Islamic jihad: Bush fantasies vs. current realities
President Bush believes he is on a mission to provide freedom to oppressed peoples throughout the world. As Newsweek reported in 2003:
Later that day, the president did so. At Opryland in Nashville—the old “Buckle of the Bible Belt”—Bush told religious broadcasters that “the terrorists hate the fact that ... we can worship Almighty God the way we see fit,” and that the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human being in the world.” In his view, the chances of success were better than good. (After all, at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days before, he’d declared that “behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” If that’s so, America couldn’t fail.)
In fact, the Newsweek article goes much further in explaining Bush's reasoning in a great many things. He's very evangelical in his thinking: he uses very little discernment, can't distinguish between truth claims, and doesn't know his Bible well at all. His conversion also seems to have revolved around the fact that the idea of a personal friendship with Jesus appealed to him. Nowhere is this thinking more apparent than Bush's various declarations about Islam and his interaction with the Islamic world.
By now, we're all familiar with his statement that Islam is a "religion of peace," but he's also spent quite a bit of time inviting Muslim leaders to the White House and wooing them through dinners and recognition. He's also thrown quite a bit of support the Palestinians' way and tried to democratize the Arabs in Iraq (though admittedly he had plenty of other valid reasons for going in). Then there was the State Department's latest chastisement of the Turkish military for threatening to interfere with the recent elections in that country, which moved it toward a resurgent Islamic state. Lastly, he's carelessly (and cluelessly) thrown his support toward an independent Albanian Kosovo, as I've stated in an earlier post.
Muslims don't want democracy. They want to be slaves to Allah. "Isla'am" means "submission," and has an entirely comprehensive political component that solidified somewhere around 1300 AD. That's 700 years with no changes. It involves perpetual expansion into infidel lands, subjugation of the peoples there, and so on, which is precisely what we see happening in Kosovo and Israel, which are two sides to the same coin. Infidel nations have thus far shown all too much willingness to sell out such countries in order to appease the Muslims. It hasn't worked. Wherever the borders with Islam lie, and wherever infidels are in close contact with Muslims, the story is pretty much the same. Western leaders of the world, especially Bush, need to clue in.
PRCalDude
Just to be clear, I'm not one of these people who thinks that Bush went into Iraq under false pretenses. No, he thought Saddam was a threat, as did Bill Clinton and several other high-ranking Senators. In fact, pretty much everybody thought Saddam had WMD. They're probably over the border in Syria. The error of the Bush neocons is that they failed to read the history of Britain in Mesopotamia in the 20s and 30s (it reads almost exactly like ours in the region) and they failed to consider what would happen if the Arabs didn't just magically drop their tribalism and Islamic presuppositions and democratize. As it stands now, we're looking at a partition of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia states. The Kurds are the best chance we have of having an ally in the region. Supporting them will lose us Turkey, but they're probably gone anyway. The Sunnis will govern themselves as they always have: the tribal sheiks will rule. The Shia will likely fall into the hands of Iran, which will give them new found oil wealth. Persia's empire will spread, giving the Arabs much more heartburn (which is great for us), but also a means to keeping the mullahs in power (which is bad for us and Israel).
42 Comments
Reader Comments (42)
" and that the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human being in the world.”
Viola...the gospel. Bush's messianic complex is both sacry and entertaining. Please Hillary, bring some sense to our country, your nation awaits!
3 Key Statements:
So good do far. Ideological, I agree with him.
A little off track now... considering his declarations about Islam do not jibe with Muslims declarations about Islam. (ie: Two totally different understandings about what "peace" means in this context.)
And now to the heart of the matter. We are trying to give them a freedom that they do not want.
LoL... Hillary for president. Are you serious, Pr. Frueh, or pointing out the futile irony?
;)
I predict that Hillary will not be the next president. She is too stuck on herself, everything she is about is all about her. She is way to obvious and transparent on this and people don't like this kind of attitude.
But this doesn't mean we won't get a president just like her in some other more subtle guise. And that, to me, is the irony.
Bush is not a conservative. I was very late in coming to accept this. Bryan Preston at Hot Air has already talked about the fallacy of "spreading democracy" to the Middle East. The USA "spreads democracy", after first dropping bombs on people and invading their land based on incompetent, wrong, and faulty information, and then their culture is magically transformed into a "democracy," and the result? They elect more hard-line, Islamic jihadists.
I thought conservatism was supposed to be a political philosophy that distrusted "faith in government." I thought conservatives were supposed to be "competent" and "task oriented," because we care about results and less about "pie in the sky" unrealistic stuff that is the bread and butter of the American Left. Conservatives are supposed to be the ones asking the hard questions, demanding evidence, etc.
