Granted the governing Talibans would have been unwilling to cooperate, but the mere threat of a strong military response might have changed their minds. After all, despite their radicalism, they still had to govern — and who knows… we might have captured bin Laden by now.

Bush followed this error with another — persuading the American people that an invasion of Iraq was also necessary. And now the damage has been done. Should there ever be another major terrorist attach on US soil, Americans might think the only response is a military one, and any president who tried to approach it in a more logical way would be branded a coward, soft on terrorism.

Too little too late

In an effort to salvage his legacy, George Bush is finally engaged in the Middle East peace process. With any luck, he’ll have the two sides back to where they were when he took office by the time his term expires.

It will be more difficult for him to achieve anything meaningful, considering how he’s squandered American credibility in the last seven years. Already word from the Middle East is that both sides are thinking about who will next lead the United States come January 2009. They’ve learned the hard way — the US cannot be counted on to carry over foreign policy from one administration to the next.

Remember: when Bush took office, US Middle East policy changed course. The US ceased to be a broker of peace in the region. Bush essentially told Israeli PM Sharon to do what he wanted, which caused renewed inflammation between the two sides. The policy remained through the next presidential cycle, and has only now been revisited.

Which brings us to the reason. Bush isn’t running for office. Therefore, he has no votes to court. Considering his dismal record, and the way history will view him, this is his last best hope to be remembered as something other than a total failure. Won’t work here though… I will continue to believe that his change of policy was motivated by domestic politics, and that it may have been a contributing factor to the terrorists’ decision to attack us on 9/11.

Are we losing the war?

The war on terrorism, which George Bush claims to be fighting fiercely, is being lost. The terrorists, who George Bush claims to hate our democracy, have almost achieved their goal. With Bush’s blessing, we have been turned into savages. With his blessing, we have become indifferent to the principles of liberty that our forefathers fought and died for. Today, thanks to George Bush, America is less than it should be — and Americans need to wake up to that.

It will not take nearly as much courage to resist the trend toward totalitarianism and barbarism as it took our forefathers to face a line of British muskets. They gave their bodies, their lives. All we are risking is our minds. All we have to do is take back control of our thoughts, our reasoning processes, to first save America and then combat terrorism.

During the Bush years, the numbers of terrorists have grown as their cause has intensified. He has given them reason to exist, to perservere. His successor must reverse this trend. Rather than combat terrorists by trying to kill them, our next president must strive to eliminate their motives. Otherwise, they will only grow more and bring their war here. If we stay on our current course, they will bring us to our knees.

Where the buck stops

When you strive to become president of the United States, you should do so only with the understanding that when something goes wrong in the world, you will take the heat. Therefore, you’d better be equipped for the job.

Today, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by an apparent terrorist who shot her twice before detonating the bomb he was wearing. One more tragic event in a long series of tragic events that have marred what should have been a relatively peaceful, productive eight years for the world, considering that they arrived on the heels of a period when the US was flush with wealth and good standing around the globe.

One might ask, why now? Why pick on poor George? Why not still during the Clinton administration, which saw years of relative calm following the first attempt to bring down the twin towers in Manhattan? Was it because the terrorist leadership (correctly) assessed that Bush would be a bungler who would play into their hands? That the terrorist leadership understood better than his own fellow citizens that George Bush was not equipped to lead the most powerful nation on earth?

Perhaps the core of the terrorist leadership does indeed hate America and all that it stands for, the democracy we hold so dear, as Bush has claimed. But not all terrorists do, or did. Most of the army of terrorists, like any army, enrolls in a cause for reasons that emerge as situations evolve. Most of the men and women who have blown themselves up over the last years might otherwise have been selling goods in shops somewhere, or attending school, or farming, or doing something with no remote connection to terrorism. And what began as a small core of fanatics, isolated in the mountains of Afghanistan years ago, has now grown to become a real threat to world peace. And all on George Bush’s watch.

