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2004-05-09 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by tipper 2004-05-09 9:38:23 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I wish Bush would come out and say this.

Posted by Infidel Bob 2004-05-09 11:41:58 AM|| 2004-05-09 11:41:58 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 From the military.com site you posted - ". . . Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. . . . Where are we today? I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy."

The three points, the enemy is Islamic funamentalism, we have not diminsihed their fervor, and we are still vulnerable. We still greatly underestimate the danger and challenge of this war. We watch the news like its an entertaining documentary, and the politcal debate gives it a moment by moment scorecard. Many view it not as a war, but as mere politics. What do the polls say today? In truth, we are finding that 1) it is not a game; 2) we say we are in a war mode but we very clearly are not; 3) we cavalierly ask our soldiers to risk and sacrifice their lives while a great number or us undermine their efforts; 4) some of think we can defeat the Islamic fundamentalism without truly being in a war mode; and 5) some have this mistaken belief that we can just call it all off when we get tired of it. The sad truth is that Americans, not to mention Europeans, fail to fully appreciate the danger of Islamic fundamentalism. We don't truly believe our lives and freedom are at stake. Because of that, we are not fully committed, and we will end up leaving a festering wound in Iraq that will turn even more Muslims to the fundamentalist side. The events that will finally unite us are unthinkable. Yipes.

Posted by Jake 2004-05-09 11:53:13 AM|| 2004-05-09 11:53:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Amen, Jake. As you say, some people (and we know who they are) think they can play politics with this situation. Only people who are suicidally oblivious to the threat can imagine they have the luxury of bickering, whining, complaining, demonstrating, undermining, demoralizing, etc. In contrast, those of us who have the appropriate level of fear don't have time for that, our minds are concentrated on survival and how to defeat the enemy.

Posted by virginian 2004-05-09 1:50:05 PM|| 2004-05-09 1:50:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 "I wish Bush would come out and say this."

I suspect he wishes he could say it; but he knows he can't.

Until we can get Iraq settled in good enough shape that we don't have to expend all our energies governing it, we cannot proceed to use Iraq as an American land base for projecting military power in the Middle East; and until we can do that, there is little point in announcing that our real war is against Islamic totalitarianism and that the actual targets of our military power are-- and have been, all along-- Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-05-09 2:13:06 PM|| 2004-05-09 2:13:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 To reiterate some of the points that Jake made:

This was not state-sponsored terrorism.

This was religious war.

We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy.

We face a very sophisticated and intelligent enemy who has been trained, in many cases, in our universities and gone to school on our methods, learned from their mistakes, and continued to use the very nature of our free society and its aversion to intrusion in privacy and discrimination to their benefit.

Let's cut to the chase and stop fooling ourselves. We are now engaged in another World War. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, some valid parallels to the Nazis are in order:

1.) We face an enemy who is determined to kill everybody that does not adopt their ideology. Coexistence is not an option, assimilation occurs only through conversion

2.) This opponent is virulently anti-Semetic to an irrational degree

3.) Our foe does not blanch at violating all wartime conventions and uses the most barbaric methods to attain their goals

4.) These actions have served to derail world progress against a multitude of pressing issues like famine, disease and illiteracy, to name but a few

5.) Containment is not a functional solution nor is there any viable form of equilibrium attainable against this sort of fanaticism

6.) Global economic recession is a distinct and probable result of continued terror attacks. The current cost is prohibitive as it stands

7.) Our assailants utilize modern technology to create an asymmetrical threat that far exceeds their strength in numbers. Without massive intervention a nuclear terror attack is inevitable

8.) Continued loss of human life on a mass scale is implicit in any delay. Time is most definitely not on our side

9.) Our adversary seeks to install an ultimately repressive form of rule that guarantees a halt to nearly all social advances witnessed in the last century

Bearing in mind these appropriate comparisons, one question remains:

Would any civilized nation on earth sanction the continued operation of a historic religion that overtly permitted avowed Nazis to openly worship within their churches?

This one question identifies a substantial portion of the problem. We are confronted with a major religion which is willing to countenance the presence within both its clergy and adherents of those who undeniably advocate terror. Why is the remaining world obliged to endure such a direct and obvious threat to its own existence?

If there is any sort of acceptable answer to this last question, it needs to be put forth right now. There is no apparent reason for this planet to put up with such an outright assault upon its entire population. A final proof of this is the continuing internecine violence within the Islam's own individual sects. All that we can look forward to is endless mayhem with our own blood running in the gutters alongside that of their fanatics.

This cannot be allowed to pass without violent objection. Our enemy is one of the most brutal sort. Any effective solution will likely require some degree of reciprocal ferocity. If we shrink from responding in a calculated and ruthless nature, then we are essentially doomed by our own forebearance. We have no choice in this matter.

To continue with World War II analogies, we must grapple with solutions on a par to the nuclear attacks upon Japan. Those atomic bombs save countless lives of both American soldiers and Japanese civilians alike. Again, the similarities are plentiful. Like Japan's civilian population, Islam's believers largely embrace the violent mentality of Jihad. The few voices of moderation from within are forcefully stifled. Instead, we face an organized assemblage of both antagonists and their supporters.