We invaded Iraq because of "WMD," which turned up nothing. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and Iraq is experiencing a civil war between Shia sect 234 vs. Shia local sect 23 vs Sunnite sect 3 vs. Sunnite sect 54 versus Al-quadi linked Sunnis vs. Baathis type of Sunnis vs. secular Sunnis vs. Al-quadi Shiites, vs......
The southern portion of Iraq is Iraqi in name only. It is basically an Iranian province.
And Bush thought that by dropping bombs on people he could magically transform a different culture that has centuries and centuries of bloodshed engrained in their history? Bush is no conservative. Bush believes that by dropping bombs on people, one can easily build and REBUILD a nation. But nation-building philosophically rests on liberalism, not conservativism which has a negative and realistic view of human nature.
If Clinton did what Bush has done, then everyone at HotAir would cry out for impeachment. And rightly so.
Yesterday an article (I cannot find the link) at HotAir said that a senior CIA staff informed the press that Bush already knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq PRIOR to the invasion. He lied, and people died. If Bush was a Democrat, everyone would be calling for his impeachment.
Be honest. If Clinton did what Bush has done, then everyone would be calling for his impeachment.
Colts,
What you correctly articulate is the silliness of thinking we can transform Muslim Iraq into a nation with a secular government that is separate from it's religion. Just because we have what amounts to a secular government in America within what is still accepted as a Christian base culture. Islamic culture just doesn't work that way. Even the model of such in Turkey it doesn't really work. It worked when most of Turkey was still not Muslim, but now that they are becoming majority Muslim the secular government model and national identity is being usurped by Sharia Law.
What I disagree with you on is why we invaded Iraq. We invaded to fight Islamofascist Terrorists on their one ground. What has happened is that "freedom" and "WMDs" became a rallying cry for the purpose of eliciting support for invasion. But the WMDs was an issue involving United Nations resolutions more than anything else.
And the argument about bad intelligence is mostly a canard of the anti-war crowd to make us question classified information that we could never confrim if we wanted to, because it is classified. There were WMDs in Iraq, by the way, which are now mostly hidden in Syria.
Lawrence,
Concerning Turkey, I was surprised to learn that Turkey is a strong friend of Israel and even conducts joint military exercises with Israel frequently. Syria is upset with this, but Turkey would rather side with Israel rather than to please Syria. I was surprised. Given that "Bush's 2-term main goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East" is not a conservative principle at all, I wonder when Turkey's soon to be Islamic majority throws Israel under the bus.
Concerning WMD, I am open to the possibility of there potentially being some in Iraq or there being secretly transported elsewhere.
I am only trying to point out that conservatives traditionally have been skeptical of everything---government deficit spending, military invasions, etc. Conservatives have been skeptical because we know the evidence can be misconstrued or misinterpreted. So we hesitate before making rash, impulsive decisions that we could potentially regret in the future.
Even IF there were WMD, Bush's invasion was rash and impulsive in hindsight. There was no post-war planning other than Cheney's comment of, "the Iraqis will be welcoming us and celebrating in the streets just like what happened in Japan and Germany." Sure they are. And blowing up US funded Iraqi schools and US funded hospitals, etc. And this civil war is not caused by a small minority of Iraqis. Almost everyone has or knows relatives who are sharing some part in the civil war.
After all, the entire Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by the Mahdi Army. We are talking about a different culture here. And Bush is clueless.
I am not advocating withdrawal from Iraq at all. I am only questioning whether Bush's pre-war, rash, impulsive, "nation-building" philosophy can truly and accurately be called "conservative." It is not conservative at all. It is liberal.
ColtsFan: You have drunk the Kool-Aid. See Japan after WW2. Bush's problem is that he is too weak and timid in the face of KGB-trained Leftists who run our schools, media and the Democratic Party. We needed more bombs. We needed martial rule and Douglas Macarthur as de facto emperor of Iraq for 10 years.
Saddam was a bug, and the Iraq people are still better off today, as they are no longer slaves to totalitarian monster. Iraqis are fighting their Civil War against slavery, just as we did in 1861. Are you against the liberation of slaves? The Word has much to say about the State's role in punishing wrongdoers and criminals...and Saddam was one of the biggest on the planet...
I believe Iraq is turning into Vietnam. We supported S. Vietnam, things got better, then cowards and KGB-funded traitors pushed us to abandon S. Vietnam, which then fell to genocidal tyrants. It will happen again. But this time, we are taking names on who supports surrender...
Let's back up here. Turkey probably sides with Israel (if what you're saying is true), to piss the Arabs off. You're not understanding the ethnic divisions within Islam. They just elected an Islamist to be president of Israel and have instituted numerous pogroms against Jews, Greeks, and Armenians throughout their history. The military is secular, and it has had to intervene into Turkey's politics numerous times to prevent it from drifting back into an Islamic backwater. The cultural presuppositions are largely Islamic, and Turkey is drifting away from secularism even as we speak. Even if it is secular, Jews and Christians are still heavily persecuted in that society, if you'll recall the missionaries that were recently tortured to death in that country.
