I’ll admit to being disappointed with the tenor of the anti-war right’s rhetoric. Of course the pro-war right hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as a fount of reason either.
I maintain there is a difference between expelling an enemy from one’s homeland and destroying his base of operations and invading and rebuilding an enemy society from the ground up. The latter I find much more questionable. They can’t fix Detroit - why does anyone, any conservative, believe they can fix Iraq?
LRC has what I find to be a fair and rational appraisal by Stephen Yates of Thomas Friedman’s recent defense of the war.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/yates/yates83.html

I reject Mr. Purdy’s suggestion that the logical and factual arguments made by people like Krauthammer, Kristol and Kagan about the Iraq war (see the linked articles below) are somehow on the same level of irrationality as the rantings at lewrockwell.com and The American Conservative.

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001815.html

“fiasco” in an understatement. Iraq is a sinkhole. The invasion of Iraq was a poorly timed and improperly executed effort to better secure the Middle East for Israel.

Thanks to P. Terentius for proving the concluding point of my article. Keep it coming!

Mr. Auster:

“The administration never told the American People that Hussein was involved in September 11th.”

Publius:

-Nor did the administration dispute the public misconception that Saddam was complicit in the September 11th attacks. And from whence did this misconception arise?

Yes, I was thinking more in terms of Fox News and some warbloogers than people like Kagan and Kristol.
Of course their arguments seem to be based on the idea that Saddam could not be contained the way the USSR was. I wonder whether that is true. I also doubt that Saddam would have provided any weapons to terrorists if he had them. But I admit I don’t really know.
An Iraq unified under Saddam and contained would have been less expensive and dangerous than the current situation. Are you sure Iraq could not be contained? The lack of evidence for WMDs (to date) seems to indicate Iraq was being contained.
My perspective on this is informed by a conservative view of history.
1 - Wars have rarely advanced any causes desirable to conservatives. Peter Hitchens has written on this and I find him persuasive.
2 - The US government has a long history of overestimating threats and overstating the case for intervention. This is surely true domestically and I think a good case can be made for saying it is true internationally. This alone makes scepticism toward government claims a tenable axiom.
The overall pattern here, regardless of whether a majority of Iraqis accept the US presence and regardless of whether some progress is being made, is the same old government approach: intervene, then when it goes sour, intervene again with more money and so on.
Only time will tell but pessimism is surely not irrational here.

None of what Mr. Purdy says is persuasive to me because, before the war even occurred, I hated the very idea of it and saw terrible disasters coming from it; yet it was clear to me then, as it is now, that we could not just sit and let that situation fester, trying, at best, to “manage” or “contain” it. Mr. Purdy is forgetting that the “containment” he favors required continual U.S. military pressure on Iraq, including (1) the thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia that were supposedly the main reason bin Laden wanted to hurt us; (2) the sanctions regime which the antiwar types said was causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children and was another reason that supposedly justified bin Laden’s attack on America; and (3) actual ongoing intrusive U.N. inspections, which in turn had only been made possible by America’s imminent threat to invade Iraq, a threat that was only made credible because the U.S. was in fact sending divisions to the Persian Gulf. Such a “containment” regime, which Mr. Purdy sees as the more reasonable and less costly approach, was unsustainable; and when it was dropped, as it inevitably would be (just as Clinton had finally gotten tired of the game and dropped the inspections in ‘98), we would have been back in the same situation as before, but worse, with us demoralized and exhausted and Hussein stronger and more full of himself than ever.

The arguments I’ve just made have been made over and over. But when people are dead set against some necessary aspect of reality, as war is a necessary aspect of reality at times, they will keep looking for any escape.

Below is a 2 paragraph excerpt from the 2003 State of the Union address.

“With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans — this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes. (Applause.)”

It seems reasonable to conclude that Bush and his team carefully crafted the speech to remain (just barely) factual. However, they failed. The part about aiding and supporting Al Qaeda terrorists is an outright lie. Meanwhile, Bush introduces unsupported conjecture and hypothetical situations. This is not truthful, honest leadership. This is an almost Clintonesque spinning and manipulating of the American public. Tony Blair will eventually go down for his lying to the British public. Bush should go down for his cynical manipulation and outright lies to the American public. And for getting us into that sinkhole.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq the Hussein regime was rumored to possess Al Samood missiles with a range of approximately 73 miles. Because these missiles were a threat to Tel Aviv, the United States was forced to invade Iraq.

Keep those short-range missiles coming, Mr. Young and P. Terentius. You just keep making my case for me.

