January 27, 2007
Perhaps
Ray Mileur
Defending America's Values
In a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters that resolutions under consideration in Congress to express disapproval of President Bush’s plan to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq could embolden and encourage America’s enemies there.
Makes you wonder what has emboldened them for the past four years?
Perhaps it was the failing of this President to build a real international coalition prior to the Iraq invasion, forcing the US to shoulder the full cost and consequences of the war that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is the paranoia that is spread by the bureaucrats and politicians that emboldens the enemy?
Perhaps it is because, the United States is engaging in an illegal and unjust war that emboldens the enemy?
Perhaps it is because as military analyst William Arkin points out forcefully, “every time we pretend we are fighting for our survival we not only confer greater power and importance to terrorists than they deserve but we also at the same time act as their main recruiting agent by suggesting that they have the slightest potential for success.”
Perhaps it is because we bomb ice cream trucks, that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is the fact that Bush administration lied to us, to lead us into this war, and we the American people know it, that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is the $100s of millions of dollars that we have funneled to Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the past, that has emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is because we are stuck in the middle of a civil war that is distracting us from the real war on terror that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it was the approving the demobilization of the Iraqi Army in May, 2003 that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is because the United States is considered the greatest threat to world peace by 80% of Europeans that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is because the United States is fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong troop that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is the refusal of this administration to cede any control of Post-invasion Iraq to the international community, meaning reconstruction has received limited aid from European allies or the U.N that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps having no real plan for the occupation of Iraq is what emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is running up a foreign deficit of “such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy”, that, that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps it is micromanagement that keeps our forces from having enough resources to do the job that emboldens the enemy.
Perhaps, just perhaps, it may not be the passing of these non-binding resolutions that emboldens the enemy. After all, isn’t that why Americans voted to send Democrats to Washington to take control of Congress away from the imitation Republicans, so that non-binding resolutions could be passed?
Perhaps.
"Fighting for America's Future"
