posted
Although I will be very likely voting republican in the fall, I find myself paying very close attention to what John Kerry is saying because of the very real possibility that he will be our next president. One of my concerns is about what he will do in the war on terror, not just in Iraq, but elsewhere as well. With all of the posturing right now before the election, it's difficult for me to see how he will behave if he is elected.
So my question is, how do you think our government will change it's policies in the war on terror should John Kerry be elected?
posted
Well, short of going crazy with the Cheez Whiz, I don't see how he could make more of a pig's ear out of it.
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posted
War on Terror minus the crusade, minus the preemptive wars, and plus international cooperation...
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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"War on Terror minus the crusade, minus the preemptive wars, and plus international cooperation..."
Ok, fair enough. Can you explain how the US would be at war without preemptive wars? In other words, do we wait until terrorists attack and then respond? and does 'minus the preemtive wars' mean that the US won't be hunting for terrorists itself?
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Tres' assertion is that Kerry will continue the War on Terror but will discontinue the highly contraversial way in which it has thus far been waged, from the battlefields (and the selection thereof) to foreign relations.
Posts: 4350 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Ok, fair enough. Can you explain how the US would be at war without preemptive wars? In other words, do we wait until terrorists attack and then respond? and does 'minus the preemtive wars' mean that the US won't be hunting for terrorists itself?
I mean like how Jordan stopped that terrorist attack a week ago. They didn't have to go invade countries like Iraq. They just gathered their intelligence and arrested the terrorists.
It would be a war in the way the war on drugs was a war.
I guess that's my question, what is it exactly that we would do?
I find some security with the fact that we are actively hunting/pursuing terrorists... and before I decide exactly who to vote for, I'm hoping to get a better understanding of how Kerry's administration might handle things.
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posted
John Kerry has stated that he would turn over Iraq to the UN, so most likely Iraq would end up in terrorist or terrorist friendly hands. He's also said that he would treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem and not a military probelm. In other words, the war on terror ends and terrorists are treated no differently than other criminals.
I've got my issues with Bush, and in a perfect world I'd be voting for a third party candidate. But Kerry's stance on the War on Terror frightens me so much that I will certainly vote for Bush to help prevent Kerry's plan of appeasement.
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I suppose comfort relative to not pursuing. My concern is that if we aren't aggressive enough, the terrorist organizations will certainly focus their efforts now that they know that they can hit us at home. The comfort I feel now is in the knowledge that we are tyring to keep them running...making it more difficult to plan and organize as much as they might otherwise if we weren't being so aggressive.
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posted
I'm not so sure that admitting the US lacks the authority or the resources to occupy foreign countries at the drop of a hat counts as appeasing terrorists.
In fact, the whole "appeasing terrorists" thing is getting a bit old to my ears, which to date have never heard a single American politician suggest that we give terrorists what they want.
You beat me to it. It's not the analogy I would have used to make people feel better about Kerry as president. And he does scare me less than our current president.
And I do notice that this is a forum that has a healthy representation of votes on both sides going to "scares me less" and "dislikes least."
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posted
I would agree with you if terrorism was really a matter of a bunch of organizations, like rogue nations, that we could gather together and squash. But it's not.
Terrorism is more like leaks springing from an aging dam. You can patch individual leaks. You can even declare a War on Leaks and hammer thick rubber patches into LOTS of leaks -- but if your hammering weakens the dam so that more leaks spring up, you aren't making things more secure.
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posted
The War on Terror, as John Kerry sees it, is more of a law enforcement and intelligence operations. Therefore, the war on terror will begin to focus more on rooting out terrorist cells and organizations and working with law enforcement organizations of our allies to apprehend them before they can perform any more heinous acts. When there is an actual situation where a foreign government harbors and supports terrorists (i.e. Afghanistan) Kerry has said he will use the United Nations, NATO, and other international coalitions to deal with the problem, up to and including military action.
How does this differ from the Bush policy? Bush has, up to this point, worked largely on sealing America's borders to terrorists, and dismantling states that harbor them. this is a far easier to plan, as it involves traditional military tactics of invasion and occupation, rather than attempting to destroy diffuse, non-state entities which you can't even really do with a strong military alone. Nevertheless, dismantling safe havens for terrorists is important, especially in a case like Afghanistan whering the government has a special relationship with the terrorist group.
