By Ted Belman ——–May 6, 2008
The best response to 9/11 is still the matter of heated debate.
Obama wants out of Iraq and into Afghanistan and wants Pakistan bombed. Democrats generally argue we should have stayed in that theater and not gone into Iraq and what they want to do now is correct the administration’s mistake. Hillary shares this view except for the bombing of Pakistan.
I don’t get it. They know chaos would ensue in Iraq but argue its not America’s problem. But it is. If you remove Afghanistan as a safe haven, the terrorists will go elsewhere, possibly to Iraq or Sudan or Somalia. The Iraqi government is not strong enough to prevent the fracturing of the country creating chaos throughout the adjacent countries. Between the Middle East and Afghanistan, its a no-brainer. The Middle East has the oil.
There is no question that we are worse off for having invaded Iraq, and will be worse off still if we get out. But what else should America have done. What was the proper response to 9/11? It wasn’t a matter of revenge, it was a matter of making a difference. Bush announced his war on terror but never really fought it, not really. What War on Terror?
Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 highjackers were Saudis. The Saudis are financing jihad all over the world. Whether in the madrassas, the universities, the mosques, the prisons or the schools they are relentless in their zeal to propagate Islam including Sharia. They are the enemy, not terror.
Ralph Peters makes this point in a NY Post article, SAUDI STICK-UP:
1. WANT to know a key reason why you’re being robbed at the gas pump? Well, my fellow Americans, you’re being punished – for giving Iraqis a chance at democracy.
2. The Saudis ordered President Bush not to remove Saddam. The last thing that the despotic bigots in Riyadh wanted was change in the Middle East – especially change that empowered common men and women, Shia Arabs and Kurds.
He complains about The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby, and says:
1. They only care about Islam. They’d sacrifice tens of millions of Muslims to further their perversion of the faith.
I strongly disagree. It is not the perversion of their faith but the prorogation of it.
In 2003 Rachel Ehrenfeld published a book Funding Evil in which she accused the Saudis of doing so and Peters agrees. Ehrenfeld was attacked in the courts for libel and held her ground in New York resulting in the Libel Terrorism Protection Act to protect American journalists and authors from overseas defamation lawsuits.
Peters recommends, that
1. when referring to Islamist terrorists or the Saudi royal family that nurtured them for so long, let’s stop using the term “Islamo-fascists.” As horrid as Italian or Spanish fascists could be, they were enlightened humanitarians compared to either al Qaeda or our Saudi “friends.” Let’s just call fanatics “fanatics.”
Again, I disagree. I go with “Islamists”, though this word and others like it, has been barred by the State Department.
Peters goes further,
“The stunningly hypocritical Saudis have used their wealth to cut out Islam’s heart. The faith of Mohammed, peace be upon him, has no greater enemies.”
Can you believe this. Mohammed is the author of Jihad and Peters is wishing him peace? It doesn’t get weirder than that.
At least he concludes:
1. “In the heat of the moment, Iran appears to many to be our worst enemy in the Middle East. While the nut house government in Tehran is a deadly problem, it’s ultimately one of lesser scale. Our greatest enemy, anywhere, is Saudi Arabia, the cradle of terror.“
Suppose that six years ago, the US had invaded Saudi Arabia after punishing the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The US would have proceeded to secure the oil fields and secure the oil supply and revenue. To avoid an insurgency, the US could have expelled all dangerous personnel and brought in oil workers from around the world including the US. This revenue would go first to reimburse the US for costs and then to create a fund for the poor in the Middle East and Africa. This money would have earned the US lots of good will and friends.
If the US would have thus cut off the head of the snake, the body would have withered away.
But the US would never do it.
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