What's it all about, Bushie?

Cast your minds back.

Consider: at Noon on the eleventh of September in the year 2001 C.E., was the nation of Afghanistan at war with us? Did the government of Afghanistan make an official declaration of war against the United States? Did the armed forces of Afghanistan attack us? Did agents of the government of Afghanistan attack us? Did the people of Afghanistan attack us?

The answer to all these questions is, “No”.

Who did attack us? An extra-national organization which shared a religious viewpoint with the government of Afghanistan. To date, it has never been shown that the government of Afghanistan had a hand in either the planning or the execution of the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, it has never been shown that the Taliban knew anything of the 9/11 attacks until they happened. While it surely knew their attitudes and general intentions, the Taliban only gave Al Qaeda sanctuary. In return, OBL provided weapons, vehicles and other items which the government of Afghanistan either could not afford, or obtain through normal channels.

By what right did we send armed forces into Afghanistan?

While most hawks will admit that the people and government of Afghanistan were no threat to us, most on the anti-war left admit that we were justified in going into Afghanistan after OBL.

I hope that I can be forgiven for being confused.

It is a fact that the government of Iraq provided sanctuary, training, financial and moral support to Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, PLO, Islamic Jihad, etc. There is no proof and no reason to assume that the government of Iraq had foreknowledge of - or a hand in - the planning or execution of 9/11. So what is the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had a program to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Unlike Afghanistan, agents of Iraq had attempted to assassinate a former President of the United States. Unlike Afghanistan, the government of Iraq was in flagrant violation of no fewer than 14 U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring it to change its behavior and open itself up to inspections designed to guarantee that it did not have either WMD or the programs necessary to produce them. Unlike Afghanistan, the government of Iraq was crafty enough to host Al Qaeda, et. al. and still maintain plausible deniability in the event of an attack upon the West.

By any measure you wish to use, Iraq was the greater threat. Nevertheless, our efforts are undercut by many who either expected a quick “video game” war - or whose only motivation is to embarrass the President politically and damn the consequences.

Take a look at the current behavior of the government of Iran and tell me that Iraq was not attempting to build a nuclear weapon and that we could have negotiated or pressured Iraq to forego its ambitions. How quickly we forget what a complete and utter failure the sanctions regime against Iraq was. Ask yourself this: would we have been able to go in and root out Al Qaeda if the nation of Afghanistan had had nuclear weapons in 2001? Or, would Osama still be living there, directing and financing operations while we tried to negotiate for his extradition?

Yeah, yeah, sure. But, speaking of which - where is Osama? Why have we not killed Osama? This ‘diversion’ in Iraq has weakened our ability to find him and fight the ‘real’ war on terror. What of Al Qaeda?

What is Al Qaeda? Is it not a loose grouping of like minded individuals all over the world? Afghanistan was its headquarters and Osama was its CEO and treasurer. What is the state of Al Qaeda today? If he’s even alive, Osama is living in a cave and is not able to direct much more than which rock to use as a pillow. Even if he is still in contact with Al Qaeda cells throughout the world, that world has got its eyes if not its hands on his money. He no longer controls anything like the organization he did in 2001. Let’s be clear, the remnants of Al Qaeda remain dangerous, but there is no longer the money or direction that there once was. If he is dead, others will step up to fill his shoes. Had our efforts in Afghanistan slowed down sufficiently, who doubts that foreign Jihadis and branch-office Al Qaedans would have run to Afghanistan? In fact, the recently resurgent Taliban is probably made up of foreign replacements of the same stripe that we face in Iraq. It is entirely reasonable to suggest, as the President has done, that many of those we now face in Iraq are preoccupied with trying to kill our soldiers there rather than our civilians at home. Why is this dismissed as irrelevant? If our invasion of Iraq caused the creation of Jihadis, then so did our invasion of Afghanistan. So would any self-defensive response have. If we defend ourselves, the call goes forth for Jihad. If we don’t defend ourselves, we are called cowardly and invite more attacks. The only question that matters is: Where will we fight these people - in the aisle of the plane or in Baghdad?

I firmly believe that we are facing a challenge the like of which we have not seen since 1865. And sadly, I don’t believe there are enough Americans left today with the fortitude necessary to see this thing through.

The NSA: Liberty vs. Survival?

Most of us understand that the NSA 'probably' has used filters to pick out certain words or phrases from phone conversations for 30 years or more. Thus, if you tell a friend over the phone that you'd love to kill the president, you should not be surprised if you get a visit from the constabulary. Do we object to that? Some do. Some don't. The point is that in my every day life, the mere fact that the government may be listening to my phone conversations, does not constitute harm to me.

Now, with that said, if the IRS seizes my bank account tomorrow because an NSA geek told them that he heard me admit to cheating on my taxes, OK, now there's trouble. We must nip that right in the bud. But, if we need to avoid that extreme, we also need to avoid the extreme that says that someone in the U.S. - even a citizen - who is talking to a known Al Qaeda member overseas deserves the same privacy as the rest of us. Are we at war? Certainly some people are trying to kill as many of us as they possibly can – that’s good enough for me – so, yes, we are at war. Is the commander-in-chief ‘allowed’ to intercept enemy communications during a time of war? Hell, yes. Can the rights of citizens be restricted for the good of the nation as a whole during war time? Centuries of case law say, “Yes”. I have no objection to this program and will defend it for a couple of years - at any rate – before I again question its necessity and efficacy.

