Tonight, marking five years since the attacks of September 11, 2001 President George W Bush declared: "Today we are safer, but we are not yet safe." Aiming for the rafters with his rhetoric, Mr. Bush continued:
Since the horror of 9/11, we’ve learned a great deal about the enemy. We have learned that they are evil and kill without mercy, but not without purpose.
We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam: a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent.
And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.
The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.
Five years after the attacks Mr. Bush has found renewed vigor to go after the enemy. We have come to expect this from our President. He is a late bloomer. His 7-minutes of infamy on September 11, 2001 and his fiddling while New Orleans drowned have taught us that this President is slow to catch on.
In responding to the terrorist attacks on America, Mr. Bush did not fiddle. Instead he invaded the wrong country. Today he confessed that people often ask him why on Earth he would do such a thing:
I am often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.
My administration, the Congress and the United Nations saw the threat.
And, after 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.
The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.
I wonder if the American public will continue to take Mr. Bush at his word on Iraq. Will the American people believe Saddam was a threat just because Mr. Bush says so? I wonder what evidence there is that the world is safer because Saddam Hussein no longer is at the helm in Iraq. The Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, wrote in a Washington Post opinion column today that he believes Mr. Bush is losing the war on terror and we are definitely not safer:
In North and South Waziristan, the tribal regions along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an alliance of extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, Central Asians, and Chechens has won a significant victory against the army of Pakistan. The army, which has lost some 800 soldiers in the past three years, has retreated, dismantled its checkpoints, released al-Qaeda prisoners and is now paying large "compensation" sums to the extremists.
…
If this is indeed a long war, as the Bush administration says, then the United States has almost certainly lost the first phase. Guerrillas are learning faster than Western armies, and the West makes appalling strategic mistakes while the extremists make brilliant tactical moves.
As al-Qaeda and its allies prepare to spread their global jihad to Central Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the Middle East, they will carry with them the accumulated experience and lessons of the past five years. The West and its regional allies are not prepared to match them.
However, Mr. Bush is oblivious to the facts on the ground. There is an election to win in November and the "facts" must be fixed around the rhetoric.
Mr. Bush wants to convince Americans that the war in Iraq was not a distraction. How well he sells this point will determine the fate of the Republicans in November. So, a little fear mongering is in order:
Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.
They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.
Mr. Bush is correct here. Pulling out of Iraq will not solve the problem of terrorism. However, neither will staying. Invading Iraq did nothing to diminish the terrorist threat to the United States. All evidence however suggests that the invasion in fact provided a wonderful recruiting tool for the extremists. Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda before Mr. Bush embarked on three years of chaos. After wasting the blood and treasure of the United States and Iraq for three years, Mr. Bush now wants to convince us that staying in Iraq somehow is holding a tide of terrorists back. Only a moron would believe that.
The real war against extremism is not in Iraq. It is, and has been for decades, in the streets of Third World Muslim countries. In this war the United States has often colluded with, and actively aided, the extremists against the secular forces. To this day, the United States, and the Bush Administration in particular, ignores the toxic brew of extremism that emanates from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other so called allies. This brew has been mixing since well before 2001. 9/11 was America’s tragic exposure to the toxic mix that Muslims in the Third World have suffered through for decades.
Mr. Bush had the opportunity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to join the battle against the extremists and on the side of the majority of Muslims. He squandered that opportunity. He chose instead to alienate the entire Muslim world in order to fulfill his own ideological goals. Mr. Bush, by his actions, has created a world that is more dangerous now than it was 5 years ago. Yet he claims that we are safer now than before.
Delusions cannot be substitutes for facts.
Mash, thank you for making this post. I didn’t get to see his speech this evening. Did you see Keith Olbermann last night? Please go view the video on Crooks & Liars. I have never been so proud of him in my life.
Also, Keith discussed how Al-Qaeda now has control over one of the three provinces in Iraq. I forget the name of it, but it’s the western one the borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Nice going, Der Leader.[-(
Even the Bushistas I know are getting depressed over the failure of Iraq to yield anything positive. Read Richard Cohen’s column in today’s WaPo: Cohen is often a wanker, but today he nails it, that BinLaden had a fortunate choice of enemies in Bush/Cheney, and has won so far.
I did not quite understand your choice of title for this post, but it brings up something silly, Bill Shatner’s cover of “Lucy In the Sky…” http://www.devilducky.com/media/29841/
Sometimes I need to laugh so I won’t weep.
