“We have the evidence that al-Qaida and Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto,” Pakistan’s Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said.
Six years ago, the United States had a chance to completely dismantle the Al Qaeda terror network and its supporters within the Afghan Taliban government behind a worldwide coalition sympathetic for the 2,754 Americans that were murdered on 9/11. Instead, we chose to attack a completely unrelated nation and took our eye off the ball. Now, we have only thousands of more dead Americans, hundreds of billions of dollars lost and an Iraqi civil war to show for it.
Bhutto’s death is a direct result of the Bush administration’s incompetence in foreign policy. In case you are keeping score at home, the terrorists are winning and if you think we have managed to thwart additional attacks here in the United States because of our federal government’s policies, you are mistaken. Waterboarding, warrantless surveillance and the entire Department of Homeland Security have done absolutely nothing to increase our safety.
Al Qaeda has regrouped, they are as powerful as they were before 9/11 and have used our seemingly endless presence in Iraq as their most effective recruiting tool. For those that seek to kill us, their mission is truly accomplished. The only thing left for these nuts to do is to send the White House a Thank You card for doing their job for them. This is not fear mongering, this is reality.
I wonder how much of that 10 billion dollar investment the U.S. has made in propping up Musharraf’s regime ended up in Swiss bank accounts.
What if the populace became so radicalized that the Taliban won elections in a democratic Pakistan, and got their hands on its nuclear arsenal?
I shudder to think of the repercussions if the U.S. ever did invade Iran. It could only further inflame anti-U.S. passions in the Muslim world.
I think Webster Brooks has the right idea. We need better relations with Iran. Surely that is key to our engaging other Muslim nations in a way that won’t further stoke the fires of militant Islam.
The first goal should be to unify all of the moderates in the Middle East via alternative media such as YouTube and the blogosphere, which is complicated by media control and fear of being discovered by these oppressive regimes.
Ex-pats in Western nations need to reach out and take the lead in beginning this process. The United States needs to provide an effective platform to promote our cause in the region. This is the rare example where propaganda could be a good thing.
Bush and Co. have made the U.S. ‘brand’ unpalatable to so much of the world, how effective can Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty style propagandizing be in Muslim countries, especially with the RFE’s history as an implement of the CIA? (I’m asking this rhetorically).
I have no idea what kind of credibility the Persian language Radio Farda has in Iran.
I agree that netroots outreach is the best way to create dialogue with moderate Muslims, but when I try to imagine myself in the shoes of an Iranian college student surfing the web, I think I would be resistant to any communications from westerners, even Muslim ones, that remotely smelled of Western propaganda.
I agree that our standing in the world has taken a big hit in the past seven years but what remains of our ideals is still vastly superior to a dictatorial regime. The problem is getting the silent majority to easily access and buy into our philosophy.
If you can figure out a way to reach out to the hypothetical, moderate student in Tehran without being perceived as propaganda, I am all ears.
“Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?”
Are any of you old enough to remember that one?
Does the Iran-Contra debacle jog your memories?
As long as the world’s weapons merchants continue to get fat selling materiel to anyone with the ready cash, factions will be able to wage war. This includes United States business interests as well. Pull that plug first and you may have a beginning. There’s so much energy behind the efforts to control the spread of nuclear technology, but in the world of conventional weaponry, it is business as usual.
I remember it very well, D__.
You’re certainly right about the weapons business.
In response to Josh’s last comment, I was thinking that despite the best efforts of good persons like himself and Webster Brooks, that it will probably take some worldwide cataclysm to bring the people of this planet together.
We in this country tend to take the parochial view that the meta-brain of the internet ‘thinks’ in English, but already the number of non-English speakers using it surpasses the number of English speaking users.
Probably within the next ten years the number of Chinese speakers alone will outrank that of those who speak English.
I hate to think that the U.S.-originated content that users from the rest of the world are most likely to encounter will still be pap about the likes of Jay-Z or Paris Hilton, who are hardly ambassadors of the best we have to offer the world of our culture.
Judging from the way things seem to be unfolding in certain quarters, there is little being sought from ‘our culture’. In fact, it is considered by many to be alien, an anathema to be plowed under and replaced by an order cultivated more in keeping with their own philosphies.
Butto, from that point of view, constituted a clear and present danger to the multitude who see these traditions at risk. Even, to witness the bastardization of conventional teachings such that a father can justify murdering his daughter for eschewing a head scarf.
It’s a kind of Torquemada redux which lends appeal to Huckabee’s arguments for border security, in that the moderates in those quarters apparently have been dumb and silenced by the fear of their own lives.
Have a good year. We look forward to another 365 days of this back and forth….and….Josh will turn 30.
You know what that means to my generation!!
He’s a goner?;-)
Well Vince…..he’s no longer to be trusted….if that means he’s a goner…so be it!