The problem most people have with the NSA program is their fear of what I have outlined above: ‘mission creep’ – and justly so, but would you rather get dunned by the IRS because we were over-cautious or vaporized by an Al Qaeda nuclear attack because we were not cautious enough? Is this a false dichotomy? Maybe, but here again is the point: We don’t know where or when our enemies are planning to strike us and if we don’t find out in time are we going to say, “Well, we lost Chicago, but at least the government isn’t listening in to my phone conversations?” Or, is every finger in the country going to get pointed at the President for failing to protect us? We all know the answer to that question. Which tools shall we say we cannot use? But, remember, if we don’t use this tool and we get hit again we may find ourselves reaching into the box later for one we’ve sworn to never use again.

One difficulty the administration had, of which we the people were blissfully unaware, is that when the current questionable NSA program was originally suggested, it probably occurred to someone that it might violate the law by circumventing the FISA court. Now, let’s say you’re the President: what do you do? Do you send a note to Congress and say we need a law to allow us to do this? Do you start the program and then ask Congress to OK it with a new law or amendment to the current FISA statute? Or, do you decide that we need it now, regardless of its legality - and it must remain secret? The regrettable part is that had the President contacted Congress – at any time – debates and votes would have been required, knowledge of the program would have become public and severely damaged its effectiveness. Thus, the President really only ever had the last option. Now, as it happens, it did leak and its efficacy has been weakened, but the President gets full marks for doing the right thing. Laws are designed to deal with certain situations. When situations change, however, the laws rarely do – and then only very slowly, in a conspicuously open forum. That’s not what’s needed when people are - as we speak - planning attacks designed to kill hundreds of thousands of us.

Judge Richard Posner of the University of Chicago in a recent interview reminded me that 100 years ago, there were few dedicated telephone lines and we were perfectly content with party lines on which a dozen or more people could easily eavesdrop. Does the availability of privacy create the right to it? It just may be that our current expectations of privacy are just that – expectations – and have no corresponding basis in law.

A stupid idea for your consideration

All rational, intelligent and educated people, whether they admit it or not, recognize that our problems have their origin in the large numbers of disaffected people of the Islamic faith.

It is axiomatic that we cannot kill them all; nor can we win in a propaganda war when the authoritarian governments and religious authorities who rule these people control access to information. Our current experience indicates that creating democratic institutions is very difficult, if not impossible.

Thus, we find that we cannot convince them - by propaganda or the introduction of democracy - to stop attacking us; we cannot defeat them militarily and we cannot effectively defend ourselves against them without gutting civil liberties.

What do we do? Our only choice seemingly is to withdraw from the world stage, close our borders and resign ourselves, as have the Europeans, to the occasional attack.

Of course, the occasional attack could be a nuclear one, but, while we could lose upwards of a million people if a moderately-sized nuke were detonated in Manhattan, we might then win this war militarily by turning much of the Middle East into a lake of glass for the next 100,000 years. Even then, however, we would likely face other Islamic extremists from Asia or those who have emigrated to Europe. Thus, we find that even as we kill more and more of the Jihadis, their deaths seem only to serve as a greater enticement to others - and we are forced to accept that for every 100 we kill, 250 are created. Again, we are brought face to face with the fact that there is no military solution short of overthrowing the entire Middle East and/or killing all Muslims. Now, if that seems unacceptable, then where are we left – and what do we do?

The key to this situation (which we have known all along) is the one thing which unites all those who violently oppose and attack us.

Here is one avenue that we have not investigated. It is an avenue which I expect we will not try as it will be anathema to perhaps half of American citizens. The avenue falls generally under the heading of “convincing”, but would still require a great sacrifice and loss of life in the attempt.

That avenue is conversion.

The acceptance of a modern religion by those currently of the Muslim faith would obviate the misguided religious fervor that animates the violence perpetrated against us.

As has been done since the founding of the Church in the aftermath of Jesus’ execution, those of the faith have gone to all parts of the world and proselytized for the acceptance of a faith based on love and community. And, just as in the olden times, many will die for their faith in the attempts.

We needn’t focus exclusively on Christianity, but of the major religions, it is the least hated by Muslims. Judaism, well, forget it. Hinduism has been at loggerheads with Islam on the subcontinent for centuries. Buddhism might work, but Christianity has the great benefit of a supreme leader in the Pope – for Catholics, and the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury for many Protestants. Other Protestant denominations are small enough that democratically elected supervisory boards effectively manage affairs. Having one person or a small group of policy makers means less chance of sects which advocate and engage in activities counter to the main stream of religious thought.

Today, of the affected areas, Christianity has the greatest foothold in Africa. It is North and East that the message must travel.

This may well be a staggeringly stupid idea. Certainly, five years ago I would have thought mad anyone who proposed it. Yet, re-read the first five paragraphs above and then ask yourself what other ideas and options are out there?

The only thing that is crystal clear in our situation today is this: Either we will drag the Islamic world into modernity or they will drag us back into the medieval. And since a medieval world containing nuclear weapons will not remain a world for very long, even the most outlandish ideas ought be considered.