DOWD: The Jihad All-Stars
Aug 30, 2003
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Yep, we've got 'em right where we want 'em. We've brought the fight to their turf, they're swarming into Iraq and blowing up our troops and other Westerners every day, and that's just where we want to be.
Our exhausted and frustrated soldiers are in a hideously difficult environment they're not familiar with, dealing with a culture America only dimly understands, where our desperation for any intelligence has reduced us to recruiting Saddam's old spies, whom we didn't trust in the first place, and where we're so strapped that soldiers may have to face back-to-back yearlong overseas tours.
| "It was supposed to be easier than this!" |
We don't know exactly which of our ghostly Arab enemies are which, how many there are, who's plotting with whom, what weapons they have, how they're getting into Iraq, where they're hiding, or who's financing and organizing them.
| Actually, I think we know most of that, at least in the outline. Maybe someone should tell Maureen? |
And we certainly don't understand the violent internecine religious battles we've set in motion. At first the Shiites were with us, and the Sunnis were giving us all the trouble. Now a new generation of radical Shiites is rising up and assassinating other Shiites aligned with us; they view us as the enemy and our quest as a chance to establish an Islamist state, which Rummy says won't be tolerated.
| "I just can't understand it! It's too complicated for me! My brain! It's gonna... gonna... [BOOM!]" |
In yesterday's milestones, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died since the war now exceeds the number who died during the war, and next year's deficit was estimated at a whopping $480 billion, even without all the sky-high costs of Iraq.
| Pacification wouldn't be an easy task, even without the neighbors sending their ne'r do well children in to make things more difficult. Sammy got 100 percent of the vote last time they held an "election" in Iraq, remember? I think the Noo Yawk Times actually reported that... |
But Republicans suggest that Iraq's turning into a terrorist magnet could be convenient — one-stop shopping against terrorism. As Rush Limbaugh observed: "We don't have to go anywhere to find them! They've fielded a Jihad All-Star Team."
| Which, if they have done it, is a remarkably stupid move on their part... |
The strutting, omniscient Bush administration would never address the possibility that our seizure of Iraq has left us more vulnerable to terrorists.
| The whole idea was to kill terrorists, remember? It's hard to catch them if they're not doing anything. So we're giving them something to do... |
So it is doing what it did during the war, when Centcom briefings routinely began with the iteration: "Coalition forces are on plan," "We remain on plan," "Our plan is working."
| To me, that says that the guys running things aren't surprised at what's happening... |
Even though the Middle East has become a phantasmagoria of evil spirits, and even though some Bush officials must be muttering to themselves that they should have listened to the weenies at State and nags at the C.I.A., Team Bush is sticking to its mantra that everything is going according to plan. As Condoleezza Rice put it on Monday, the war to defend the homeland "must be fought on the offense." Taking a breather from fund-raisers yesterday, Mr. Bush discreetly ignored his administration's chaotic occupation plan and declaimed, "No nation can be neutral in the struggle between civilization and chaos." Echoing remarks by other officials implying that it's better to have one big moment of truth and fight our enemies on their turf rather than ours, Mr. Bush said, "Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or St. Louis or Los Angeles."
| To me, that sounds like a jolly idea. Maureen, with her short attention span, can't remember as far back as 9-11-01. Even if she could, she couldn't quite understand it... |
So that's the latest rationale for going into Iraq? We wanted an Armageddon with our enemies, so we decided to conquer an Arab country and drive the Muslim fanatics so crazy with their jihad mentality that they'd flip out and storm in, and then we'd kill them all? Terrorism is not, as the president seems to suggest, a finite thing.
| Oh, sure it is. The enemy's not all powerful, Maureen. And every time they engage in an operation, we pick up a little more information on their structure, so we have more places to look. Somebody in Iraq has a collection of passports and names and points of origin. They've got interrogation reports that detail infiltration routes and who reports to whom and where this or that little bit of funding came from. They're just not telling you. |
Asked at a recent Pentagon town hall meeting how he envisioned the end state for the war on terror, Donald Rumsfeld replied, "I guess the end state in the shortest response would be to not be terrorized."
Sometimes Rumsfeld states the obvious baldly, doesn't he?
"Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!"
"Don't do that." |
By doing their high-risk, audacious sociological and political makeover in Iraq, Bush officials and neocons hoped to drain the terrorist swamp in the long run. But in the short run, they have created new terrorist-breeding swamps full of angry young Arabs who see America the same way Muslims saw Westerners in the Crusades: as Christian expansionist imperialists motivated by piety and greed.
| If it doesn't happen now, it happens next year, or the year after. Pay me now or pay me later. It's got to be done, and it might as well be done now... |
Just because the unholy alliance of Saddam loyalists, foreign fighters and Islamic terrorists has turned Iraq into a scary shooting gallery for our troops doesn't mean Americans at home are any safer. Since when did terrorists see terror as an either-or proposition?
| There haven't been any major terror attacks in the U.S. since 9-11-01. So what's your beef? |
"Bring 'em on" sounded like a tinny, reckless boast the first time the president said it. It doesn't sound any better when Mr. Bush says it louder with a chorus.
| "Bring 'em on," to me, sounded like a statement of determination to fight the turbans. Maureen's rants, on the other hand, sound like tinny whining, coupled with ankle-biting. But I'm probably wrong, since I don't write for the Noo Yawk Times. |
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