Die Hard $1MIL War Against Al Qaeda

SCROLL DOWN FOR  THE JOHN MURTHA MSNBC PODCAST

An avid reader of my blog gently pointed out to me the other day that there are certain perils asociated with the Islamofascist bashing that I have been doing of late. And that the extremists don't take kindly to the strong anti-extremist articles that I have been publishing.

I take that as a compliment as I see myself as being entirely politically incorrect and despite being a liberal conservative, on these issues I find myself to the right of Genghis Khan. Zero tolerance. There, I've said it. Half of my family perished under the communist rule and the other half have dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom. I therefore feel I have earned the right to strongly defend the issues of secular democracy, in the fight against Islamofascist terrorism. And I say "Lachaim to Israel" on this one. We may disagree on whether Jesus was the Messiah, but I don't generally allow that to come between us.

In the true spirit of my newly acquired reputation, I am delighted to announce that Hollywood has just gone up in my esteem a thousand points, with Bruce Willis' gutsy offer of a cool $1 million to anyone who turns in al-Qaeda terror leaders: Osama bin Laden, Aymen al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Thank you to The Right Nation for the reminder of a story that was actually reported on last weekend. I was caught napping at the wheel there :

"Willis - one of the few people with guts in the "Socialist Republic of Hollywood" announced his reward on the TV show "Rita Cosby: Live And Direct" where he also denounced biased media coverage of the Iraq war. [...] Two years ago, Bruce Willis offered the same reward for Saddam Hussein's capture. And he brought good luck. Full transcript of the MSNBC interview (blogger from Iraq Michael Yon was there too) at National Review's The Corner":

"I am baffled to understand why the things that I saw happening in Iraq, really good things happening in Iraq, are not being reported on. Michael has been over there, was embedded with the members of the Deuce Four, you know, the battalion that actually won the battle for Mosul, that -- Michael, correct me if I'm wrong -- these are the guys who allowed the election to take place, the election that happened just, you know, a couple months ago, to take place, which is, you know, just a monumental thing. And it's not being reported on. ***

[A] lot of big choices are being made. You know, to say this is not our fight, when this is the same fight that this country fought 60 years ago and the entire world fought 60 years ago, for the same kind of terrorism, the same kind of thing.

"This is not a new war. This is not a new kind of fighting. This is the same fight. And it's back. And it's time for it to stop. ***

And it's not just for this country. It's for the world. It is time for terrorism to stop. And the United States is the country that can stop it. And that's what they're doing over there. And there is -- I have no idea why this country is not getting the information that Michael Yon has, you know, access to, is, you know, showing people. It's just not getting out, and it's baffling. ***

I want to live in a world, and so do the Iraqi people want to live in a world, where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed. And, I mean, doesn't everybody want that? Who doesn't want that?"

More from John Hinderaker @ Powerline who was ahead of us all:

"Who, indeed? It is a remarkable fact that the American media, with its endless hyping of Abu Ghraib and similar stories and its obsession with body counts and bad news, have just about succeeded in putting the United States on the wrong side of the war against Islamic terror, one of the purest and most unmitigated evils the world has ever seen."

Michael Yon quite rightly points out:

"The media is an industry; but their business is not to report news. The industry needs a captive audience to beat the bottom line. The product is advertisement."

Well we saw the results of an advertisement gone wrong for the Democrats on Friday. If your motives are misplaced or at best politically self-serving, you end up with the morning after headache which a lot of them woke up suffering from yesterday. And that 'deep bottomless pit' feeling of letting themselves down by not voting for what they supposedly believe in. I mean what was all that about may I ask? Are you saying you've been cabuzled again, and try to tell me that the senators did not read both the Murtha AND the Hunter resolution. How does the song go: "Oh Lord please don't let me be misunderstood"... I mean give me a break.

The view from The liberal Washington Post this morning:

"After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are suddenly confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. The start hasn't been pretty.

Political stunts by both parties have created an air of acrimony that is infecting the parties' entire agendas. The bitterness reached a new high -- or low -- on Friday when House Republicans forced a late-night vote on a resolution for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces."

HEH. John Hinderaker @ Powerline thinks that The House leadership had a golden opportunity to make the Democrats put up or shut up tonight, and blew it.

The Liberal view, which Hugh Hewit slam dunks.

PoliPundit thinks the Democrats have gone truly insane.

THE JOHN MURTHA MSNBC PODCAST

From All Things Conservative:

"Murtha's comments came on the heels of former President Clinton calling the war a "mistake" in front of an Arab audience in Dubai.  I really think that al-Qaeda couldn't ask for better allies.
[...]
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has been given a plan for drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq after the December election."

