The real question to “Cut and Run†Democrats
The more I look at last night’s State of the Union Speech, the more I see that George Bush nailed the democrats but good.
Basically for all their cut and run talk, he boiled the argument down to this. No matter what anyone thought of the war with Iraq, the fact is that we aren’t fighting Iraq now – that was over four years ago We are fighting Al Qaeda, and other terrorist factions within Iraq now. We are indeed fighting those who would attack us in a minute over there instead of on home soil.
In essence while one would have argued about Al Qaeda in Iraq BEFORE the war, the fact is that they are there now. What Webb and Biden, and Murtha and the rest of the Cut and Run Democrats and RINOS are saying is, “We cannot fight the war on terror anymore, we have lost to Al Qaedaâ€.
So the question to them now isn’t so much “Do you want to win in Iraq?†but more important, “Do you want to win the war on terror?â€
Cross posted at Macsmind.
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Posted by macranger on January 24, 2007 12:26 pm
» Filed Under ACLU
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9 Responses to “The real question to “Cut and Run†Democrats”
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Syndicate Me
Right, there’s no al Qaeda in any other countries. Not Yemen, not the Philippines, not Iran, not Somalia and certainly not London or Madrid! And of course, the CIA and State Department both warned about the “Class of ‘05″ problem, where the insurgent activities in Iraq actually train NEW terrorists that can and do leave Iraq.
So, the real question is “Is the war in Iraq helping or hurting the war on terror?”
Democrats believe the answer is that it is hurting the war on terror.
Greg,
Need to check the facts, since Iraq world wide attacks via Al Qaeda are down, not up. For instance the Philippines has had a lot of success in rounding up (or killing) Al Qaeda BECAUSE of the intel gathered in Iraq.
The question remains for Democrats. The fact is they just want to quit and go home.
LOLOLOL!
You sir need to read, um, a newspaper, or the National Counterterrorism Center’s report on terrorism.
“The number of terrorist attacks worldwide increased nearly fourfold in 2005 to 11,111, with strikes in Iraq accounting for 30 percent of the total, according to statistics released by U.S. counterterrorism officials yesterday.”
(It doesn’t take much math to realize that even when you take Iraq out of that number, worldwide terror was up more than double!)
Those are the most recent numbers available. And about Al Qaeda specifically:
“Unlike those of previous years, the 2005 report included a “strategic assessment” of the war on terrorism, which concluded that while “al-Qaeda is not the organization it was four years ago,” the group was “adaptive and resilient . . . and important members of its core cadre remained alive and were adjusting to our operational tempo.”
“Overall,” the 262-page report said, “we are still in the first phase of a potentially long war. The enemy’s proven ability to adapt means we will probably go through several more cycles of action/reaction before the war’s outcome is no longer in doubt. It is likely that we will face a resilient enemy for years to come.”
The NCC report isn’t talking about “Al Qaeda” attacks as much as through it’s methodogy includes every incident without differation between significant or insignificant. What we call, Patterns of Global Terrorism, which basis the “strategic assessment” .
For instance a IED is an attack, but not necessarily a “terrorist attack”. Therefore no indicative of Al Qaeda in and of itself.
Once of key reasons the numbers are not accurate, and indeed viewing total actual threaded attack, the numbers are much lower.
Al Qaeda IS a wounded organization and NOT anywhere near as strong or effective as it once was. Yet “copy-cats” will surface – a truth that report made.
But all the numbers aside, we care not about stirring up the “hornets nest” and allowing other terrorists to come forward. Better now than later and here than now. Again, the Democrats haven’t the stomach for either.
Al Qaeda is “not the organization it was four years ago, [but it is] adaptive and resilient … and important members of its core cadre remain[] alive and [are] adjusting to our operational tempo.”
The return of al Qaeda:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070129&s=bergen012907
“But, today, from Algeria to Afghanistan, from Britain to Baghdad, the organization once believed to be on the verge of impotence is again ascendant. Attacks by jihadists have reached epidemic levels in the past three years, with terrorists carrying out dramatic operations in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, as well as multiple suicide attacks across the Middle East and Asia–not only in Iraq, but also in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. Meanwhile, jihadists have made inroads in the horn of Africa; the Taliban’s efforts to turn Afghanistan back into a failed state appear to be succeeding; and Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch recently declared sovereignty over the country’s vast Anbar province.”
As to the rest of your post, well, I wish I could understand it. What is a “viewing total actual threaded attack?”
Hold the phone. The very minute you start talking about the “War on Al Qaeda” instead of the “War on Terror”, you can feel free to start breaking down the source of the terrorist attacks. Until then, if the target of your “war” is a methodology, the relevant statistics relate to that methodology.
With the current definition of the war, if a Muslim extremist commits a terrorist attack, it makes absolutely no difference whether he is a member of Al Qaeda, Al No-bush, or just some random nutcase.
Bush has made it very clear that the war doesn’t end when Al Qaeda is made impotent. The war ends people (typically Muslim extremists) stop trying to attack us and our allies. By that same logic, we aren’t “winning the war” until the total number of attempted attacks (or at least the probability of success of said attacks) is decreasing.
That is an incredibly simplistic viewpoint. A hornet is a hornet. If you kill every hornet and every hornet larvae today, there will be no hornets tomorrow. But there’s little, if anything, biological about a terrorist. If you kill a terrorist today, you will turn some percentage of his otherwise moderate friends and family into terrorists. What was once a lazy bumblebee is now a hornet.
Now it is theoretically possible to kill the terrorists faster than you’re creating them, but we haven’t come close to proving that we’re doing so. As Greg pointed out, it is very possible that we’re doing the opposite.
Go right ahead and keep assuming that everyone who doesn’t agree with you is weak and stupid. It’s an easy way to get through life. I hope you sleep well at night with such assumptions. Just remember that the enemy is militant exactly because they make the exact same assumptions.
Jeff,
“That is an incredibly simplistic viewpoint. ” The best solutions come from the slimplistic, at least for us who are actually fighting this war. The hornet analogy is actually what has been missing up until the Iraq war. Prior the enemy was underground and hidden, now they are out in the open. The Art of War paraprased, “Let your enemy make themselves visible”.
The point of the post is that Bush clarified the positions – either for or against – as it’s very simple now who is on what side of the war.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong. – HL Mencken.
You aren’t just identifying who is for us or “agin” us, you’re creating more terrorists. They go to Iraq, train on how to set up IEDs and run a terror-cell, then they leave. Where do they go? London, Madrid, and if reports are to be believed, they have plans to come here.
It’s not here OR there, Macranger, it’s here AND there! The world is less safe now, not more.
I would hope not. Simplism by its very definition is not a good thing.
I think you were referring more towards someone who challenges key assumptions and asks simple questions that others take for granted. That is certainly a good thing to do from time to time, but that really doesn’t support your argument.
The simplest assumption we ever make on this issue is “should we even have a ‘presence’ in the middle east?” Other countries don’t go around “establishing a presence” in various parts of the world. We sure as heck wouldn’t tolerate anyone “establishing a presence” near us.