It seems there is a logical contradiction in your statement, Mr. Auster. You assume that the containment operation was “unsustainable” and would be dropped but the vastly more expensive nation building exercise in progress now is sustainable and won’t be dropped.
I am also genuinely puzzled by your statement that you saw “terrible disasters” coming from the war. So did I which is why I did not support it. And I ask again: are you certain the status quo ante was more dangerous than the situation now?
Of course, all this is immaterial. We are stuck with the situation. The real question is what can we do now? Stick it out I guess and hope for the best. If this effort fails we really will be “demoralized and exhausted ” to a degree that failure of the containment operation could not have done.

It’s not a contradiction but a reflection of the complexity and difficulty of the situation. Look up my article where I asked, what does the administration mean by “victory”? I discussed there the possibility that if Jihadis just keep coming at us, no “victory” will be possible. I do not claim to have an answer to what we should do there. I am one person trying to understand what’s happening, and I am handicapped, as we all are, by the absence of the kind of searching public debate that was vitally needed on this. I was troubled by that absence even before we went into Iraq, but, as I said at the time, the immediate goal of toppling Hussein was paramount. Beyond that, I was open to a range of possibilities from toppling Hussein and immediately leaving, and then pursuing the policy proposed by Andrew Bacevich of just saying to those countries, we’re not going to try to transform you, but if you develop WMDs or help terrorists, we’ll conquer you; to staying for a while; to staying for a generation and trying to create a new political culture there.

Like Mr. Auster - only perhaps more so, I am perplexed by the situation in Iraq. On the one hand, Saddam was an undeniable threat to US security. Iraq was clearly involved in the original WTC attack in 1993 and very possibly involved on the downing of TWA filght 800 in 1996. Furthermore, the notion that secular Baathists like Saddam will have nothing to do with the Islamists has been disproved by several instances of Baathist-Islamist cooperation starting with the Iraqi airforce’s escape to Iran (with Iranian approval) in Gulf War I. While the Islamists and Baathists can be bitter enemies, they have an amazing capacity to put their hatreds aside when dealing with a common enemy like Israel or the US. Thus, a connection of some kind between Al-Quaeda and Saddam is entirely feasible and believable.

To top it off, one of the anti-war right’s favorite arguments, that the whole thing was to make the world safe for Israel, falls apart when one considers that Syria, Iran, and Pakistan posed a more serious and immediate threat to Israel than the delapitated miltary of Saddam. While Saddam’s regime presented a credible threat to both countries via its willingness to cooperate with the Islamists and its continued attempts to acquite WMDs, the threat was not as immediate to Israel as those countries mentioned above, some of whom already have nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, nagging questions remain. We can discount the idea that this war was solely about US security in light of the Bush administration’s abominable behavior regarding Islamist soldiers within the ranks of the military, the continued refusal to protect the nation’s borders, and the continued sales of sensitive military technology to China (who will readily re-sell it to places like Iran).

I can understand the desirability of getting rid of Saddam. There is a point, however, when we’ll have been there long enough to have rooted out the remaining Saddam loyalists. If Bush insists on staying there, legitimate questions will arise as to the actual purpose of this whole adventure. Is the whole thing a distraction while Bush, Rove, and the Republicans destroy the nation from within via mass immigration? If so, the anti-war Paleos have been very unconvincing in their arguments, which have descended to the point of sounding like leftists (Paul Craig Roberts) in their blind hatred of the neocons, instead of addressing the real threats to US security presented by Bush’s genuflecting at the altar of multiculturalism. We are truly living under the Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times.

“We are truly living under the Chinese curse— may you live in interesting times.”

I was thinking about that earlier today, the sheer complexity of our situation, even as reflected my own articles that I posted Saturday, with one article attacking the antiwar right for their nuttiness, next to another attacking the neoconservative democratists for their nuttinesss.

It also has occurred to me, looking at the evident disarray and passivity in the Bush administration recently, that Bush may be overwhelmed by the complexity of things. When the issue was relatively straightforward (evil-doers had attacked us, we had to attack them to make ourselves safe), Bush was quite effective. But once we got into Iraq and it got more complicated than he expected, Bush started to feel lost; and when he loses confidence he loses energy and becomes passive, it’s a pattern he’s shown in the past. So all he could do, when he finally gave a speech on Iraq after four months, was to say, “Stay the course.” He seemed to have no larger grasp of what is going on or of what our strategy should be. It was a very poor showing. This relative paralysis of his must not last.

