Strangler, just because I dare to suggest the Bush Administration is doing something wrong, don't lump me in with liberal howlers who have no idea what they're talking about. Within that post alone, you assumed that I think Bush is a fascist dictator (I don't, in fact I think his election is legitimate even if I disagree with the majority), that I am calling his supporters evil (I'm not and never did) and that I think we should lay out all our government secrets on the table (I don't). The only reason you don't see me picking apart Typhoid every once in a while is because you do that just fine on your own. I don't treat you as a Bible-thumping backwoods hick who wants to nuke the rest of the world while dressed in an American flag. Please have the courtesy to treat me as my own person.
Now, you're suggesting that because we haven't been attacked since 9/11, we've got a victory and everything the Bush Administration is doing is working. It reminds me of the story of the man who said that if you danced in a circle, tigers wouldn't attack you in Africa. When somebody pointed out that there are no tigers in Africa, he said, "See! It works!" You just can't use logic like that. When there is another attack, I suppose you'll tell me that we've only had one terrorist attack in several years and that therefore we are doing well.
It's not that I am willing to be attacked again but that I am realistic enough to know that we will be attacked again. The UK had terrorism on its soil for years even before 2001, and all the same, they were attacked. It's not that I think Tony Blair is incompetent. I just recognize that time is on the side of the terrorists and that it's a very long war we've got going here. Given that, the question is how are we going to react to it. Getting scared of the next attack seems a bit counter-productive given that they are called "terrorists." And the thing about the Constitution is it's not something we can just hide away when it's inconvenient for us. It's meaningless that way (and make no mistake, detaining people indefinitely without due process is unconstitutional and Justice Scalia himself wouldn't argue otherwise).
Al Qaeda and their ilk are twisted, but they aren't totally stupid. They know that they could inflict a 9/11 type disaster on us ten times over without coming close to bringing us to our knees. It would be painful, but the country would pick itself up and get going on its business again. In pure number terms, they can't win and they know it. But when we go back on the principles of liberty and freedom that we preach so loudly to the rest of the world, what message do you think that sends to terrorists?
Now, as for the detainees, there's nothing anybody can do to free an innocent person in there. They have no access to the outside world and there are no legal avenues at all to free someone even if there is evidence that he's innocent. Yeah, one could bring it to the attention of the authorities, but how much attention do you think they would pay to, say, an alibi? They had a suspicion of the person in the first place, and we all know they're not going to give up that suspicion easily. So all anybody can do is sit and wait for the long process to work itself out. That's what's so unaccountable about the whole thing.
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In WW2 over 1,000 servicemen were killed in an EXCERCISE preparing for the european invasion. Something like that could never be tolerated by the public, so it was kept SECRET so that what needed to be done WOULD be done.
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Had the public known about that, they would have gotten angry and demanded that somebody find out who was responsible for such a waste of lives. What they
wouldn't have done is demand that we drop out of World War II altogether. Therein lies the difference. People back then were perfectly willing to see the war to its end. It's very simple: fascists represented a clear threat to us. It might not have been clear until one December 7th morning, but once we figured that out, nothing was going to stop us.
Or consider Afghanistan. That was also pretty straightforward. President Bush said, "Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, and they are supported by the Taliban. We're going to get them." And the public agreed more or less that it ought to be done, and it was done. I'll have you know that I was in support of that war, much to the chagrin of some fellow Swarthmore students. Today, Afghanistan is struggling to set up a democracy while guerilla warfare continues outside of its capital, but you don't see very many people complaining. During the actual war in Afghanistan, I remember a lot of people saying, "This is going to be very hard" and "This is going to cost a lot of lives" and "President Bush is doing this wrong" but I saw very few people suggesting that we shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan to begin with.
But then consider Iraq. Remember how that started? Back in 2002, President Bush was saying that we had to get in there to get rid of WMDs. He and his administration presented evidence that Iraq had a weapons program and that it had ties to Al Qaeda and so on. It was called a pre-emptive war to stop further terrorist attacks. There was no talk back then of establishing a democracy in the Middle East so that it would spread freedom and change the entire region and strike at the very root of the culture that spawns terrorism. That's all well and good, but it's not why we went to war. This was one case where the media was actually spreading the message that President Bush wanted. The Washington Post was even in support of the war because its columnists were convinced by the evidence that Saddam had WMDs.
Now here we are two years later, and the reason we're in Iraq is suddenly to spread democracy? Frankly, that looks more to me like trying to make the best out of a messy situation. And as noble as the idea is, the public is discontented because they feel just a bit cheated in the whole matter. Even red staters are turning against the war. After all, that's where most soldiers come from, and they prefer to have a straightforward reason for going to war. What if President Bush had said, right from the beginning, that the main goal was to establish a democracy, free millions of Iraqis and hopefully change the entire Middle East in the process? It would have been a hard sell, but I guarantee Bush would have much less of a problem at home (to say nothing of getting Congress to approve funding for soldiers and so on). And if he couldn't manage that, maybe he should have been willing to wait. Or maybe he should have started his democratic project in Afghanistan just to prove it could work.
Surely I'm not the only one who notices that we are perfectly willing to see the conflict in Afghanistan through to the end.