Oy:
“I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people,” [House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)] said.
One of his listeners, offering Boehner the chance to rescind that charge, asked if he really meant to accuse Democrats of treason. “I said I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists,” he replied, repeating more than clarifying. “They certainly don’t want to take the terrorists on in the field.”…
“The very people that planned the attacks are the people who are in Iraq,” [Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)] stipulated, drawing a conclusion different from the one the Senate intelligence committee reached. He said Democrats “can’t face the reality that we have a dangerous enemy out there, an enemy that wants to destroy everything we hold dear.”
According to Keith Olbermann (no link), Dennis Hastert followed Boehner and Santorum’s comments from yesterday with his own today. Hastert said (paraphrasing), “Some Democrats on Capitol Hill seem to be confused about who the enemy is.”
On the topic of confusion, all we have to do is cite the President from his Monday night speech, “If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened.”
Are there some terrorists in Iraq that are affiliated somehow with Usama bin-Laden? My guess is that there probably are some. But, more importantly, each day that Americans are occupying the country of Iraq there are new recruits for suicide terrorism missions. Some of those recruits are living in Iraq, but some are living in the United Kingdom, or in Barcelona, or in Phoenix, or Greats Falls, Virginia. What makes a young Muslim turn into a deadly nihilistic suicidal terrorist? It’s usually a combination of exposure to images or articles of Muslims being harassed, assaulted, or killed in Palestine or Iraq or Chechnya, or Kashmir, or Bosnia, and a careful recruitment process.
And what motivates the recruiters? If we believe what they say, they are opposed to the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our military bases in Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE. They feel that we are preventing Arabs from gaining the military power and unity they need to challenge Israel, and that we side against the Palestinians (we’re not an honest broker in peace accords). Occupying Iraq has only added to their list of grievances.
Now, in what sense are these people our enemies and what can we do about it?
Our enemies are people that intend to do us harm. But we need to be clear about why they want to do us harm. It is not because of our freedoms or our lifestyles. It has much more to do with their lack of freedom and the Saudi Royal Family’s lifestyles. It has to do with the fetishization of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world. (The Palestinians have a legitimate grievance, but it has exploited and used to distract from problems in other countries). It has to do with the tens of thousands of Iraqis we have killed.
What would it take to remove the grievances that motivate suicide terrorists? I believe it would take a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, the removal of American troops from Iraq, and less military bases in the region. It would also require some serious reforms from the Saudis.
We do not have our special relationship with the Saudis, nor do we have all our military bases in the region, for the hell of it. We do these things as part of a larger plan to secure and assure the uninterrupted flow of energy supplies to the whole world economy. It is an investment in stability that benefits the vast majority of people in the world. That is not to say that there could not be different arrangements that are more beneficial, or beneficial to different groups or nations. But we need to be clear that the War on Terror is really a war on people that object to the status quo arrangements that the United States has with the leadership in the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, (and now Iraq).
At least, it is a war on the people that are upset enough by the status quo to recruit suicide bombers and plan attacks.
It is in this sense that the neo-conservatives perceive any retreat or any concessions to the Palestinians to be acts of cowardice that will embolden the enemy.
And if we don’t handle things the correct way, a retreat from Iraq will embolden those that oppose the status quo. They will not be any more likely to attack the United States (perhaps less so), but they will probably move on to challenging Saudi Arabia’s government and infrastructure, stepping up pressure on Israel, and challenging the governments of Jordan and Egypt.
There is one sense in which George W. Bush seems to understand the problem, and that is on the issue of democratization. Bush pushed for electoral reforms in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and heralded the elections that were held in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. Unfortunately, Israel couldn’t live with the results of the elections in Palestine and Lebanon and moved quickly to destroy the Palestinian parliament and the infrastructure of Lebanon. The Muslim Brotherhood made large gains in Egypt. The Shi’a Revolutionary Theology movement took over the government of Iraq.
What Bush doesn’t understand is that the status quo in the Middle East is unpopular with all Muslims, not just those that are committing acts of terrorism in response to it. The more free expression there is, the more opposition to American policy there is. In other words, it’s our policies stupid.
This is not the same thing as blaming America for the attacks we suffer. Purposely attacking civilians for the acts of their government is a deeply immoral thing to do. Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. showed that there is a much better way. They died for their beliefs too. They were the real martyrs. But, as Rumsfeld might say, we face the situation we have, not the situation we might like to have. And our situation requires new thinking.
We cannot kill enough people to make those that remain living accept the status quo. They will not accept the opulence and corruption and hypocrisy and visciousness of the Saudi Royal Family. They will never accept the occupation of the West Bank by Israelis. They oppose those injustices and we oppose those that oppose those injustices and label them terrorists. Some of them are terrorists, but the vast majority of them are just ordinary human beings that dislike injustice.
In order to simultaneously lesson the threat of terrorism while pulling out of Iraq, we need to make progress in another area that will pull the rug out from underneath those that will be emboldened. We need a final agreement on the Palestinian question that will be broadly acceptable to the Arab world. Without the Palestinian cause to rally anti-American feeling, and without the US occupying Iraq, there will be very little fuel to fire the jihadist’s movement.
It will be much safer for our allies in the region to allow more representative government if they are not seen as allies of America that are impotent to come to the Palestinian’s defense. As for the Saudis, they seem to be a hopeless case and we seem to be stuck with them. That is the best argument for a major Apollo project for alterative fuels. One day we may no longer care if the Saudi Royal Family lives or dies.
Democrats are not confused about who the enemy is, but we know that we have a lot of internal house cleaning to do that is important in winning a so-called war on terror. We know that Bush and Israel are pursuing policies that are 180 degrees away from what is needed. We cannot afford their policies even if they had any prospect for success. But they don’t. Hamas, Hizbollah, and al-Qaeda are all vastly more popular and powerful than they were on 9/11. Bush and Sharon and Olmert are responsible for that.
What we need is what Bush promised us in 2000: a more humble foreign policy. And a peace settlement in Israel, and energy independence. But don’t tell that to the Christian fundies and oilmen that make up Bush’s base.