Mr. Auster answers with one cryptic line, rather than engage facts.

Mr. Auster and Carl deal in hypotheticals for which there was, is and will be no evidence.

There is no connection between Saddam and the 1993 WTC attack, except in the minds of a few hysterical reporters. That the Iraqi Airforce was permitted to fly to Iran is no indication of cooperation between Islamic terrorists — it was a decision at the state level in the interests of both states. In fact, as it turned out, it was against Shia Islamist interests, as that same Air Force was used to help keep Shia’s down under Saddam.

Iraq was the most surveilled country in the world prior to this war. Two thirds of it were under allied air cover, the rest constantly under scrutiny of our intelligence assests. That anyone could think that Iraq was capable of mounting any sort of threat to the Israel, let alone the US, is ridiculous.

The situation is not complex. 1) eliminate our reliance on Gulf oil —which would eliminate the need to toady to the Suadis and would dry up terrorist funding 2) leave Israel to defend itself, which it is quite capable of doing 3) draw a cordon sanitaire (French!) around the Islamic world, eliminating immigration, refusing to sell arms to them, etc. If we leave them alone, I will bet they will leave us alone. We had no problems with them, indeed they were pro-American, until we started to meddle in their part of the world.

Mr. Young offers a fine and workable solution to the present Middle East crisis. Simply leave them alone! All right thinking people should be wondering why this is not American foriegn policy. Does anyone believe that the United States would be the focus of terrorist rage if we were not meddling in their affairs? Almost certainly not! Why isn’t this even considered in Washington?

I suggest American foreign policy is so completely intertwined with Israeli interests that such a common sense solution will never see the light of day. Please consider the interests of AIPAC, JINSA, the Defense Policy Board, neoconservative “thinktanks” including the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation as well as individual neocon operatives including podhoretz, pearl, wolfowitz etc.

I responded the way I did because Mr. Young’s and P. Terentius’s comments were not worthy of serious reply. Mr. Young’s description of President Bush’s argument on Iraq, which was and is deeply persuasive to me and to most Americans, as an exercise in Clintonian deception is an example of the kind of bigoted, self-marginalizing statement in which the anti-war right has specialized, as was Terentius’s comment about Israel.

But in Mr. Young’s latest comment, at long last, we hear from the antiwar right a policy instead of bigotry. On this basis we could start having a rational debate about what our foreign policy ought to be. The steps Mr. Young lays out were also my thoughts in September 2001, as what I thought the long range goal of U.S. policy should be. But it still seemed that in the immediate situation we had to respond to our enemies in Afghanistan and elsewhere. We can discuss this further.

As for P. Terentius, I advise him that I am not going to entertain the arguments of someone who is inordinately focused on Israel and Jews as the cause of our problems. We’ve been through all this before, at enormous length, in our discussions at this website. I’ve paid my dues as far as debating Israel haters is concerned, and I don’t intend to expend any more time, as far as it is avoidable, in dealing with that particular pathology.

”..During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act..”

-George Orwell

Is an Israel the physical size of, say, Syria inconceivable? Is it desirable or undesirable? Would Israel’s problems be diminished if she grew to such a size, or would they be even worse? Is this a question that must not be broached? Is the question of Israel’s size so ridiculous that it’s a waste to even think about? Israel is so liberal that almost no one there is talking about growing. Only a tiny minority is, apparently way too small to register on the political radar screen.

I do not see the solution to the problem of Islam’s containment as unifaceted. One facet would appear to be Israel’s expansion.

I know I must be wrong about all this, because never in history has a political question been less talked about. No one on the planet, in the Solar System, or in the Milky Way galaxy has ever talked about Israel growing. So, I’m prepared to be laughed off the reader’s forum — don’t hold back, anyone.

Quite to the contrary of Unadorned’s statements, there are those in Israel (a small minority) who dare to talk about the fact that the historic lands given to the 12 tribes of Israel included quite a bit of land east of the Jordan, land that is now part of Jordan and Syria.

They might be a small minority, but their occasional statements to that effect are great grist for the propaganda mills in Islamist states. I am surprised the anti-Israel paleocons have not made a bigger issue out of it.

Now, if you are just talking about Israel expanding to the Jordan and expelling the Palestinian Arabs, that has been talked about quite a bit. Witness Robert Locke’s column in the recent archives at vdare.com, for example.

You’re thinking outside the box, Unadorned; that’s what’s needed.