Including giving us the encouraging report from our enemy camp @ Al Jazeera, who are enjoying the fight:

"On Thursday Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha, a hawkish Democrat, said the United States could not accomplish anything further militarily in Iraq and it was time to bring the troops home"

CHECK OUT THE SUNDAY MORNING TALK SHOW LINE UP ON THE RED STATE

Weekend Links: The Political Teen Don Surber Don Surber's LGF vote California Conservative The Political Teen My Vast Right WingConspiracy Stop The ACLU 

Mudville Gazette and The New York Young Republican Record Banagor also covered last weekend's story on Bruce Willis.

Comments

[mark patterson]

THE PROBLEM IS TRUST,DO YOU "TRUST" BUSH,AND THE PUPPET REPUBLICANS SUPPORTING THIS SAD,LIE OF A WAR. if you do not trust people,think that they may be SPYING on you,without the law of our land protecting your basic freedoms,then that is disintigration of our nation as we know it. i have heard the old nazi quote "if they have nothing to hide",OUR RIGHTS ARE AT STAKE PEOPLE,i have heard republicans on AIR AMERICA say they were willing to give up "some" of their rights to "get them terrorists",ANYONE WHO IS WILLING TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHTS,THE TWO HUNDRED YEAR HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS NOT ONLY A FOOL,BUT A DANGEROUS ONE AT THAT!!,PEOPLE NOW ARE LAME,THEY DON'T EVEN VOTE AND THEY WOULD LET A DICTATOR TAKE THEIR FREEDOMS FOR A PRICE.john murtha was RIGHT,and the comming months,YEARS,will show this to be true. we haven't enough troops to finish the job,whatever that was,NOW IN AFGHANISTAN THE TALIBAN ARE TAKING CONTROL,NO ONE THERE TO FINISH THAT JOB,REMEMBER AFGHANISTAN!!,AL QUIDA THERE,OSAMA BIN LADEN,PROBABLY STILL THERE,where the heck is that guy anyway.i sadly think,we screwed up BAD. now who knows what will happen,sunni,shiite,kurd,shia,WHATEVER,they all want their form of religion in power,they have no concept of democracy,sorry its true,there is not ONE democracy in the middle east,and don't start on israel,that's a joke. SO PEOPLE WITH NO CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY,WILL NOT ACCEPT DEFEAT OF THEIR "MINORITY",AND THEY WILL FIGHT.

[jeff stiles]

Amen, Lilly. Iraqi citizens right now are in the unpleasant position of having a gun to their heads by the terrorists while we and our allies are trying to repair their country and jumpstart freedom for their children. It will take time to convince these folks that, in the end, truth always prevails in this world.

[lilly]

"80% of the Iraqi population wants us out. 45% feel attacks against the US military justified." Those figures even if they were true and represent a correct picture, must be considered in connection with the immense propaganda which has been going on for so many years in Iraq. If you are brainwashed constantly it takes time to get it out your system. It is true that if you repeat a lie 1000 times it becomes the truth. It will take time to convince the Iraqis that the Americans are trying to help in building a democracy, and that is not an easy task. It will take time and patience.

[Kenny Pierce]

Jeff,

My wife was a psych major in Rice with a specialty in the creation of polls, and one thing she's told me over and over is that if you can't read the actual wording of the poll questions, you shouldn't pay attention to polls unless the findings of the polls run counter to the known agenda of the organization presenting the findings. It's too bloody easy to skew the results by changing the wording.

For example, "80% of the Iraqi population wants us out" -- well, was that question worded along the lines of, "Do you want the United States to pull all of its forces out tomorrow?" or was it more along the lines of, "Would you like the Iraqi government eventually to be able to ensure safety and liberty and justice without the help of outside forces?" Either could be represented by an unscrupulous poster as, "They want us out," but obviously there's a big difference between the two.

My favorite was the breathless report CNN had a year or so ago about how a poll had found that a majority of Iraqis "perceived the presence of United States forces as an occupation." The entire force of that report came from the negative connotations that are present in the English word "occupation;" yet if there's one thing that's certain, it's that when the vast majority of non-English-speaking Iraqis think of our forces in Iraq, the first word that comes to mind is not the English word "occupation." There's simply no telling what Arabic word was actually used, or what connotations that particular word has. You're entirely at the mercy of the professional integrity of whomever the news agency got to translate the poll -- which, since you're talking about the professional integrity of the people who brought you Mary Mapes's memos and the 10,000 dead in New Orleans, is hardly something any sane person would gamble money on.

[jeff Stiles]

"80% of the Iraqi population wants us out. 45% feel attacks against the US military justified."