That is the problem. You, just like the liberals, are ignoring the magnitude of differences between cultures. What happened in Japan in the past at a different time and different place is not a future indicator at all for what possibly could occur in Iraq.
The cultures, history, and societal norms are different.
RM,
I subscribe to the "Two Kingdom" view too. I agree that the purpose of the State's role is to punish wrongdoers and criminals.
Our disagreement lies in, "does the above lead to moral justification for the State to take action on an international level (as opposed to domestic policies only within the USA) , to invade a sovereign nation in order to be the World's International Policeman. I do not think so.
I do not think that the Word or the 2 Kingdom View teaches that the USA should be the world's international cop. If it does, then we should first invade Mexico, and get rid of the rich feudalistic state that economically destroys that country apart, causing tens of millions to illegally come to the USA for jobs.
I have never been an "isolationist" in the past or present. I usually disagree with Pat Buchanan. My issue here is that I am only trying to bring back "conservatism" the way it should properly be understood. Nation-building and starting budget-busting, deficit international wars based on weak (if not skeptical) evidence is not conservative at all. It is liberal.
I stand corrected.
I was thinking that Turkey and Israel were "friends" due to a recent HotAir.com article that I was reading that talked about joint military exercises between those countries.
I share your concern about understanding ethnic divisions. After all, understanding complex issues such as ethnic divisions, and cultural differences are what true conservatism is really all about: skepticism about human nature, and a persistent propensity to always ask the hard questions about everything. This is conservatism, rooted in reality.
But Bush's neo-conservatism (just like neo-conservatism in theology---both are NOT CONSERVATIVE AT ALL) teaches that dropping bombs on people can indeed change the human heart, and can wipe away magically centuries and centuries of ethnic divisions and cultural differences. This is not conservatism at all.
True. President Bush is a moderate at best, and I've always claimed such. Even during his early nominations to seek presidency. I think that he thinks he is a conservative, but some of his ideas are pretty liberal.
There were WMDs, and we could debate all day about what exactly they were. But you correctly identify that the overriding issue at this point is nation-building.
And there was a lot of post-war planning, just that everyone had their hand in the pot with conflicting objectives. We still have conflicting objects between cabinets within our own Legislative governance. We have the President wanting one thing, State Department another thing , and Department of Defense trying to do something else.
I do not think that Bush's original plans were rash or impulsive. The idea of invading either Iraq or Iran has been on the planning table since before President Clinton. I think President Bush knew exactly what he was doing and as far as I can see he has held to his convictions despite his detractors and low polling numbers. (Numbers which are suspicious at best.)
What we face now is what happens when we carry this war over into a new presidency. There is no reason for the enemy to stop fighting us at this point, because the new president may choose to give up and let them win. There is no direct reason for the Iraqis to step up and take over as long as we are there pumping cash into their economy.
So is there really any reason for continue fighting? What we must remember, and I think you agree with me on this. The current enemy combatants are all being sent from various nations to Iraq to fight us. If we leave Iraq it frees up all those people to go fight us somewhere else, probably by sneaking across our porous national borders and blowing up civilians here in the U.S.
I know we hear of all the untold civilian deaths in Iraq, but both the overall civilian and military death toll in Iraq is actually lower during this time of conflict than it was under Saddams murderous regime.
Thanks for your response.
One reason (NOT the primary reason) for my disappointment with Bush and for my pervasive healthy skepticism over Bush's "spread democracy throughout the world" plan is because he attempted to push the Amnesty thing on 3 separate occasions, despite 80% opposed to it.
What type of democracy does Bush subscribe to?
But that is a side issue. The primary issue for me is how Bush is changing and redefining "conservatism" so badly.
I agree that Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands, if not causing millions of deaths during his decades-long reign of terror. It is estimated that 1 out of 6 Iraqis were on Saddam's payroll, either directly or indirectly as spies, secret police, etc.
Socialism works to cause private investment and free markets to "dry up," causing the only remaining economic entity left in the game to be that of government. And then you have basically a dictatorship. It is kinda hard to oppose government when you are getting a paycheck from it. Venzuela will soon find this out once complete nationalization is finished.
I just think Bush just wants to return to his ranch. He does not care anymore.
ColtsFan: You argue I am using an abstraction with Japan...then go on with a larger abstraction as the "US as World Policeman." I think you are making a larger error. Your use "neocons" -- another loaded abstraction -- further distorts your argument.