As for P. Terentius, his reply makes crystal clear where he is coming from. I had said to him: “I am not going to entertain the arguments of someone who is inordinately focused on Israel and Jews as the cause of our problems.” His reply was not to deny that that was his position, but to quote Orwell: ‘…During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act …’ What this means is that the truth Terentius believes he has to tell is the truth that Israel and Jews are the main or exclusive cause of our problems. The “universal deceit” he is exposing is the cover-up of that great truth. Not only that, but with his Orwell quote he casts himself in heroic terms, as the revolutionary spokesman for the oppressed ubermenschen of the world, speaking the forbidden truth about the oppressive untermenschen who control the world and are the cause of all ills.

I’ve dealt with the anti-Israelites before, there are lengthy discussions in VFR’s archives unfolding their arguments and psychology, and, as I’ve said, I’ve spent enough time responding to this particular pathology. P. Terentius should post elsewhere.

John Purdy wrote:
“I maintain there is a difference between expelling an enemy from one’s homeland and destroying his base of operations and invading and rebuilding an enemy society from the ground up. The latter I find much more questionable. They can’t fix Detroit - why does anyone, any conservative, believe they can fix Iraq?
LRC has what I find to be a fair and rational appraisal by Stephen Yates of Thomas Friedman’s recent defense of the war.”

The Islamists terrorists are helped not only by a whole range of regimes( secular, traditional monarchy, and Islamist) but also by allies “failed states.” The involvement of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Sudan make this abundantly clear.

We cannot just leave Iraq, lest the Islamist take over.

Publius Terentius wrote:
““fiasco” in an understatement. Iraq is a sinkhole. The invasion of Iraq was a poorly timed and improperly executed effort to better secure the Middle East for Israel. “

The same Us administration that is pushing Israel to give up the West Bank went to war with Iraq for Israel?
Please. If anything, US action in Iraq have undermined Israel in so far as the West is now forced to push Israel in an attempt to curry favor wit the Arab world.

Pt wrote:
“-Nor did the administration dispute the public misconception that Saddam was complicit in the September 11th attacks. And from whence did this misconception arise?”

1. Saddam Hussein used Ansar Al-Islam as a proxy to destabilize the Kurdish region. “The helpers of Islam” are affiliated with Al Qaeda. Hence Saddam had a working relationship with Al Qaeda.

2. Saddam Hussein helped fund operations of a member group of Al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

3. Many still believe that there were ties between Muhammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence.
Given the training of terrorists in taking over airplanes at the Iraqi facility of Salmaan Pak, the belief in a connection was tenuous, but reasonable.
Add the circumstatial evidence regarding Iraqi intelligence and other operations in the US (WTC 93, Oklahoma City) and the onous was on Saddam.
The fact that Al Zawahiri sought medical attention and refuge in Iraq after September 11, 2003, and Iraq looked good to me.
It still does.

PT wrote:
“Prior to the invasion of Iraq the Hussein regime was rumored to possess Al Samood missiles with a range of approximately 73 miles. Because these missiles were a threat to Tel Aviv, the United States was forced to invade Iraq. “

Terentius,
GET A MAP!
The distance between the nearest Iraqi military installation, H2, and Tel Aviv is over 500 miles.

“Is an Israel the physical size of, say, Syria inconceivable? Is it desirable or undesirable? Would Israel’s problems be diminished if she grew to such a size, or would they be even worse? Is this a question that must not be broached? Is the question of Israel’s size so ridiculous that it’s a waste to even think about? Israel is so liberal that almost no one there is talking about growing. Only a tiny minority is, apparently way too small to register on the political radar screen.

I do not see the solution to the problem of Islam’s containment as unifaceted. One facet would appear to be Israel’s expansion.

I know I must be wrong about all this, because never in history has a political question been less talked about. No one on the planet, in the Solar System, or in the Milky Way galaxy has ever talked about Israel growing. So, I’m prepared to be laughed off the reader’s forum — don’t hold back, anyone. “

1. By your own admission, the avocates of Greater Israel are a tiny minority. How then, can the Islamists be reacting to them.
2. Why can’t you and PT get a map?
Since 1973, Israel has given up territory.
3. Even if Israel were to expell the “Palestinians”, Israel would only be taking full possession of territory it had full military control of until 1993.
4. Only thing growing is that amount of land the Arabs use to attack Israel.

