Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Remember Al Qaeda?


Every morning on CSPAN the continuing mantra of ‘we have to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here’ is constantly echoed.
Just exactly who do they believe ‘them’ to be? They would respond, “The enemy”. Which would beg the question, “Who is the enemy?” At this point the adherents of anything Bush get off-beat strange.

From the most ignorant and frightening ‘the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim crowd’ you would get an answer of Arab or Muslim because 'they hate our way of life and freedom'. From another group just as ignorant but a little less hateful you would get an essentially correct response of terrorists although many of these people would fit nicely into the previous group.

In the case of Iraq a response of terrorism means all the people fighting placed under one umbrella. Sadly terror is a tactical choice employed by all the varying factions but there seems to be a complete disconnect when it comes to understanding the varying factions and their motivations.
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Al Qaeda is responsible for their share of the violence but it’s a relatively small percentage of the overall violence. The great enemy in Iraq is the power lust of the few (Kurd, Sunni, Shiite and the battles within each of those varying factions), along with the hate driven desire for revenge carrying fear and ignorance as its allies. So many people are suffering an incredibly insidious hell of a tortuous death. It’s shocking how exceedingly cruel people can be once they see the others as less than human. The hate that exists is growing even stronger in an environment where fear and revenge has become the master.

All sides want us out; they believe its okay to kill our men and women and they are all going after us with great relish. Our troops are stuck in the middle of a brutal civil war where all sides are shooting at them and the enemy can not be easily discerned, if at all. They do not belong in the middle of this and it’s a illicit misuse of the military to expect them to.

War crimes were committed. Bush policies of rendition, torture, indiscriminate use of weapons improper among civilian populations, seriously overused troops in a deadly supercharged environment, profiteering, and negligent planning wrapped up in a refusal to admit any mistakes have made Bush Neoconservative’s opponents of peace toward the US and Iraq and the people of the region if the instability spreads.Those in charge are to blame for this mess because they’re the ones that put the horror in motion. Neocon policies have become the best recruiting tools for Al Qaeda and like-minded groups. Money has been wasted, misused and stolen causing us to rely on China and other nations to finance our illegitimate occupation while keeping the lifestyles of the powerful undisturbed. They’ve left the brunt of domestic sacrifice for this war of lies to be carried by the military families with little support from the Republican chicken hawks who so frequently love to envelop themselves with flags, yellow ribbons and military paraphernalia.

They also screwed the Afghanistan people and our troops who were fighting the terrorists who really did attack our country on 9/11 by running away from the ‘war on terror’ hijacking it for neoconservative desires. The Taliban is regaining strength in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden is still free and in charge of Al Qaeda which is gaining strength and free reign in western Pakistan and throughout northern and western Africa. We know this because of good quality intelligence, excellent police work and investigative journalism but we can’t do anything to curtail their growth because we are bogged down in Iraq while seriously running down the morale and readiness of our military.

Our continuing occupation of Iraq is harming us while allowing Al Qaeda to grow in organization, strength and territory to be able to set up training camps along with a platform to attack us.If our presence in Iraq is futile or more destructive to them and us than our absence then we must leave.

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