I've heard those stats reported by NPR and a couple of the liberal networks, but have so far seen no evidence that those are real figures. I think it more likely that some anti-war zealot just pulled those numbers out of their you-know-what.

[Kenny Pierce]

Ghost,

Could you please stop with the "training ground for terrorists" stupidity? I've managed to restrain myself from several uncharitable responses already but you just keep hammering away with this particular stupid comment, which seems to be the one thing you're most certain of about Iraq. At least, it's the point at which you keep most tiresomely repeating yourself. And yet, if there's anything that's clearly emerging as a consequence of the war in Iraq, it's the dramatic drop in al Qaeda's reputation among the sorts of Arabs they have to recruit. For God's sake, you're getting massive public demonstrations against al Qaeda in Jordan, of all places, and you're still babbling on about what a great recruiting tool the war in Iraq is for al Qaeda?

Besides, the primary experience of terrorists in Iraq over the past couple of years has not been "getting trained." It has been "getting killed."

Look, all of your arguments reduce to appeals to authority -- the "facts" you cite, and much more the general conclusions you draw from said "facts," are in fact highly debatable and in any case are "facts" you could not know unless somebody else told you they were true and you believed them. No shame there; that's the position the vast majority of us are in. It's an ordinary condition of human existence; we have no choice but to take 99% of what we believe, on authority -- that is, because somebody else told us it was true and we believed them.

Unfortunately, you clearly have a very different idea than I of what sorts of qualifications make a person a trustworthy source of facts and ideas. When a sane person decides whom to trust, he looks for two things: competence, and honesty. As proxies for competence, intelligent people look at qualifications, and at the putative authorities' access to relevant information, and at track records, especially the soi-disantes authorities' track records in prognostication; as proxies for honesty, intelligent people look at past history and at the potential for conflicts of interest (i.e., political agendas).

Now, given those standards, I trust the soldiers who are fighting, and winning, this war. (Not the President, you observe, who does not do particularly well on the reliable-authority tests, but the soldiers themselves, who are off the charts in every one of the categories by which sane people judge reliability of testimony.) You, on the basis of some standard I can't begin to imagine and would be very interested indeed to hear you formulate, trust the people who promised us before the war that tens of thousands of American soldiers would die in the initial assault, and that Iraqis would be too terrified to go to the polls, and that Iraqis would never be able to come to agreement on a constitution, and that Guantanamo's guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet, and that six-year-old girls were getting raped in the Superdome whenever the n****rs (a word never uttered but always implied by the press throughout the whole disgraceful Katrina coverage) could take a break from feeding off the carcasses of the 10,000 dead.

Well, I suppose if that's whom you want to gamble your own credibility on, it's a free country, and you have only your own reputation as an intelligent person to lose. Myself, I tend to want to trust people who (a) have some level of technical expertise on the subject matter (as opposed to, say, Jimmy Carter, or your average Washington-Post reporter whose only military experience came fifteen years ago in protesting against ROTC's being allowed to recruit on campus), (b) have shown an ability to succeed in the past (unlike Baby-Boomer Democrats whose only experience with war came in the process of losing Vietnam, and unlike Brent Scowcroft, who is a jackass, a foreign-policy failure and a moral leper), (c) have more reason to tell the truth (such as the fact that they are in a life-or-death situation) than to grind a political ax (such as pacifiying an enraged, vocal, and bitterly anti-war base, or having an antecedent dislike of Dubya), (d) haven't shown themselves to be wildly inaccurate in the past (they're raping children in the SuperDome! the bodies are stacked up everywhere!), and (e) are actually there (and the longer they have been there the better, which is why I place more trust in the judgment of Deuce-Four, who have just completed a remarkably successful full tour of duty, to some Vietnam-era Congressman who has spent three days in Iraq and comes back thinking exactly what he thought before he went, which is that Iraq is just like Vietnam; also, "sitting in a hotel in Iraq" doesn't count, which is why I trust Michael Yon vastly more than I trust whichever CNN reporter is currently running up the bar tab in a Baghdad hotel before taking ten minutes to toss together a story drawn entirely from the negative parts of the day's information releases from the military itself).