“The situation is not complex. 1) eliminate our reliance on Gulf oil —which would eliminate the need to toady to the Suadis and would dry up terrorist funding 2) leave Israel to defend itself, which it is quite capable of doing 3) draw a cordon sanitaire (French!) around the Islamic world, eliminating immigration, refusing to sell arms to them, etc. If we leave them alone, I will bet they will leave us alone. We had no problems with them, indeed they were pro-American, until we started to meddle in their part of the world.”
1. I agree fully. I think we should subsidize domesting drilling with a tax until we can get a combination of Nukes and hydrogen power going.
2. If you mean stop subsidizing Israel and allow it to deal with the Arabs, that is fine with me.
If you mean sell out an outpost of western civ, I disagree. The “moderate” Islamists simply want to retake much of Europe. The more radical ones want America. Don’t think that we are safe from the lunatics. At best, they will wait until the Khalifaya has expanded.
3. Until the 1950’s the Arab and Islamic world was busy freeing itself from European domination. We were an ally in anti-Colonialism.
Go look up the history of Islamism. They always hated the US.
Look up Ayeed Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood.

We are already in World War IV. Walking away will only embolden and strenthen our enemies.

Did Ron misinterpret my post about Israel getting physically bigger (taking it possibly as a piece of sarcasm meant to convey the opposite of what I’d intended)?

My post wasn’t sarcastic. I think it’s elementary that Israel needs to expand and I don’t see why no one appears to be talking about that. My feeling is that either she gets bigger — much bigger — or she perishes ultimately. I see no third alternative. An Israel the size of Syria is what’s needed at a minimum, in my humble opinion. This is no sarcasm, Ron. Talking about solutions for the Near East without addressing Israel’s tiny, indefensible size is beating around the bush. To me, this is a no-brainer.

I’ve discussed this before in the pages of VFR but always timidly, sensing that I may be ridiculously wrong since no one else in the known universe (except that tiny fringe minority in Israel) seems to be broaching the subject. But I don’t think I am wrong.

I’m sorry — on going back and re-reading all of Ron’s posts in the thread, I see that where he wrote (right after having just pasted my post into his), “Why can’t you and PT get a map? Since 1973 Israel has given up territory,” he wasn’t talking about me and PT, but about Mr. Purdy and PT. So, he wasn’t taking my post as sarcasm. Sorry, Ron.

Unadorned:
Well, if Ron was including me in that particular comment then he is engaging in irrelevancies. I never mentioned Israel at all, nor would any of my comments have been made more accurate by using a map.
The comment that does reference me also has no relevance to my comments. I acknowledged that we are probably stuck in Iraq for just the reason he mentions. Stephen Yates wants us out but I don’t think that’s feasible now.
That’s why I opposed going in in the first place. I knew there would be no way to leave.

“That’s why I opposed going in in the first place. I knew there would be no way to leave.”

That would have been the strongest anti-war argument of all. But it was barely used before the war. Instead we got endless ad hominem attacks on the neoconservatives, which really helped create clarity on the substantive issues we faced, didn’t it? The Anti-War Party cared more about expressing its resentments against neocons and Israel than about engaging in the rational debate that was urgently needed.

I think I heard more about the role that neocons played in getting Bill Bennett appointed as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities than I did about the likely postwar problems in Iraq.

What we needed was (1) a full frontal assault on the “Proposition Nation” nonsense, and (2) a demonstration of the linkage to Iraq: If you think that all it takes to have a successful democracy is to have a bunch of people who subscribe to the Great Proposition (e.g. “people everywhere want the same thing: to be free and safe, and for their children to be free and safe”, blah blah blah), then you will underestimate how hard it is to institute a successful democracy in a nation that lacks all of the institutions, patterns of thinking, and virtues and values that are prerequisite to a successful democracy.

Of course, then you will also underestimate what it takes to MAINTAIN a successful democracy, or constitutional republic, right here at home, won’t you?

Mr. Purdy, OK, maybe Ron did mean me, then. If so, he inadvertantly interpreted my remarks a hundred-and-eighty degrees out of phase. I meant the exact opposite of what he thought.

Again I come back to the question of religion; and to the fact that our failure to confront that question seems to lie at the heart of our paralysis and lassitude. As Mr. Auster wrote above, Pres. Bush was quite effective when things seemed pretty clear right after September 11, but since then there has been a steady decline in clarity and vigor.

I contend that this decline is inseparable from our inability to recognize ourselves as an essential part of Christendom; and our enemies as perhaps the most persistent and relentless of Christendom’s antagonists. The struggle between Christianity and Islam is ancient. That our leaders cannot even START thinking along these lines is depressing evidence of our decay as a vibrant civilization.