I wasn't talking about the US as Global Cop. I was talking about the US in Iraq, and how we do know the means to pacify a violent, militaristic, fanatical culture. Iraq is not Japan, but surely our success in Japan gives us insight to the correct means and scale. Saddam was a threat, and the US had every right to topple him.
Where Bush is failing is in trying to appease the U.S. and Global Left with his empty air about "Democracy." This will fail. First, the Left cares nothing for Democracy, as they are genocidal, tryanical goons. Second, Iraq needs stablity, rule of law and security before democracy can take root. He is putting the cart before the horse. Three, there is no appeasing the Left. They hate Bush, hate democracy, hate capitalism, hate the US and nothing Bush says or does will ever appease them. He needs to out them for who they are (his outing of their betrayel of S. Vietnam was good first step).
So we agree that the US should not be a "global cop," then? Okay. That mutual agreement then entails that the motivation for the agenda of the neo-conservatives (who are not really conservative at all) is bankrupt, and thus, should be rejected.
Your third paragraph above resonates with me, pretty much, I already agree.
After re-reading your post, I think our disagreement centers not on "US as a global cop" but on:
how much past data (from WW II recovery of Japan, Germany) should US policymakers use to justify "nation-building" in the future?
Or are you opposed to nation-building as I am?
I agree with you that if, Saddam had WMD, then the USA is morally obligated to directly invade Iraq. Lawrence thinks there are WMD in Iraq. I am leaning on giving Lawrence the benefit of the doubt and say, just for the sake of argument, "there are WMD found in Iraq!."
But I do think that all sides will say, in hindsight, that the Bush Administration definitely **over-played** the evidence.
Okay. I will agree that RM, Lawrence, and PrCaldude are correct that Saddam did in fact have weapons of mass destruction in 2002.
I do remember that the Russian, French, and German intelligence community all shared that view as well.
I have not suggested that Bush invaded Iraq for "blood for oil" purposes. No, that is not my position. I have suggested that whenever Cheney smells a threat, his first response is to immediately pull the trigger instead of asking the hard questions, the same questions which conservatives usually raise.
I do think Bush is a bona fide "nation-builder" who thinks, "even if Iraq does not have WMD, we still should invade anyway and spread democracy." And I disagree.
But whenever Bush talks about "evidence," or "reasons," don't you kinda get the feeling that he would rather be spending time on his ranch?
I have no faith in Bush as a commander in chief from a perspective of **competence**.
Maybe I am wrong. And if I am wrong, then I will admit it.
But listening to him talk, just makes me think that his mind has been on his Texas ranch for the last couple of years.
"Nation building" is another loaded abstraction, a political talking point of the Clinton Administration. I think we should prop up the current Iraqi government. If we surrender in Iraq, Iran will become more of a threat. The goal should be security. The "Surge" seems to be toward this end, so I support it.
I support the surge wholeheartedly. Bush started the war and, he needs to finish it by going full-throttle. And I mean full-throttle.
Again, my position has never been to advocate withdrawal. Southern Iraq will become an Iranian province if we withdraw. Foreign Al-quada fighters will go to live in Sunni central part of Iraq, because they (Saudi Al-quada) will be most un-welcome in the southern, Iranian province of Iraq. Instead, Iranians will send their own people into the southern part.
My earlier posts were more directed at Bush's theme of "spreading democracy and freedom" and "nation-building", which is a term that Bush himself employed frequently when he ran as a conservative Republican in 2000.
Again, I do not believe that Bush went into Iraq for "blood for oil." I am just saying Bush strikes me as woefully incompetent, and that Cheney is a neo-con who ignores centuries and centuries of history and culture, and that neo-conservatism, at root, is hostile to conservatism.
I am only objecting to the misuse of "conservatism"
by people who claim to be "conservatives."
True. Maybe we should consider what the Iraqi's want. Maybe we should pick a couple Tribal Chieftans to be in charge and let them carve out a Kingdom. Similar to Saudi Arabia. Eventually one family will find themselves on top. The Muslim majority will be much happier under an Islamic Kingdom than an Secular Democracy.
"I think President Bush knew exactly what he was doing"
I am still attempting to identify any area where that might be true but alas, none come to mind. The entrance into Iraq was ill conceived and ill prepared. All there is now is a terror nation sitting upon liquid dinosaurs. Sadaam would have kept most of the terrorists out being afraid of them personally.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who thought a democracy would work in Iraq should be made to spend one winter in Northern Pakistan in a tent. George Bush never had one contemplative bone in his body. Next year, as the war begins to draw down, the economy will take a nose dive. And the incredible chaos in the middle east will be blamed on Bush and the Republicans.
So in 2008, Hillary will become president, the Democrats will have 62 Senate seats, and over 300 representatives in the House. The only good affect on this Democratic victory will be that many believers will experience a personal awakening in the Spirit having now recognized the futility of political activism.