Douglas Feith has written a book, and in it he describes how the current administration made key decisions regarding the war on terror. He tells of how uncertain things seemed after 9/11, and how panicked and worried the administration was that no one really knew what was going to happen next. Mr. Feith also talks about the decision to leave diplomacy behind, and tackle head-on the people that wanted to hurt the U.S., and our allies. And to be sure, there are many enemies of the U.S. that are in no way interested in talking to us, they do not use terrorism as leverage to broker a deal. Many of our enemies use terrorist tactics as a frontal assault, simply used to kill as many Westerners as possible. Al-Queda is probably one of the most infamous, but there are many other groups with similar aims. The radical Muslims also seek to drive unbelievers from all holy lands, and even doing business with the West is some sort of sin.
Clearly, diplomacy is not the tool to be used with such groups. But of course there are many problems with trying to merely go out and kill every group that says it does not like the U.S. Some of these problems include relations with foreign governments that we depend on, like Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is where we import a huge amount of oil, and while the U.S. has some friends within their leadership, the fact that the state religion of Saudi Arabia is the strict form of Islam known as Wahhabi is a bit of a thorn. To these strict adherents, Sharia law is how the country should be ruled, which is essentially laws from the 14th century, strict and unforgiving. On 9/11, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, from this strict religious school of thought. And while it is easy to believe that the members of Al-Queda are poor people, ignorant of the world at large, the uneasy truth is that many followers of this virulently anti-Western school of thought are educated. Many are educated outside of the middle east, which is stunning when you consider these people have known and met Westerners, and yet still find it plausible that killing non-believers is the correct thing to do. This shows the level of indoctrination, most importantly in the children, of people that can somehow decide that killing others is a good thing. In fact, they believe that Allah wants this, and it is difficult if not impossible to try to reason with someone who thinks that their God wants you dead.
But of course, we never invaded Saudi Arabia. We did go after the Taliban in Afghanistan, as they were known to be harboring Al-Queda. But then, we took our eyes off the target, and went into Iraq. A country ruled by a cruel dictator, as many countries are. But what is staggering to me is to listen to people like Douglas Feith, who actually say that going into Iraq seemed like a good idea at the time. As if we were going to a kegger(sp?) instead of invading a country. Well of course it seemed like the right thing to do, after we dismissed any and all factual evidence, and simply went in based on a sources so unreliable that there was no independant sources to verify what we were being told was the reasons we needed to invade. In fact, the U.N. weapons inspectors who were actually in Iraq kept wondering where these WMD’s could possibly be, and as it turns out, they had been gone for quite some time. Although we did eventually stumble upon a weapons stockpile so old that is was no longer usable, well thank goodness we invaded a country for that.
What is truly bewildering is that Saddam Hussein was a power hungry despot, unwilling to share his political power with religion. And so naturally we invaded Iraq, and now religious factions fight viciously for control of that shattered nation. Does no one get this? We invaded one of the precious few nations in the region that was essentially secular in rule, and while their leader may have been a horrible person, he was not affiliated in any way with the religious extremists that are our true enemy, you rememeber, the ones that actually attacked us? But Douglas Feith is carrying on a proud tradition. Watching him talk about his book, I was reminded of the House of Medici. This family was ruthless, cruel, and did whatever it took to get what they wanted. But this family had a great deal of money, and they paid artists, and writers, to paint an ever so lovely portrait of them. Some things never change, as this new book shows.