Just as an example: What if a prominent politician proposed a law allowing for only Christian immigrants from the Muslim world? Our brothers in Christ are almost uniformly persecuted under Islamic rule, and America cannot be bothered. Our dishonor on this count unspeakable, yet were a politicians to propose such a thing, he would find a cataclysm of denunciation awaiting him in the press. He might even end up as hated as Tancredo.

Mr. Cella’s right. Just as we can’t recognize ourselves as part of Christendom, but only as exponents of equality and diversity, we can’t recognize our enemies as Muslims, but only as terrorists. So once the character of the conflict goes beyond apprehending or stopping a few obvious bad apples, Bush is at sea.

There is an important piece in the November Atlantic (not online yet) about the Anglican Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria and why he so strongly opposes the homosexualism and decadence of the Western Anglicans:

“If the Anglican Communion accepted gay bishops or approved gay unions, Muslims would gain an enormous propaganga victory in Nigeria—and in a dozen or so other African countries in which Christians and Muslims compete for converts, often violently. When Akinola speaks out, therefore, it is not because he wants to intrude on the affairs of other churches but rather because he feels that the very existence of Christianity in his own territory is under threat. At stake, is the religious map of much of Africa, and the global balance between Christianity and Islam.”

So there you have it. Christianity’s loss of its own identity, the most extreme expression of which is its embrace of sexual liberation, is literally a death sentence, not only on the decadent Western Christians, but on Christendom as a whole.

Uncanny, Mr. Auster! I had precisely that Atlantic piece in mind when I wrote my previous post. Remarkable.

Philip Jenkins (the author) is absolutely indispensible for illuminating the profound vibrancy of Christianity in the Third World — a development almost totally ignored by the press.

It is clear that Christianity has great currency outside the debased West. This cannot but be a cause for celebration, but it is difficult to see where the future leads.

Yes, that’s remarkable. A friend read the entire Jenkins article to me earlier today on the phone, and it made a big impression.

But at the same time, let’s not fall into the mistake of thinking, “Ah, those Africans, they are real Christians, they can save us.” Let us recognize and be glad of the increase of orthodox Christian believers in parts of Africa (assuming they are indeed such), who can strengthen Christianity as a whole and be our allies against Islam. But let us also remember that the Africans are a different people and culture from us, and that only we can change ourselves.

Ron worte:

2. If you mean stop subsidizing Israel and allow it to deal with the Arabs, that is fine with me.
If you mean sell out an outpost of western civ, I disagree. The “moderate” Islamists simply want to retake much of Europe. The more radical ones want America. Don’t think that we are safe from the lunatics. At best, they will wait until the Khalifaya has expanded.
3. Until the 1950’s the Arab and Islamic world was busy freeing itself from European domination. We were an ally in anti-Colonialism

I do think we should stop subsidizing Israel — if the Jewish community in the US wants to take up the slack, fine. The IRA got along quite well with voluntary contributions from the chanties of Boston, etc. Let that serve as a model.

It is interesting that Islamism has gained popular strength as Arab nationalism has lost strength, and that Arab nationalists were pro-American. Perhaps we would be better of *fostering* Arab nationalism as a defense against Islamism. Look, there is scant evidence that the Ba’athists (i.e. nationalists) even really tried to harm the US or even Israel in a serious way after the ‘72 war. Better nationalism than Islamism.

I am afraid that, contrary to the arguments of Mr. Young and Ron, “secular” Arab nationalism was consistently hostile to the Western powers during the Cold War, though perhaps less frantically so than the Islamists are now. Both movements draw on a deep, underlying hostility that is not of recent origin.

Mr. Young feels the feds should stop funding Israel, noting that Jewish Americans can shoulder the burden of funding it the way Irish Americans did the IRA. I was going to discuss that a bit, including the well-known facts that:

1) Many Jews here and in Israel (including those belonging to the Richard Perle/Paul Wolfowitz group of neo-cons who supposedly hijacked the Bush administration) agree with Mr. Young. They feel U.S. payments to Israel aren’t needed and actually weaken rather than strengthen that country;

2) Israel clearly plays a completely different rôle in the world than the IRA, and has a completely different significance, and cannot be compared to it;

3) Whether U.S. funding strengthens Israel or weakens it, Israel is an outpost of the West as vital as West Berlin during the Cold War — even more so — and as such will never be abandoned, any more than was that city. If preserving it means funding it, it will be funded; if the opposite, it won’t. It won’t be abandoned.

