|
Pentagon: Re-Cast WOT in Civil Law Enforcement Terms
It is true that by focusing on military missions, terror advocacy and mosque incitement has largely escaped WOT scrutiny. However, I was hoping that Congress would once again place the Gitmo internees under American Law, by trumping the SCOTUS' rights enforcement that trampled the White House' designation of Afghanistan as a "failed state," and treated territorial captives as military detainees. As for civil solutions, what if Nazis won the post World War 2 elections in Germany? Either our security is paramount over enemy liberty, or we have to treat those animals as equals. Civil, or public support of Nasrallah should hardly base legitimation of his kind of terrorist. We need to criminalize national supporters of Hamas, Hizbollah, al-Qaeda, and slaughter their allies on all military fronts.
...The United States should rethink the label it uses for what is known as the "global war on terror," the chief of strategic planning on the Pentagon's Joint Staff said Tuesday.
What is needed, said Army Col. Gary Cheek, is to recast terrorists as the criminals they are. "If we can change the name ... and find the right sequence of events that allows us to do that, that changes the dynamic of the conflict," said Cheek at the Defense Forum Washington, sponsored by the Marine Corps Association and the U.S. Naval Institute.
"It makes sense for us to find another name for the GWOT," said Cheek. "It merits rethinking. I know our European allies are more comfortable articulating issues of terrorism as criminal threats, rather than war ... It ought to be our goal to partner better with the European allies so we can migrate this from a war to something other than a war."
Which will allow the Euros not just to re-frame the argument to their liking, but allow them to shift the modality as well: to defense, not offense. In that way the Dhimmicrats have a similar philosophy: we should never 'give' or play offense, but rather employ the perfect defense. We should spend lots of time and money inspecting each and every shipping container rather than find and handle the terrorists who would put a bomb into a shipping container, as but one example.
Not that there's anything wrong with defense, but a perfect defense isn't possible (it really isn't) and it's far better to take the fight to our enemies. That, however, raises uncomfortable questions for both the Euros and the Dhimmis: it means having to confront our enemies, their rhetoric and their actions. We have to answer the question, 'why do we fight?' We have to do things, from eavesdropping on terrorist conversations to questioning prisoners, that raise the hackles of the more squeamish. Taking the offensive means making difficult decisions; it means making mistakes and causing people, including some of your own, to die.
But most of all, it forces the Euros and Dhimmis to confront the failed essence of their own ideology: socialism. The socialist, multicultural, relative philosophy that abhors absolutes, firmness and conviction can't bring itself to take a fight to an enemy. It has trouble even labeling an 'enemy' unless that enemy is one of their own. It's easier to fight the KKK than it is to fight an Islamist terrorist: the former fits within their own world view of what an enemy is, and the latter does not. Taking the offensive requires one to see, understand and define the enemy correctly. It's said that Winston Churchill understood Adolf Hitler very well, whereas Hitler never understood Churchill. That became a key reason why Churchill made many more correct decisions than Hitler did over the course of WWII. The Euros and the Dhimmis, by and large, simply don't understand who Osama is: they don't understand what motivates the islamofascists, they don't see how salafism motivates men to become terrorists, and they don't get the connection between terrorist groups and state sponsers. It's easier just to play defense. It's easier not to go to "war". |
The "war" moniker elevates al-Qaida and other transnational terrorists, giving them legitimacy as an opposition force to the United States. It also tends to alienate Muslim populations in other countries, who see the war as a war on Islam, and feel they need to support al-Qaida as a matter of defending their faith.
| Which rather says something about the difference between, say, Christianity today and Islam today: as a Catholic I didn't have a reflexive need to defend the IRA in its terror campaign against the Brits. I could step back and correctly understand that the IRA was a bunch of terrorist thugs who liked killing people for a 'cause'. So my sympathies were with their victims, Catholic and Protestant alike. |
It also tends to frame the fight as one in which the Defense Department has the primary role, when it is becoming increasingly clear that the "long war" against global terrorism is going to be won on other fronts -- economic, political, diplomatic, financial. Other government agencies and departments must become more engaged; only they have the expertise to help other countries take the actions necessary to defeat terrorists.
| This is more nonsense. In the Cold War we recognized each of those fronts, from military to financial, as important. That didn't stop us from seeing the essence of the Cold War, which was that Soviet Communism was hell-bent on dominating the globe and would do so if we didn't stop them. That's what make it a war, and the fact that we managed not to launch nukes at each other kept it cold. |
Cheek's idea is not a new one, and for all the practical sense it makes to the military, it is being floated at a politically inopportune time. Both the U.S. House and the Senate hang in the balance, with a shift from Republican to Democratic control possible after the midterm elections.
To hang onto power, Republicans are returning to their strongest card: national security. And one of their chief attacks on Democrats is their alleged preference to manage terrorism as a law enforcement problem rather than being serious about defeating them in a war...
National security is more than just military might, and the Republicans are strong on national security precisely because so far they've had the clearest vision of how to combine military, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, economic and political strategies to protect our country. Criticize all you like about GWB's implementation of the GWoT, but it's a coherent vision that uses each of these tools. The precise reason why the Dhimmis have ceded the argument on national security is because first, they've taken the military option off the table, and second, no one really believes they'd use the other options in any tough, bloody-minded way.
Frame this as protecting sheep from the wolves: you need a sheepdog, and you'll put up with a number of faults and failings as long as the sheepdog gets the essentials of the job right. The Republicans are by no means perfect, and in some ways their faults and failings are substantial (and noted numerous times on the Burg). But in the end a number of us think that the Pubs will do their jobs as sheepdogs, and that's why the sentiment at the Burg, best I can tell, leans towards keeping them in power. Show me some Democrats who will serve as effective sheepdogs and I'll listen to what they have to say. I've seen one lately -- Liebermann -- and he's pretty much toast as a national politican regardless of the election. |
Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 2006-09-06 |
