CK:
First: while there are admittedly aspects of vengeance to the current actions of the USA in taking on world terrorism, by far the greatest reason we are going after terrorism is prevention. This worldwide affiliation of terrorists has stated repeatedly that its intentions are to destroy the West. I think it's safe to say that we learned from history that the only way to be safe from bullies like this is to go after them.
And the history I am talking about here might start with the appeasement of Hitler during the 1930s. It's my view that Hitler would have backed down had the UK and France stood up to him. I will grant that the USA bears its share of that onus, since we were at best ambivalent towards the threat he posed. On the other hand, that threat was 3000 miles away and we were in the throes of the Depression. Perhaps understandably, our thoughts were on things closer to home. My view is that the cowardice of Chamberlain (and the ambivalence of the British people, not to put too fine a point on it) and the smug reliance of the French on the Maginot Line in the face of an almost certainty that Hitler would not respect the neutrality of Belgium resulted in the world's reaping the whirlwind of WW II.
Let's try to imagine what would happen if the USA pulled back its troops from around the world and said, "You guys are on your own again" which is what we did after WW I. That single decision of the United States was one of the most disastrous ever taken by a world power, in my opinion. Failing to insist on a just peace with Germany was another, a mistake you will note we did not repeat at the end of the rematch.
First off, Europe's needs for energy would drive a rapprochement with Iraq. Iraq’s main purchasers of oil already include France and Russia, and if the price is right they can sell throughout Europe if given the chance.
Right now Saddam's sales of energy amount to about 3/4s of iraw's capacity, but under the embargoes in place the money for the oil comes in the form of people-related stuff 9butter not guns.) Without these restrictions Saddam would solidify his power base and would have the money to continue his weapons research. Sooner or later (probably sooner) he would have weapons of mass destruction that he not only could but would use against a neighbor. Most likely Israel, but quite possibly Turkey. He would also be tempted to use it against Iran and Saudi Arabia because of continuing ideological differences, Sunni vs. Shia vs. the Wahabbism of Saudi Arabia, etc. And the age-old conflict of Arab vs Persian.
While it's certainly possible he'll have nuclear capability, in all likelihood he will rely on biological warfare. How long would it take bioweapons to spread across the face of Europe if they are unleashed in the Middle East? Days? Weeks? And what defense is there short of totally sealing your borders? Were I Saddam I would unleash my bioweapons through a series of coordinated releases by terrorists whom I have infiltrated into all the countries of the West. On top of causing widespread death and panic, it would be damned difficult to prove Saddam was behind the pandemic.
I submit to you that dealing with Saddam now is far preferable to dealing with him later. And if Tony Chamberlain Blair doesn't have the stones for it, then we will have to go it alone.
God knows I am not a supporter of Shrub, but I do believe that overall the world-view of the USA is preferable to the European (and Arabic) model that is little more than the appeasement of a madman such as Saddam, who is nothing more nor less than a modern-day Hitler.
And certainly there are other states that promote and export terrorism. Terrorists are in general cowards and bullies. If you swat them down while they're relatively weak you can control them. And we have to consider what is the greatest threat. Ghaddafi may be able to blow up the occasional plane or two, but he doesn't have the population resources needed to sustain high levels of threat against the West. On top of that he’s having enough trouble remaining in power that he doesn’t have a lot of personal energy or the resources to take on the west. Also, remember, Libya has only somewhere around 1/5th of the workforce of Iraq according to www.geographic.org.
I was a bit surprised to see your inclusion of Turkey in your list of what I would consider rogue states for lack of a better term. Unlike, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey has a non-sectarian government based on universal suffrage. (Iran's Baath Party is technically not sectarian, but it is predominated by Sunnis, which represent only a minority of Iraq's population.) And the Turks have real elections! Its legal systems are based on a European model as opposed to the sharia that predominate in most of the other countries you mentioned. And while no country (including the USA) is anywhere near close to perfect, I’d rather live in Turkey than any other country on your list.
As you indicated in the preface to your remarks, the choices for the USA are to fight or pull back. If we don’t fight now, we are going to be fighting later. Sort of like what happened in the 1940s, doncha know? Back then, though, as everyone will or should admit, the USA did not bear the brunt of the fighting, at least not in Europe, though the final defeat of Japan in the other hemisphere was pretty much a US operation (not totally, but pretty much.) I think most historians and military types will say that if the USA had stayed out of the Western part of WW II Europe would be a wasteland, possibly a nuclear wasteland, in the aftermath of a final cataclysmic struggle between the monoliths of Nazism and the Russian brand of totalitarianism.
I don’t think even an avowedly neutral USA would let things get so out of hand as that, but as it is we certainly would rather confront evil while it’s local or regional rather than continental. Our actions after WW I were cowardly in my opinion and in retrospect contributed greatly to the conditions that engendered WW II, though of course the overall actions of the Allies in pursuing the unbelievably harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles are rather more contributory.
Though not much attention has been paid to it, I believe that Pakistan represents the greatest long-range threat to world peace. The leadership there was so supportive of the Taliban it’s not impossible to think of that “organization” as a de facto part of the Government of Pakistan. Believe it or not, for a considerable period of time in the 1990s, you could place a local call from anywhere in Pakistan to the city of Kandahar, which was the de facto capital of the Taliban movement, and was the home base of Mulla Mohammed Omar. Both Quetta, Pakistan, and Kandahar had the same “area code” 081.
Certainly the Taliban would not have risen to power in Afghanistan without overt and covert support from Pakistan. Probably the majority of the Taliban at least at the cannon fodder level were Pakistani, and definitely most of them had been trained in the conservative madrassas that are ubiquitous in western Pakistan. Western Pakistan is actually ruled at the local level by a series of small emirates who are in cahoots with the transportation mafia that controls almost all of the commerce within Afghanistan. There’s little if any central control from Islamabad. Of course, to make matters even worse, Pakistan possesses atomic weaponry, and they are working valiantly to develop delivery systems that would allow them to flex their muscles in a sphere from Tehran on the west to Bangladesh on the east. That encompasses a big chunk of land and a whole bunch of people. Parenthetically, Osama Bin Laden sent more than a million US dollars during calendar year 1999 to Bangladesh to support the Harkat-ul-Jihad party, which has stated publicly its desire to turn Bangladesh into a Taliban-type Islamic republic.
I’m pretty certain in my mind that the US Government not only recognizes the threat of Pakistan but intends fully to use its bases in Afghanistan to provide support for a movement to gut terrorism from Pakistani territory, which would require the removal of the Army from control of that country. I would expect India to fully support this, of course, and I suspect that China would also, since Pakistan funds the dissenters in China’s only Muslim province, the name of which temporarily escapes me. Zhiou Whuang? Something like that?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the US is trying to export world stability. Certainly, we are doing so because we want trading partners, people to buy the technology and information that we produce, but I firmly believe there's on overarching altruism that much of the world doesn't appreciate. We want all people to have the same rights (and responsibilities) that we enjoy here in the USA. Radical Islam is against stability since such stability prevents them from fulfilling their dreams of a world-wide Islamic state. And that's why they are our enemies. And why they should be your enemies also.
TEd