I was going to comment on some of these questions but these discussions seem like beating around the bush as long as they don’t include the element of Israel’s getting a lot bigger physically (at the expense of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan).

Nothing is going to ameliorate Israel’s most fundamental problems unless it grows territorially: neither U.S. funding nor its withdrawal; neither peace process nor deadlock; nor anything else.

Alan,
For the record, I am well aware that all Arab Nationalists either started as or became anti-American. (The post 1970’s Phalangists may be the only exception)
The Soviets outbid us, despite the best efforts of Eisenhower to sell out our allies. Of course, given the Fascist roots of Arab Nationalism, we never really had a chance.

Mr. Young wrote:
“I do think we should stop subsidizing Israel — if the Jewish community in the US wants to take up the slack, fine. The IRA got along quite well with voluntary contributions from the chanties of Boston, etc. Let that serve as a model.”

There is a fundamental difference. Israel is a western ally. The IRA is a essentially communist group that has ties to Islamists thanks to their shared training in Libya.

While American Jews and Zionist Christians could probably raise a few billion each year, the message of completely cutting off Israel would be that the US can be pressured into retreating.

“It is interesting that Islamism has gained popular strength as Arab nationalism has lost strength, and that Arab nationalists were pro-American. Perhaps we would be better of *fostering* Arab nationalism as a defense against Islamism. Look, there is scant evidence that the Ba’athists (i.e. nationalists) even really tried to harm the US or even Israel in a serious way after the ‘72 war. Better nationalism than Islamism.”

Secular Arab Nationalism is less of a threat than Islamism. The goal of the Arab Nationalists was simply to unite either their own countries or the Arab world to compete with the West.
However, the Arab Nationalists were also expansionist thugs who sided with the communists.
They were certainly not above working with Islamist terrorists. The Ba’athists, who are properly Pan-Arab Nationalists, have extensive ties with Islamists. Iraqi intelligence helped fund the anti-Sha movement in Iran. Since then it has built extensive ties with Islamist groups including Al Qaeda. They were not training Islamists to be stewardesses at the 707 mock-up in Salman Pak.
Whether you believe, as I do, that Iraqi intelligence was involved in the first WTC attack and the Oklahoma City bombing, or not,the fact is that Iraq’s funding arming and training of terrorists had to stop.
Syria’s Ba’athist regime trains funds and arms Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. IJ is part of Al Qaeda.

Kudos to Ron for calling attention to the evidence of Iraqi involvement in the OKC bombing. The apparent cover-up of this allowed the government to avoid the implications of highlighting the undesirability of an unassimilable population of potential fifth columnists and focus blame on a stereotypically deranged, right-wing white man.

How many times have we been reminded that it isn’t just Arabs that commit terrorist acts, ‘cause after all there was Timothy McVeigh? It gave President Clinton a chance to huff and puff about citizen militias, (even though the connection between McVeigh and any militia was tenuous at best.)

A strange parallel to how Hollywood made that little change in “The Sum of All Fears” from the book to the movie. Instead of Palestinians setting off the nuke in Baltimore, it was, of course, neo-nazis.

Also, in a recent thread you also weighed in on the need to move away from our dependence on oil — good call there too. :-)

Mr Lawrence Auster writes, “This is simply false. From the beginning, there was of course the possibility that Hussein was involved, and relevant leads were properly pursued, but the Administration never told the American people that Hussein was involved in September 11th.”

No, it isn’t

Here is a text of letter signed by George Bush:

1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Notice the significant phrase,”…to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

Harry Asster: help me out here. How does that quote charge that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11?

“Harry Asster,” whose e-mail address is “Asster@bigassweb.com,” attempts a low grade insult based on my name. Normally I would delete a comment like this, yet I’ll leave it as a sign of the antiwar mentality. Now, our friend Harry thinks I’m a “big ass” to say that “the Administration never told the American people that Hussein was involved in September 11th.” Harry’s evidence that this is not true is an order by Pres. Bush: “… to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Somehow Harry believes that this statement embraces _only_ entities involved in 9/11, which would indicate that Bush was saying that Iraq _was_ involved in 9/11, which would make me an ass. But of course, the Bush order refers to a range of international terrorists and terrorist organizations, some of which were involved in 9/11, some of which were not. Harry is so knowledgeable, and I’m such a dunce not to know the obvious truth that Harry knows. Yet Harry is unable to understand the meaning of a simple sentence.