Kerry has also said that the war in Iraq was a mistake and has actually hurt the war on terror. I believe this is the case, and I sincerely hope Kerry is elected so he can help bring the rest of the world in on this. According to recent polling, where last March the Iraqis were split down the middle as to whether Americans were an occupying or liberating force, the scales have now tipped overwhelmingly toward "occupying." While we have a "coalition" the American (and British) forces are the main contact the Iraqis see. If you want an example how a poorly armed and impoverished people deal with an overwhelmingly advantaged occupying force that has them extremely outgunned, all you need to do is look at Palestine. Whether you think the Isrealis or Palestinians are in the right, you can't deny that a major cause of terrorism is a belief that the other team cannot be contended with using traditional means because they have overwhelming power. The war in Iraq will similarly provide a beeding ground for new terrorists. Pulling out would be even worse, because it would leave an anarchic state behind with even greater bitterness and less control. The only real answer is to internationalize the force, which is what Kerry wants to do.
Please read the previous paragraph and disregard. I don't want the war on terror discussion to become another fight over Iraq. The two are not even close to being the same thing.
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quote: John Kerry has stated that he would turn over Iraq to the UN, so most likely Iraq would end up in terrorist or terrorist friendly hands.
...so, here's the deal. Iraq under Saddam's reign didn't have ANY terrorists that was gunning for the United States, but now that we've invaded their country and murdered 10,000 of their people, we've got to STAY in Iraq to watch the terrorists we've created?
There's some George W./Cheney "progress" for you.
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I agree with what you say. In fact, I suspect there are more people signing up for their cause as a direct result of our actions. But what are we to do. They attacked us because of our support for Israel and the like.... but we are going after them because of what happened on 9/11. It reminds me of the Israel/Palestine back and forth... they just keep responding and things don't seem to improve. I fear that we're heading in that direction with terrorism in general.. but what can be done to stop the cycle that's already begun?
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posted
Sun, Bush has said before that he is using Iraq as bait for terrorists. I would imagine that he'd prefer 10,000 terrorists in Iraq, killing perhaps 200 American soldiers, to 100 terrorists in Chicago, killing even two American civilians.
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posted
Damn. I thought about using the analogy of the war on drugs, but I decided not to use it because the war on drugs has been so ineffective and there are several differences the would wake the war on terror far more likely to succeed. Mainly, there are nations that utterly depend on the production of drugs as the main support of their economy. The same is not true of terrorism. Also, the only people I know of that are particularly interested in fighting the war on drugs are the government themselves. It is a war that does not have the support of the people of the nation (or any other nation that I can think of.) The war on terror is different because if someone I know has a pound of weed stashed in his apartment, I don't tell the police. If he has a U-haul full of fertilizer and some detonators, I don't care how good friends we are, I tell the police. Finally, there are huge numbers people employed by the "drug industry" in this nation, so for every shipment that gets stopped at the border, 100 more get through unnoticed.
I really love the analogy of the dam, Tom. How do you keep a dam like that from leaking, though? You dive down and patch it from the other side. That way you don't have to use nails at all. The pressure of the water will keep the rubber patch from falling down. We can't fight this war by holding the terrorists out. Nor can we fight it by invading other nations because (and the fact that this still eludes some people really scares me) it is not other nations that have attacked us. It is a non-state entity. These are not soldiers from a well defined area of land we can send our soldiers to invade. They live among citizens of probably every nation in the world. Militaries are singularly well equipped for large-scale destruction. They really really suck at manhunts, though. This war IS against criminals, so it must be fought with law enforcement and investigation.
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posted
Sun, so are you saying that we should wait to be attacked before attacking? Maybe we were wrong about some of our Iraqi intelligence, but I'd rather have our government act than to wait, even if we are sometimes not completely right.
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posted
NO Paul. NO. THEY did not attack us. WE attacked them. Iraq had NOTHING yo do with 9-11. We attacked afghanistan for that and we were right to. They would not cooperate in bringing our attackers to justice, and they had a special relationship with those attackers that made that particular government, the TALIBAN government a legitimate target for destruction.
