Jeremy Dibbell is underwhelmed with Bush's latest "major speech." For me, it is too little, far too late. However, this speech's purpose is essentially one-fold: convince the American people that the president is clued in. Hence, you see a certain analytic complexity that has been heretofore absent. "I am aware," is the state to which we've sunk in presidential rhetoric.
In reading the text of it, some interesting things stand out. First, is the repeated use of the word "militants" as opposed to the oft-favored "terrorists." Second, Bush presents a pretty straightforward analysis of global jihadism's networked structure -- implicitly conceding its stateless nature after years of a state-centric anti-terrorist "strategy," used in part to justify attacking Iraq.
Third, this analysis avoids Bush's past attempts to fallaciously conflate al-Qaeda's threat with the invasion of Iraq. We are seeing the White House's realization that their 'bumper-sticker' communication strategy is now too unsophisticated to reach the American public, and so they've abandoned it. Fourth, instead, rather than attempting to validate America's presence in Iraq with the tired, ex post facto invasion justification, something new emerges:
[The] militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments. Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal, for a time, in Afghanistan. Now they've set their sights on Iraq. Bin Laden has stated: "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries. It's either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation." The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
It's the same "central front" rhetoric, but with a new twist; a twist that is, in my opinion, more conducive to reality than anything we've been led to believe in the past. The burgeoning "withdraw now" coalition (or make that "strategic redeployment" if you prefer euphemism) has no immediate answer to this new twist -- a fatal flaw -- even if they do smell "victory" in the latest Zogby numbers.
Yet the president's own fatal flaw is that it is his policies that have created and sustained this condition in Iraq. That is something that can't be bullshat away anymore. Al-Qaeda is having itself a wonderful time in Iraq, which both mandates we defeat them there and requires us to examine the bone-headedness that turned a post-invasion Iraq into the failed state in which al-Qaeda thrives.
Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001 -- and al Qaeda attacked us anyway.
That is one piss-poor counter-argument. First, Iraq was not involved in September 11, and yet we attacked it on those grounds. Second, idiots arguing that the invasion of Iraq legitimates al-Qaeda's terrorism are hardly worth refuting, but the point is that Bush has done so little to delegitimize terrorism, and that incidents of it have actually grown ever since. Zarqawi's al-Qaeda group is actually starting to govern exposed communities in western Iraq. For that I blame Rumsfeldian incompetence, and -- simultaneously -- for that I remain unpersuaded by "withdraw now" sanctimony.
But this is the speech that Bush should have given long ago. It is the basis on which America should have founded its post-9/11 policies. It is the rock on which a truly global coalition could have been built. Now, we see what a strategic distraction the Iraq invasion has been from that mission. Now we see just how much we have squandered our Nation's credibility and capital.
Styg, sorry but was what I saw and heard was just more pathetic rhetoric. He was talking about "terrorists" yet most people who heard this drivel knew they were listening to none other than the leading culprit himself. Iraq was a fools errand and thus the perfect pastime for the smirking chimp.
I'm with Bill Odom. So when are you going to come to your senses man?
Posted by: Dorman | 06 October 2005 at 08:40 PM