Harry would seem like a fairly extreme case of raw incomprehension combined with raw anger. In fact, a good many of the arguments one hears from the antiwar left and right are on not much of a higher intellectual plane than Harry’s. Lots of anguish, lots of fury, lots of denunciation; but so little truth, or even simple logic.

An entire society in which such illogic and such resentment has been unleashed on a mass scale is a society in trouble. One of my greatest problems with Bush is that he doesn’t take his enemies seriously. He makes his OWN case, with the boring repetetitiveness of a mediocre student; but he doesn’t respond to or attempt to refute the arguments and (largely irrational) beliefs of his ENEMIES; and so those beliefs fester and grow and poison our politics. And that begins to threaten our ability to function steadily as a society, to sustain commitments, and so on. Leadership involves not just making the case for one’s policies, but showing why the arguments against one’s policies are wrong. And in this Bush is a non-starter.

I have grown quite weary of debating this subject, which I have been doing since well before the Iraq intervention. It seems unlikely that anyone who supports the intervention is going to change their minds because of anything I say - and I do have other things to do with my time. Nonetheless, because I respect Mr. Auster and many of the posters here I will state my case one more time for the record. After this I will be moving on to other topics.
When I debate the pro-war right I gain a sense of what it must have been like to debate liberals about Johnson’s Great Society programs circa 1966. They have their reams of facts and figures, their coolly argued logic and their shining examples of good things the action has brought or will bring about. They point to the necessity of fighting poverty and the immorality of ignoring it. And they can insinuate there is something racist or hysterical about opposing the programs.
All I can offer in rebuttal are axioms about government intervention. There are, as yet, no incontrovertible historical facts to support my assertions, only predictions based on the aforementioned axioms (axia if you’re a stickler.)
So, large scale government intervention, whether domestic or foreign, will produce a self-reinforcing government bureaucracy, it will diminish the liberty of Americans and it will not solve the problem. The problem will remain and it will be in some respects exacerbated. It will produce unintended consequences that will be deleterious to both conservative and liberal principles. It will provide yet more justifications for government expansion as well as more opportunities for waste and misallocation of the taxpayers’ money.
One unintended consequence is already apparent. The Bush Administration has provided an exemplum for the Third World: national sovereignty can only be protected by nuclear weapons no other means will suffice.
I hold these outcomes as by far the most probable result of the Iraq intervention, though, of course, we all know predicting history is a mug’s game. All I can ask of you as conservatives is to think, very carefully, about whether you really believe massive state intervention can solve problems. And to remember, around 2015, what some of us beseeched you to consider.
By then we should have a pretty clear understanding of the full ramifications of Iraq. I would be glad to be proven wrong, but I won’t be.

Large governmental interventions are sometimes necessary. One large governmental intervention was WWII, in which America helped to defeat a murderous government bent on world domination and trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. A second large intervention was the Cold War, in which American helped to defeat a murderous government bent on world domination and possessing weapons of mass destruction. A third large intervention was the war in Afghanistan, in which American helped to defeat a murderous government bent on aiding and abetting murderous people bent on destroying America.

Yes large interventions bloat the government, which becomes more oppressive. We owe thanks to the anti-war right for reminding us all of this. The solution is for the average citizen and intellectual to oppose the oppressive qualities with relentless vigor (with time off for R&R) instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The commentators here are all agreed the American government is oppressive.

So at the end of our heated discussions, we must agree to stand together against the oppression. This is the wise implication in a comment above.

Mr. Purdy says of the pro-war right, of whom he says he has grown weary of debating:

“They have their reams of facts and figures, their coolly argued logic and their shining examples of good things the action has brought or will bring about. They point to the necessity of fighting poverty and the immorality of ignoring it. And they can insinuate there is something racist or hysterical about opposing the programs.”

I have not made the types of arguments Mr. Purdy refers to, and no one else at VFR has either. I have not pointed to “shining examples of good things the action has brought or will bring about.” I have not pointed to “the necessity of fighting poverty and the immorality of ignoring it.” I have not accused war critics of racism or even hysteria. However, I have repeatedly called them irrational arguers who ignore what the pro-war side is saying. And that accusation has just been proven in spades by Mr. Purdy’s own statement. It is evident that he is battling, not the actual war supporters, but a pre-conceived image in his mind of Cold War liberals from the 1960s. This fits the pattern (which I have pointed to endlessly) of war critics ignoring the reasons that the war advocates themselves have stated. With respect for Mr. Purdy, I would suggest that if he attended more to the arguments of his actual opponents, instead of battling fictional opponents in his head, perhaps he would have become less weary of the debate.