Of course we will never know if 9/11 would have even happened were Al Gore president instead of Bush. We have no way of knowing that. My feeling is that it wouldn’t have happened. My feeling is that a Gore administration would have taken more seriously that August 2001 daily intelligence rief that warned of terrorist activity involving hijacked airliners. If indeed such activity would have been evolving to even inspire such a brief. Would the terrorist leadership have tested Gore, who was clearly more competent than Bush? Would they have even been motivated to attack the US at that time, considering that the Clinton administration, of which Gore was a part, was actively pushing the Israelis and Palestinians toward peace and a Palestinian state? Or that Gore’s agenda included energy independence for the US, which would mean reduced interest in Middle Eastern oil? After all, the Bush family fortune was built on oil, and while oil has meant prosperity for much of the Middle East, to the radicals it was not only the reason for exploitation but the incursion of Western ideas and habits into the Muslim lands.

President Bush is confident that history will record his presidency as a successful one, that what he began will eventually end well. He’s delusional. If things end well, it will be only because someone else fixed it. What we will have is eight years that shouldn’t have happened the way it did. But with Bush, what else could we have expected?

Was There a Plot to Fake a Plot?

Last week I posted this speculation that perhaps the recently foiled terrorist plot may have been a fabrication. My thoughts were based on nothing more than a general distrust of the administration, the awareness that it is not above subterfuge, and the belief that coincidences seldom occur.

Now, in the week following the announcement of that so-called foiled plot, others are beginning to ask questions — among them Harry Shearer at the Huffington Post the other day, and Larry Johnson in a posting today. Last week, Shearer cited this piece that raised technical questions about the feasibility of the plot.

What’s disturbing is that the mainstream media seems to be running with the story of the plot as if it were an indisputable fact — which leaves it to observers in the blogoshpere to raise important questions.

Shearer has resources that I don’t have, so his speculations are based on more than gut feelings. Johnson, who once worked for both the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in related fields.

Right now most people are walking around thinking the plot was the real McCoy. Happily, it hasn’t given Bush any appreciable bounce in the polls, which must surely be a disappointment to the GOP. Nevertheless, count on them to play up the tale — and if it was all based on a fabrication, as it’s beginning to seem, maybe soon someone’s nose will start growing.

Did We Foil a Terrorist Plot?

In a world filled with possibilities, here’s yet another: The apparent terrorist plot that was foiled last week was really a success. How? By reminding us that they’re still there.

We spend a lot of money defending against terror attacks, and according to critics, not all the holes are plugged. The failed attempt reminds us that terrorism is still a threat. So does the president, who goes on to warn us that no matter how vigilant we are, we may still be vulnerable.

When Bush took office, we enjoyed a huge budget surplus. That’s become a huge deficit, thanks largely to the war on terror. The biggest drain, of course, has been the war in Iraq, which ironically has spawned more terror rather than contribute to its defeat.

And there’s no end in sight. With so many other pressing national needs left unmet, the war on terror will continue to drain the budget, weaken the economy, and by extension threaten our democracy.

Terrorist threats will not diminish as long as we continue our present course of foreign policy, but terrorists won’t need to successfully carry out their threats to remind us that they still exist. As I’ve said before, it’s wrong to insist that terrorists simply want to destroy our democracy. They have tangible reasons for hating us, and those are what need to be addressed.

Does the Plot Thicken?

Here’s an afterthought to my previous post. Since yesterday the news has been filled with stories about the foiled terrorist plot. From what I’ve been hearing, the plot was the real deal. There are 24 suspects in custody, and the names of 19 have been released. So yes, Virginia — there was a plot.

We have to remember, though, that the people who are telling us there was a plot are the very same people who told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he had ties to Al Qaeda which implicated him in the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11. As we all know, those claims turned out to be bogus. Were they based on flawed intelligence, as we’ve been told? Was the intelligence skewed to fit the desires of the Bush administration? Or was it all a pack of deliberate lies?

There once was a time when if the government said something, I generally believed it. But that was long ago. Over the years I’ve become more and more skeptical — until now, when if the government says something, I tend to think the opposite is true. Personally, I think it’s damn sad.

Are The Terrorists Winning?