To defeat this group conventionally we must contend with possible loss of life in monstrous numbers. This penalty is only augmented by the enormous economic pricetag that accompanies it. Is it worth enduring such untold tragedy merely to seek some sort of nonexistent equipoise with an enemy who will only endeavor to attack us further?

We are obliged to seek less than conventional approaches in solving this problem. Any lackluster attitude will carry along with it a severe price. Unlike Japan, there is not an immediate need to begin nuclear attacks against our foe. However, now is the correct time to begin making clear that nuclear retaliation is on the table. Like Japan, we must seek to dismantle or neutralize the religious underpinnings that serve to drive our opponents. Because there is no single ruling body or central council that governs Islam, we are obliged to address it at a component level. There are distinct and substantial elements that lend themselves to ready identification. In order of importance to Islam itself, they are:

A.) Islam's major religious shrines

B.) Those governments that harbor and abet Islamist terror

C.) Clerical leaders of the Muslim faith

D.) All individual houses of Islamic worship

These are the fulcrums against which our levers must be set. Due to the intentionally asymmetric threat posed by Islamist terror, it is not practible or prudent to pursue each instance of it on an individual basis. Such a reactive stance is merely playing the victim and naught else. Just as terror attacks are leveled indiscriminately, it will likely prove necessary to apply blanket solutions in our attempts to remediate this global poison. Any aversion to this will only assure other major atrocities.

The four constituent parts of Islamic faith listed above concomitantly engender some basic solutions to the threats they pose. In the broadest possible terms, these are:

I.) Holding the major Islamic shrines hostage, either through military occupation or the overt threat of denial by way of contamination or obliteration

II.) Elimination of those governments which sponsor Islamic terror through direct military attacks upon their assembled leadership

III.) The arrest and confinement of all Islamic clergy who advocate violent jihad

IV.) Closure or demolition of all mosques

Each of these solutions carry with them huge implications. The military occupation of Saudi Arabia and its shrines would represent a massive campaign fraught with the threat of constant outside attack. It is for this reason that I advocate holding these shrines hostage under threat of retaliation in kind or assured destruction.

Elimination of foreign governments who sponsor Islamic terror poses the looming problem of creating numerous power vacuums that might be occupied by equally hostile opponents. Such attacks would have to be accompanied by crippling blows to the military engines of those regimes.

As we descend this scale the solutions become more unwieldy. The arrest and confinement of aggressive clerics and advocates of jihad is less simple and more time consuming. The civilized world's disdain for religious repression is exactly what Islamists rely upon to thwart such a large scale purge. This, despite the fact that Islamists seek to impose the most repressive form of religious theocracy. The irony of this one simple fact alone pretty much justifies the dismantling of Islam.

A complete purge of all Islamic institutions is the most difficult to implement. Due to underground and clandestine assembly of believers it would be the least effective though most visible solution. However, there must occur a dismantling of this violent religion to some degree, whatever it may be.

I do not believe that either America or the world has the time to squander in going about a sequential rout of each individual government that sponsors Islamic terror. Within the timeframe of such a ponderous and lengthy program it is nearly assured that large scale biochemical, radiological or nuclear attacks will happen. Because America epitomizes all the advances and plenitude that our terrorist foes do not have and will likely never attain we shall remain their most prominent target.

As Islamic terror's principal objective, it may well be necessary for America to act unilaterally in the imposition of a credible deterrent or outright military action against all sponsoring nations. This was the case with Iraq and our great difficulty in making forward progress there should serve as a bellwether regarding any attempts to progressively campaign against that region's hostile regimes.

A broader approach is demanded if we are to have any hope of subduing our foes. I fail to see why America or the globe must sit around and wait for a massive biochemical, radiological or nuclear upon one of its principal cities before taking some of the measures mentioned here. This is an excessive price to pay in order to show restraint against those who have openly avowed to orchestrate such attacks at their earliest convenience.

Islam is rapidly anointing itself for complete and total destruction. With each passing day and every new atrocity they further negate any collective worth they have to this planet. I refuse to sit idly by and calmly accept that such an unworthy opponent should be left free to wreak havoc upon the people and economies of this world. There has yet to manifest any sort of concerted effort by Islam to rid itself of the thugs who are hijacking their faith. Such complacency in the face of so dire an internal threat to the credibility and moral authority of their church inevitably must be interpreted as willing collaboration and nothing else.

Time is running out. Who shall it run out for? Millions of innocents in some metropolis that will be poisoned or vaporized in a major terror attack or the terrorists and their entire corrupted religion? I do not see where there is any alternative.

Posted by Zenster 2004-05-09 4:16:21 PM|| 2004-05-09 4:16:21 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Okay Zenster... be careful and drop that damn Pork Chop because the.... are on the way.

Posted by Fury 2 2004-05-09 7:07:34 PM|| 2004-05-09 7:07:34 PM|| Front Page Top