In Iraq, the Ba'ath government never attacked American soil. Bush never even CLAIMED they attacked American soil. His claim was that they had weapons of mass destruction, AND that the state had ties to terrorist non-state entities. The idea was that we couldn't fight the non-state entities, so we would do the next best thing and take out the place where they could get nukes or VX or some such WMD. The only problem is, there wasn't any evidence that Iraq had ties to terror networks, and the evidence of WMDs was not strong enough to convince the rest of the world. For some reason, we decided to invade rather than wait for the rest of the world to be convinced there were WMDs. In no way was that decision in retribution for 9-11. That was the last war. PLEASE don't confuse them. It scares me.
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posted
I'm not confusing them. I believe I understand what happened and why. I'm not trying to say that we were right in Iraq (I'm not saying we were wrong either). I'm interested to know what Kerry might do once he's in office.
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quote: Sun, so are you saying that we should wait to be attacked before attacking?
Yes. It's the American way. Strengthen your CASTLE as much as possible, and then when someone attacks your castle, destroy them.
...but you don't start to guess "Who might attack our castle?" and then invade their castle.
It'd be for shutting our borders DOWN, and beefing up our defenses, but to attack those who we guess might not like us is satanic.
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posted
Sun, I follow your logic, except I don't believe guessing is part of any US reason for attacking (I'm assuming you didn't mean it quite like I read it).
So is that how you think Kerry will handle terrorism?
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posted
Sorry for shouting. I feel strongly on this issue. I usually just lurk, but you scared me out of my lurker hole.
The question to ask is whether the war in Iraq has done any good. The other question is, handled differently, could it have done any good.
America and Britain invaded, almost alone, with at mosta thousand or so troops and at worst outright horrified condemnation from even our allies. When one nation, extremely powerful and backed with almost irresistible technology invades a poor nation, those people fight back with geurilla warfare and terrorism. Look at how the Afghans threw off the soviets. So has this war done any good, or is it simply creating a bigger problem. In response to your question, what would you have us do, wait to be attacked, I must respond that unless you can make a move that will help the problem, you do nothing. If the only course of action available will only make the problem worse, you use creativity and solidarity with other nations to find another course of action.
Second question, could the war have been handled so it actually did some good? I really don't know. I think the main problem we have right now is an image problem. The Iraqis think of us as occupiers who care nothing for their well-being. I think that, far earlier after "major combat operations" had ceased, if basic services had been restored, it would have gone a long way toward improving the current situation. This is when the UN should have been brought in. True, other nations may have been unwilling to committ troops, but I think they would have helped the people of Iraq for humanitarian reasons. Here it is, a year later, and to them it must feel like the week they were captured. Soldiers are still kicking in doors of residential areas, electricity and water are still iffy, and in two months from tomorrow, we will wash our hands of the whole issue.
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posted
I don't believe that Bush's plan is to wash his hands when we turn it over. The new governement will still need help keeping the country secure.
If Kerry is elected, what do you think he'll do with Iraq?
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posted
"The new governement will still need help keeping the country secure."
Actually, according to recent news, the new government will still need help passing laws; apparently we don't intend to permit them to actually legislate anything without our approval.
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posted
President Bush with his administration like Cheney and Rumsfeld scared and insulted many governments around the world.
They know that working with the US has advantages, but it is hard to do so when you get slapped in the face (Old Europe? With us or Against us? Freedom Fries?)
A new president will allow these insulted countries a chance to work with us again, without having to bow to the man who ignored them, insulted them, or presides over those who did.
This can only strengthen the international War of Terror, and give us support in Iraq.
I agree that agressive wars in the name of peace are not bright. We thought Iraw was a terrorist supporter so we invaded, humiliate their people, stole some of their property (Ba'thists) and gave it to others, took their jobs, bombed their houses, and killed your sons in uniform.
Now we say, "Oops, we were wrong. But hey, if we were right it would have been bad for us."
That is true.
But it doesn't help the Iraqi's whose lives we destroyed in one way or another.
We were wrong. There were no ready to sell WMD. There were no ties to AlQueda, more than there are now in the American Run Government there. There were no sales planned. But we did this to save ourselves from the possibility of future danger.
Sounds good from our end.
From the end of the rest of the world we look like scared bullies, willing to beat down anyone who looks at us funny, just in case they may one day try to hurt us. Our government has become the ugly American.
