Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dan DeWalt, an artisan and activist interested in democracy and the Constitution. He writes from South Newfane.
Same old same old. Barack Obama went in front of the television cameras to tell us why we should wage war with terrorists and it just as well could have been George W. Bush talking. He somberly told us about the latest grave threat to our “homeland” and why we should give him unfettered freedom to unleash America’s military might in response.
The trouble is that this is just another chapter in an ongoing saga of an ignorant American foreign policy that has created an a series of ever increasingly dangerous terrorist organizations. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, we armed the mujaheddin fighters in opposition, Osama bin Laden among them. After the Russians were driven out, bin Laden saw America as another enemy of Islam, but when George Bush senior attacked Sadaam Hussein, bin Laden agreed to an American military presence in Saudi Arabia, as long as it was temporary. America ignored his threats, did not vacate the bases, and we all know about the consequent success of al-Qaida culminating in the attacks of Sept. 11. Bin Laden wanted to goad America into a costly and debilitating war, and he succeeded. George W. Bush destroyed a functioning secular country (Iraq), cost America around a trillion dollars, killed about 10,000 American soldiers in two wars, seriously injured and traumatized tens of thousands of others and created a bitter political divide in America’s body politic.
As we were supposedly “wiping up remnants” of a destroyed al-Qaida in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq spawned an offshoot, al-Qaida in Iraq, whom we have been fighting ever since. When the U.S. military controlled parts of Iraq, this extremist opposition went underground and away from American areas. They continued to train and took advantage of the American invasion that brought them a steady stream of new jihadist recruits to train. When America forged a new government in Iraq, our shortsightedness and misplaced priorities led us to install a Shia version of a “democratic” Sadaam who abused the majority Sunnis and alienated them as he made their lives miserable. Many Iraqis are now so disgusted and terrorized by the current Iraqi administration that they welcome any change, even one brought by a group like the Islamic State (aka ISIS), which is what al-Qaida in Iraq now calls itself.
By publicizing the beheadings of two Americans, ISIS is again trying to goad America into another deadly and costly military action just like the last ones. They know that a violent military response only breeds more recruits for their jihadist camps. They welcome the martyrdom of death while fighting infidels and nothing will make them happier than a battle against the might of the U.S. President Obama has taken their bait and is following their game plan.
Obama has to know that there is no end to terror groups that will grow and flourish in response to armed aggression by Western military forces against Islamic peoples. Yet he is taking the same counter-productive and dangerous route that Bush/Cheney chose; one that will only lead us into further violence, bloodshed, monetary costs and societal disintegration. He boasts about our success in fighting terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere, but that just means more massacred wedding parties and civilians, a few more dead terrorists and many more jihadist recruits. While it’s hard to tell just what may be driving him internally to take this stance, there is no question that the news media and, alas, the public are once again fanning the flames, favoring military “strikes” and demanding that the good guys take a stand and wipe out the bad guys. Pundits tell us that the public has been appalled and thus energized by the “barbaric” beheading of the Americans. We’re not troubled by the “civilized” attack of a Hellfire missile into an apartment house that transforms a mother and daughter into a scattering of body parts – victims of being related to the wrong person, or perhaps, simply as “collateral damage,” as long as it’s done by us or our allies. If this indeed the case, then we the people have become a sick parody of what Americans are supposed to be: independent thinkers, suspicious of lying governments and interested in the welfare of others. In our collective ignorance, we allow politicians to posture and parrot empty rhetoric, while making ill-informed decisions that will do great damage to our nation and our futures.
By publicizing the beheadings of two Americans, ISIS is again trying to goad America into another deadly and costly military action just like the last ones. They know that a violent military response only breeds more recruits for their jihadist camps.
One Hellfire missile costs $58,000, and we shoot them freely into villages and compounds. How much more long term anti-jihadist value would there be in spending bursts of $58K that constructed a school in a village, rather than blowing one up? How willing would Sunni villages be to support ISIS if the U.S. and its client Iraqi government had shown them cultural respect and invested money into water, health clinics or agricultural assistance for them? Would the Iraqi army have capitulated to ISIS fighters (and given them all of the U.S. military equipment that has enabled their rapid advances) if the army had trusted the government and the government had fully trusted and empowered the army?
ISIS is a dangerous threat to people in the region. We should try to bolster those who offer an alternative to their nihilism, but to think that more military action on our part will do anything other than make the problem worse is indulging in fantasy. We won’t really be fooled again, will we?
Read the story on VTDigger here: Dan DeWalt: Same old same old.