In short, when the men and women who are fighting the war overwhelmingly insist that the war is worth fighting, and that we are winning it, and that the impression created in the mind of the average American by the highly censored version of events that gets back to them (which is to say, the version you're assiduously promoting in Alexandra's comment section) is grossly inaccurate, and that the last thing they want is to leave before the job is done and thus render their sacrifices needlessly worthless -- well, that carries a lot of weight with me. The opinion of Wolf Blitzer, or for that matter of John Murtha...sorry, but I don't really give a shit. If I want to know how to lose a war, then I will certainly give Murtha a call; as a Vietnam-era Democrat, he's an expert. As it happens, however, I'd prefer to win this one. And I have the word of the soldiers, overwhelmingly, that we are winning the war, and that the view you sneeringly put forward as indubitable fact is in truth dramatically and insultingly wrong, wrong, wrong -- and they are backing it up by reenlisting, at astonishingly high rates. When a man backs up what he's telling you by freely and voluntarily putting his life back on the line, that tends to tell me he's probably not lying. Is John Murtha, or Jon Stewart, risking his life when he pushes his version of events? Are the people whose word you, Ghost, take as gospel, backing up their opinions with their lives? I know whom I'm going to trust, and it's not John Murtha or Jon Stewart. And also not some anonymous commenter on a blog whose hero (to judge from his handle) seems to be Patrick Swayze.

But if you want to take your version of reality from the blow-dried talking heads of the Washington political and 80-percent-Democrat media establishment, safe in their offices and secure in their prejudices, well, hey, don't let mere rationality stop you.

P.S. I have just decided to give myself a new rule: before I discuss the war with anybody who bloviates on how badly it's going, I will in future ask whether he has read, from beginning to end, Michael Yon's history of the war in Mosul, and if he has not, I simply will not waste my time with him.

P.P.S. Ghost, when you're done passing on advice from good ol' who-cares-how-many-raghead-Arab-kids-get-tossed-into-mass-graves-as-long-as-American-interests-are-advanced-in-the-short-term Brent on how to handle foreign policy, perhaps you could get me some advice from Rick Pitino and Isaiah Thomas on how to manage an NBA roster, and from uber-Aggie Clayton Williams on how to run a campaign for governor of Texas. Oh, and if you could also get me a signed copy of Teddy Kennedy's Big Book of Tips on Driving Safety and Chivalry, then my day would be complete. (I note in passing that the score still stands Chappaquiddick 1, Guantanamo 0.)

[Alexandra]

WMD is THE ONLY REASON the american public supported this war.

Semanticleo, you have this all wrong. 9/11 was THE ONLY REASON the American public supported this war. Reports of WMD were initially secret and not in the public domain. But 9/11 certainly was, so were the Anthrax attacks.

I'm borrowing from NxNW's previous comments here and say to you, granted, the Bush administration saw WMD as a 'smoking gun' argument, especially in light of Anthrax. Let's put aside whether at the time they believed the reports to be authentic or whether they didn't -- you know my stance that they together with Prime Minister Blair in fact did believe in their authenticity. The administration was however most certainly aware that 'selling' any political campaign to the people requires a 5 second 'sound-bite' pitch. And as ironic as it seems, especially such an intricate one. This political reality, facing the Bush administration at the time, is however a common problem and very much prevalent globally -- this isn't a Republican conspiracy. If criticize you must, rather criticize the peoples' severely limited attention span, than the thus ensuing political communication tactics.

Which brings me to my point: The WMD issue was neither necessary to sell the war in Iraq and/or on Terror, nor should their existence ever have been allowed to have taken centre stage. In that respect, the rise of contention surrounding the WMD issue thus turned out to be the biggest political windfall for all anti-war factions around the globe and proved a serious political gaffe for the Right in as much as they choose to make it the 5 second 'sound-bite' pitch. But that doesn't take anything away from the urgency of the situation, from the immensely complex nature of 'Islamofascism', the dangers and perils of which we are all facing for decades to come. It's merely a deflection from the real issues at stake, some of which I highlight in my post The Blinding of Samson in Iraq.

As NxNW put it: "It's [the contention surrounding the WMD issue] what'll cut Tony Blair's Premiership short and what'll give rise to the only seemingly legitimate opposition. BUT IT'S FALSE. IT'S MISLEADING AND ALL POLITICAL LEADERS KNOW IT. IT WAS NEVER THE REAL MOTIVATION AND DRIVE. Decades of genocide, torture and the sum total of ALL imaginable human rights violations committed by Mein Führer Saddam Hussein WERE THE REASONS; hundreds of thousands and counting at the time.

But of course, let's not forget, none of the Führer's atrocities, nor the violation of all UN resolutions combined could have galvanized the collective political will to act. THE DEATHTOLL [of the Iraqi people] WOULD STILL BE COUNTING WERE IT IN FACT NOT FOR 9/11.

Now the human element mattered, not just the Oil. And that is where this debate ought to end. But the whole WMD issue is just too juicy a bone to pass up; too much potential for Spin; too much of a sound bite: "Bush lied over WMD; mislead the people; attacked Iraq under false pretense".