Good post. I agree so many avoidable mistakes were made after 9/11.
Ack! I am getting pummelled with comment spam! ~X( I may have to put in some CAPTCHA filter >:p
Robbie, I saw Olbermann. His commenteries lately have been very powerful. His delivery along with his writing make for powerful commentary.
Mr. Bill, Cohen has completely turned around on Iraq. When you lose Cohen you are pretty much alone (only Krystal and Krauthammer are holding on with bare knuckles).
About the title, my mother always said not to write when you are angry. I was angry and the only word that came into my head during the speech is “delusion”. Hence the acid reference from the song. My apologies for the rather obscure reference – it only made sense in my head at the time. :-b
My European friend, thanks. I know there wasn’t much substance to the post. But, I intend to follow it up with some posts on extremism in countries like Bangladesh and their causes over time. I hope those posts will round out the broad but unsupported claim I made at the end of this post:
Now back to work…
@-)
Mash, good to see you back. This country’s chosen country bumpkin was told about an agenda and it had been pursued before 9/11. I posted Dahr Jamail’s interview with Ray McGovern (part 3, part 1 and 2 I posted last week), ex CIA guy who had some choice and insightful words to say about the neo-cons. One word that would some it up, unsurprisingly; the crazies! Just as Israel had been waiting for the opportune time to attack Hizbullah, so did the US. I think that is known all over the place, save the pulpits who need to play ‘follow the Godly leader’..
Ingrid
And STILL the neo-convicts try to reel in the tragically dumb by conflating 9-11 and Iraq.
GWB: We fight the terrorists in Iraq because we were attacked on 9-11.
REPORTER: Mr. President, haven’t all the links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda been shown to be false?
GWB: I’m not connecting them. Who said that? I’d like to see you prove that I misled anyone on that point.
REPORTER: Well, Mr. President, it just so happens that I have taped transcripts of at least 10 occasions when you explicitly connected the two, and even more occasions when Mr. Cheney did the same thing.
GWB: Liar! That’s it, press conference over. Dang lib’rul media is out to get me!
REPORTER: Sir, this isn’t a press conference…you’re here to dedicate a memorial.
GWB: One more word out of you, hippie, and I’ll get some NSA transcripts of all your phone conversations since 2002. Now, outta my way, there’s some brush what needs clearin’ down in Crawford. Gotta love that brush, heh heh…don’t talk back, just sits back and takes gettin’ cut and burned. Why can’t everyone be that way? Presidentin’ is too HARD!
REPORTER: Uh…sir…your pants are on fire.
GWB: Says YOU! You’re the “liar, liar” here!
REPORTER: No sir, your pants are actually on fire. I hesitate to remind you (for fear of ending up in GitMo)that you’re not in Crawford yet, and that’s not brush you’re igniting but Eleanor Clift’s hair.
GWB: I KNOW that smarty-pants. I’m just trying some of my world-famous gentle persuasion to get her and her commie lib’rul friends to back off.
REPORTER: No worries sir…I think she’s “cutting and running” for the nearest fire hose.
GWB: Heh heh heh.
Welcome back, Mash.
Ingrid and Mandrake, its good to be back.
Mandrake, you know, I am having trouble deciding whether or not the transcript you quote is real. :d
My God, what a disaster our response to 9/11 has been. Leaving A-stan like we did for Iraq was like taking only half your medicine to kill a virus, its hard to tell what it will mutate into.
However, its only a three on the scale or worriesome issues, while Iraq, with it tying up 10 of 12 active Army divisions, is rating a ten.
And the petri dish that is present day Iraq has already boiled over with some new mix of terrorism and violence that leaves one wondering what exactly the Bush Admin. really has created.
It’s certainly not anything that 130,000 American troops can contain. Truth be told, we would be hard pressed to defeat the Mehdi Army of al Sadr, even though we have a clear technological edge and superior weaponry, we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory, where insurgents and civilians are hard to distinguish from one another.
Hello Vietnam. Goodbye Iraq. It’s 1974 all over again, and we have yet to send the last chopper out of the Green Zone. But the day will come, and the images of us leaving and declaring “victory” or that “Iraqi forces are now in control of their own country” will ring just as hollow as the similar announcements regarding Vietnam did over 30 years ago.