It’s only taken one day for the administration to start spinning the foiled terrorist plot into a campaign issue for the November elections, and the headline on a Yahoo! news article says it all: Bush seeks political gains from foiled plot. Why, if we didn’t know better, we’d be thinking that the terrorists were Republican campaign field workers.

What the administration wants to do, of course, is to reinforce the belief that its policies — and by extension, the policies of the Republican party — are keeping Americans safe, and that only by continuing to elect Republicans will we remain safe.

But in his remarks the president left himself an out. “It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America,” he said. “We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren’t completely safe.”

“We still aren’t completely safe.” Naturally he had to say this, because otherwise how would he explain a plot that actually succeeded?

Right now I’m left with the impression that the terrorists are the Republicans’ best friends. Otherwise, why would they have presented the GOP with what some might consider a winning campaign issue? So by extension, it follows that the terrorists would like nothing better than for the Republicans to remain in power.

Republicans have used this kind of strategy often in the past. They’ve painted Democrats as soft on communism, soft on crime. Now it’s soft on terrorism. The implication is that as long as Republicans remain in power, plots will be foiled. Vote Democrat, and plots will succeed.

But in its constant barrage of reminders about the horrors of 9/11, the administration alsinadvertentlyly reminds us that the worst terror plot to have ever succeeded occurred on the Republicans’ watch. And it’s left up to us to remember on our own that the administration may have had intelligence in hand that warned of the plot to destroy the Twin Towers.

On NPR’s All Things Considered last night, I listened to one analyst discuss how the terrorists were inclined to stick with a tactic they were familiar with — blowing up airplanes. Of course the thought of that is frightening. But imagine how terrifying it would be if they blew up something else. I can’t imagine they’re not thinking about it. The possibilities are almost endless.

We continue to fuel the terrorists’ hatred of us. With each passing day, we give them more reasons to attack us. There are more terrorists today than there were six years ago, and as long as we continue our present policies, their numbers will increase — and our civil liberties will be stripped away.

The terrorists’ goal is to instill terror. But it’s not just Al Qaeda that’s doing that. It’s the administration as well. If terrorists want to destroy American democracy, as the administration claims, they’re succeeding.

"Hot" News

CNN reports that London police took 24 terrorist suspects in custody today, claiming that they foiled a plot to blow up a number of airliners bound for the United States. According to one source, the terrorists’ plan was to mix a “British version of Gatorade” with a gel-like substance to make an explosive that they would possibly trigger with an MP3 player or cell phone.

Comments to the story on Huffington Post were sharply divided, with one side adopting an “I told you so” position and the other side expressing skepticism about the plot and the timing of the revelation.

My own view is this: it’s possible, but suspicious. Remember, both Blair and Bush are under fire for their handling of the war on terror and for the action in Iraq. Remember too that just this past Tuesday Connecticut Democrats rejected Joe Lieberman, who was a hawkish supporter of Bush policy, in favor of Ned Lamont for their party’s senate nomination. With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire event was a fabrication to create hysteria and shift opinions back in favor of the combined US/British handling of the war on terror.

I would also consider the possibility that the alleged plot is a red herring. My own feeling is that the terrorists, having already succeeded once by using aircraft on 9/11, have other tricks up their sleeves. They would understand that our security and vigilance at airports has been heightened since 9/11. Furthermore, there are countless other ways they could strike, ways against which we would be absolutely defenseless.

Let’s face it: the invasion of Iraq only made the war on terrorism more difficult. Iraq today is unstable, a breeding ground for more terrorist groups. It provides inspiration for zealous young Muslims to become involved. I’m guessing Bush’s poll numbers might go up a little now, as some Americans waver in their doubts of his mishandling of the situation in the Middle East. And I’m guessing too that before the ink is dry on this post a number of Republicans, whose seats are being contested this November, will be trumpeting the victory in this skirmish as an affirmation that they represent the party that can truly protect the United States against terrorism.

Don’t buy it. They got us in this mess in the first place, and they’re just not smart enough to get us out of it.