Machiavelli, Italian statesman and political philosopher (1532) advised rulers that the acquisition and effective use of power may necessitate unethical methods. Never had he a more committed following, did he!"

[Alexandra]

Ghost,
My answer to you got so long I posted a new post on it The Blinding of Samson in Iraq

[Semanticleo]

Alexandra;

You have called some attention to your admitted blind spots in the spectrum of YPO, not the least of which is falling into the trap of melding the overall war on terrorism with the wrong-headed incursion into Iraq.

80% of the Iraqi population wants us out. 45% feel attacks against the US military justified.

How can this be viewed as progress in the war to defeat the terrorists?

Do you think Americans would have supported the war merely to remove a vicious dictator? No, neither did the 'Cult of Curveball'.

If WMD did not exist, then it needed to be created. WMD is THE ONLY REASON the american public supported this war. You and others may feel too much has been sacrified to stop short of victory. I say too much has been sacrificed already. Further sacrifice does not jusify the 'ends' which have been so corrupted by the 'means'.

[spiritofecstasy]

I love jumping right in without reading the article or the comments. It test the metal of my ideas. (And I carry a Very Big Stick too.)

To hell with Freud, that is not the stick that I think I meant.

Onward: One can go to any website of international affair and politic where people start "projecting" their anxiety. That is; they "imply" things to address their ideological opponents by deception. Two bit street corner scare tactics. Oh, how clever, how deep. This is done conciously and unconciously. I.E. Are anti-war protesters who wear elaborate costumes more or less like children who wear halloween costumes because it is fun to be noticed. when you are compelled to be noticed. when you are frustrated.

What is fascinating is that I "know" "scary" people who are not really that scary. But they can be ...

Geepers Mr. Wilson, the world is full of scary people!

Now Dennis, take off that turbin and do your homework and stop pretending.

[North by Northwest]

Ghost Dansing,

"...Iraq flaming..."

Come on... that's really a bit much propaganda on a Sunday (LOL). US soldiers are being attacked by a small group of insurgents. Murtha says so himself as you can hear on the podcast linked above. If any country is 'flaming', it's France.

[Huan]

"We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn't our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war."
--North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1990 interview with historian Stanley Karnow

[jeff Stiles]

Vietman was a winnable war that was lost back here at home when all-negative/all-the-time news reports forced public opinion against that overseas conflict.

There would be a danger of that happening with Operation Iraqi Freedom too, except A) We now have a President with gonads who will keep us in the fight, B) We now have influential people like Bruce Willis who will help focus public opinion on our nation's true agenda of fighting this war for worldwide FREEDOM, C) We now have news outlets like FOX that give a fair and balanced report of the war, and D) We now have folks like Alexandra reminding us of the dangers of totalitarianism, and of the importance of fighting against oppression and for freedom all over the world.

[Huan]

but what evidence you have that the war is lost?
was ww2 lost on the first day of D-day?

critical pessimism is only of value when accompanied by objective supporting evidence and a workeable solution. the war critics have neither.

[Ghost Dansing]

Dubya and the Republicans lost the war in Iraq due to their incompetence. Iraq is not the best place for our troops to be in the war on terror. They should be redeployed. Iraq is going to have a civil war. There is no point in our troops being caught in the crossfire.

[Huan]

what is worse than the "incompetence" of the Bush administration as it tries to win the war against islamofascism is that the Dems want to surrender and appease them.

[Alexandra]

I just posted the MSNBC John Murther podcast above where he says that the resolution we put forward is ridiculous, and that no Democrat would have voted for it. He is calling to re-deploy and let the Iraqis get on with governing their own lives. I didn't hear that he had a concrete plan as such. When I read the Murther and Hunter pdfs from my post yesterday, The Hunter resolution seemed to say the same but without the rhetoric. Listen to the podcast above and compare to his resolution text, and let me know what you think. AS IF I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT YOU WILL SAY. LOL!!!

[Ghost Dansing]

There's nobody on our side of the fence that is backing islamofascists. Criticism is criticism of the incompetence of this Republican adminstration.

The interesting graphic with the Eagle attacking Bin Ladin is interesting. However, this Republican administration has been ineffective in capturing Bin Ladin, now successfully hiding four years after 9/11 with Iraq flaming and islamic extremist ideology spreading like wildfire.

Dubya's big achievement? This Republican administration has simultaneously increased the ranks of jihadists by turning Iraq into a new training ground and recruitment magnet while at the same time exhausting America's will and resources to confront that expanded threat.

Great job. Some call it incompetence.