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quote:Kerry will use direct military force when necessary to capture and destroy terrorist group and their leaders. He will also increase the size of the Army by 40,000 active duty troops on a temporary basis. Kerry will improve international intelligence and law enforcement and cut off the flow of terrorist funds. In order to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction, Kerry will appoint a high-level Presidential envoy to buy up and destroy stockpiles of loose WMD materials. Kerry will build bridges to the Arab and Islamic world by supporting and assisting human rights groups, independent media, and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture.
I honestly think the most important one of these issues is the last one, and I'll tell you why. Increasing funds to first responders is important because it makes the people of America more likely to deal with attacks when they happen. Increasing intelligence and cooperation with foreign law enforcement is INSANELY important because it lets us know who is planning to hurt us and allows us to stop them before they can without destroying the infrastructures of entire nations. Military force is important because it allows America to remove governments that are complicit or supportive of attacks against us. But ONLY by making America into a nation that Arabic nations don't look at as an oppressor can we make the terrorists stop WANTING to hurt us. They don't hate us because we're free. One of the main reasons they hate us is that we provide a supermarket for Israel's armed forces.
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posted
Dan, I guess I just don't see us the way you do, though I can see why the other countries might. And I'm not debating the war in Iraq on whether it was right or wrong, that's a different question. You're right, we have a chance to elect a new president... which is why I'm curious how Kerry will deal with all of this.... before I vote. If I were to vote today, I'd still be voting for Bush, but I don't want to be blind to what Kerry is offering.
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Idemosthenesl, isn't a lot of what Kerry proposes already being carried out or is the insinuation that Bush isn't doing these things?
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"But ONLY by making America into a nation that Arabic nations don't look at as an oppressor can we make the terrorists stop WANTING to hurt us. They don't hate us because we're free. One of the main reasons they hate us is that we provide a supermarket for Israel's armed forces."
Right, so in order to not make us look like an oppressor, will Kerry change our relationship with Israel? I think this is key for me.
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posted
I never said that I was happy with our policy in Israel, I just think it's key because if our support for Israel lessons, the dynamics in that part of the world could change significantly and not necessarily in our favor. and I'm American through and through.
Posts: 22 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I don't think there is any plan to change our relationship with Israel, especially as to do so would be incredibly hypocritical. We have made a lot of the same mistake in dealing with terror that Israel has. What I AM saying is that Kerry proposes to focus more on the non-state entities than the states who harbor them, because when you remove the state and declare victory, that doesn't defeat teh terrorists, it only defeats the state. The terrorists are still there, they just have to make new contacts (if they had any government contacts in the first place.) Similarly, Kerry wants to at least do something to address the animosity that exists between the U.S. and the Arab world (humanitarian aid, media, etc.) The first step is to solve the problem of Iraq. Right now, the U.S. has a MAJOR credibility problem. Any actions the U.S. takes toward helping the people on the ground are viewed with extreme suspicion. That is why Kerry wants to internationalize the effort, to restore credibility. BTW, I take issue with the statement that having the U.N. in charge will automatically lead to terrorist friendly government there. Second step is to begin hunting down the terrorists. You can't do this with bombs and soldiers unless the terrorists ARE the state (which was awfully close to being the case in Afghanistan). It has to be done with investigators and police, since they operate in small groups and live in cities (training camps are something else). Finally, we work to improve America's image and relations with the Arab world.
All of that is Kerry's plan to deal with terror. I think it's incredible that his statement characterizing the war on terror as "intelligence and law enforcement" has been used to show he is "soft on defense." I really don't see any other way it could possibly be fought.
P.S. The other idea implicit in the invasion of Iraq was that once a free and democratic state existed there, it would have a chain reaction effect, and democracy would spread like the descolada, shining so brightly that other nations would catch the light and joyously insist that they too could become democracies. In Bob Woodward's new book, he relates that Bush even expected the democratic Iraq to solve the Isreal-Palestine problem. Even if the Iraqi war had worked exactly as planned, I think that reflects a huge blind optimism and either an ignorance or apathy as to what actually causes terror.
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posted
I appreciate your thoughts. It's certainly a lot easier to play monday morning quarterback. Knowing what's in Kerry's playbook makes the job of voting for the right person more difficult, but still necessary.
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