I found this post at the far-left, anti-war Daily Kos to be interesting. The author spends most of his time hyperventilating about Tony Snow's indication that policies under the Reagan/Bush Sr. administrations (along with Clinton, Carter and other previous presidents) are party to blame for the terrorism problem we have today.
Knee-jerk partisan reactions aside, Tony Snow is exactly right in his assessment of the situation. Policies under past Presidents - from our failure to show jihadist forces around the globe that they cannot push us around to our use of fanatical Muslims in our cold war against the Russians - are to blame for the rise in power of Islamic extremists.
Are any of these past Presidents culpable for the present terror problem? I don't think so (not even Clinton), mostly because none of them could have predicted that Islamic terrorism would become the problem it is today.
But what makes this Daily Kos post interesting is that the author stumbles upon one of the basic truths in the war on terror: We are not going to win the war on terror by repeating the mistakes of our past.
Back in June Rep. John Murtha - who has spearheaded the Democrat opposition to the war in Iraq of late - said on CNN's Situation Room that America should change directions in Iraq like Clinton changed directions in Somalia. I criticized Murtha by pointing out that Osama bin Laden himself had used Clinton's cut-and-run from Somalia as an example of why America was a "paper tiger" that could be forced to turn and run if you hurt it bad enough.
That Clinton's pullout from Somalia - along with examples like Reagan's pull-out from Beirut, Carter's weak handling of the Iranian hostage situation and George H.W. Bush's failure to deal fully with Saddam Hussein during Gulf War I - were all mistakes that led us into global situation we are in with extremist Islam today is apparently lost on the Daily Kos author and much of the anti-war left in general.
Diplomacy and appeasement aren't going to keep us safe from Islamic extremism any more. Those tactics will simply delay the inevitable. While we negotiate with and appease terror groups like Hezbollah and rogue terror-sponsoring states like Iran they will simply use the delays to grow stronger and more menacing. They don't see a solution to our hostilities as being one where we can all live in peace. They see this is a win/lose proposition. Either they win or we win, and they're playing to win.
America and the west, apparently, are playing for a draw or a stalemate.
We are going to lose the war on terror unless we start playing to win. That means fighting in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and maybe even Iran. That means letting Israel finish its fight against Hezbollah instead of pushing for yet another cease fire. These extremists will never stop coming after us, and unless we defeat them they will only grow stronger.
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Actually, it could be said that both men, as well as Poppy Bush, knew that you cannot wage a "war" against an ideal, any more than you can wage a war against an emotion. It's a charade. Luckily for republicans, it's a charade that's worked very well for the GOP at election time.
The fundamental religion of the Sunni and Shi'a is all that really needs to change, such that the killing of all the infidels of the world is not required any longer and is replaced by the thought that they may actually try and get along and work with all the infidels of the world..
Iraqi Hospitals Under Attack
excerpt =
Iraqi hospitals are war's new 'killing fields'
Medical sites targeted by Shiite militiamen
Baghdad resident Abu Nasr, holding photographs and death certificates of relatives killed after going to the hospital, said that he would "prefer now to die instead of going to the hospitals."
By Amit R. Paley
The Washington Post
Updated: 7:50 a.m. ET Aug 30, 2006
BAGHDAD - In a city with few real refuges from sectarian violence -- not government offices, not military bases, not even mosques -- one place always emerged as a safe haven: hospitals.
So Mounthir Abbas Saud, whose right arm and jaw were ripped off when a car bomb exploded six months ago, must have thought the worst was over when he arrived at Ibn al-Nafis Hospital, a major medical center here.
Instead, it had just begun. A few days into his recovery at the facility, armed Shiite Muslim militiamen dragged the 43-year-old Sunni mason down the hallway floor, snapping intravenous needles and a breathing tube out of his body, and later riddled his body with bullets, family members said.
Authorities say it was not an isolated incident. In Baghdad these days, not even the hospitals are safe. In growing numbers, sick and wounded Sunnis have been abducted from public hospitals operated by Iraq's Shiite-run Health Ministry and later killed, according to patients, families of victims, doctors and government officials.
As a result, more and more Iraqis are avoiding hospitals, making it even harder to preserve life in a city where death is seemingly everywhere. Gunshot victims are now being treated by nurses in makeshift emergency rooms set up in homes. Women giving birth are smuggled out of Baghdad and into clinics in safer provinces.
In most cases, family members and hospital workers said, the motive for the abductions appeared to be nothing more than religious affiliation.
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