by Glenn R. Jackson
“We can't stop short. If we stop now -- leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked -- our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight.”
So spoke President Bush during his State of the Union address this past January. Yet it was in this same State of the Union address that the President deflected America’s attention from our nation’s justified Terror War and toward a less effective security goal of targeting the “Axis of Evil,” and Saddam Hussein in particular.
With the anniversary of 9-11-01 behind us and the President’s address to the UN writing in stone the course before us, the war with Iraq becomes a certainty. Clearly this President Bush intends to correct the mistake of the last President Bush and eliminate Hussein from the world stage. Unfortunately, other then the world being short one more murderous tyrant we will still be facing the same murderously evil philosophy that we are now.
For you see Hussein is nothing more then the typical run-of-the-mill psychopathic dictator that the world has dealt with for centuries. Hussein is a bad man who today deserves removal with extreme prejudice, but that was as true in 1988, 1991, 1995…you get the point.
What makes Hussein’s elimination TODAY so important as to make an all out Iraqi war the next step in the Terror War?
Hussein may get the “Bomb” seems to be the answer, and if not the bomb he at least has Weapons of Mass Destruction and has actually used them. Given those facts and Hussein’s close ties with terrorist the President feels that American security demands he launch a war to remove him.
Of course none of that means a thing in reality. Pakistan, a U.S. “ally” has the “Bomb”, harbors Al Qaeda terrorists, “may” be hiding bin Laden, and is the source of much of the terrorist indoctrination training for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Taliban John Walker received his training in one such Pakistani “school.” General, now President, Musharraf of Pakistan came to power in a military coup, not too dissimilar from Hussein. Throw in Pakistan’s most recent run-up to the brink of nuclear war with India and we have just one more brutal, murderous dictator. The psychopathic probably comes later after an assassination attempt or two.
Do we even want to talk about Iran?
The President has gone from a direct move to eliminate Terror to a tangent. This has happened either by being thrown off course by the Palestinian/Israeli conflict or some family need to correct past mistakes, or something much worse. In any event the U.S. effort in the Terror War has now begun to rot at its core.
The problem we face and the Terror War we are justified to fight is against a deviant and evil philosophy. Militant Islam is the driving force for evil directed against the U.S. and it is funded by U.S. petro-dollars. With enough oil revenue, hate, and hopelessness this evil philosophy stands poised to strike the world. While Islam’s people live in a disgraceful state of poverty, the oil princes fund people like bin Laden to export this deviant worldview of militant Islam.
Striking at Saddam will not change the terrible threat of militant Islam. Removing Saddam from the Islamic world will not affect the militant Islamists ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The same money that Saddam is using to “acquire” WMD, Western petro-dollars, is available to the bin Ladens of militant Islam. The money flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim oil states with adherents to this deviant Islamic worldview. The same suppliers of technology that would sell to Saddam will also sell to militant Islamist. This includes the French, the Russians, and our “strategic” partner the Chinese.
American Conservatives falling into the march with this war-drumming President need to see beyond the moment. Will the elimination of a Muslim secularist slow the advance of militant Islam? When Saddam attacked Iran in the 1980’s he declared himself the enemy of the militant Mullah’s and their evil Islamic philosophy. Saddam’s elimination will be a double victory handed to the Islamist by the U.S., an enemy eliminated and a Muslim martyr to inspire the Islamic world.
Paradoxically Saddam has no power and no reach without the militant Islamist, and to the militant Islamist Saddam is more useful martyred then left in his box. In this way the President is poised to hand the militants a double victory, they gain time to regroup and a useful martyr when we strike at Saddam.
As it grows darker in the Islamic world President Bush fails to grasp a chance to bring our true enemies to light. If he presses ahead, be prepared for a reversal of fortune.
Glenn R. Jackson is Chairman of the American Reformation Project, former State Chairman for Buchanan Reform and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party. Glenn also served on the Executive Committee of the Reform Party USA. Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.
© Glenn R. Jackson