Politics of a New Paradigm

When you don’t have the means to engage an enemy in straightforward combat and beat them down with direct confrontation, the best thing that you could do would be to create circumstances that stretch their military thin, draw them into the range of urban guerrillas, and set about weakening their economy. You would also want to recruit people into the fold. Osama bin Laden has achieved all of these goals.

Presumably, Osama is still alive today. The United States is reviled around the world, and not just in Arab countries. People in Europe feel as though America’s occupation of Iraq is a bigger threat to world peace than Iran’s nuclear ambitions. About 90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since we invaded Iraq. Israel continues to expand into the West Bank, and Bush has done everything that he can to antagonize Iran. The actions of the United States and Israel since 911 have been a recruiting bonanza for anyone who wants to try to convince Arab Muslims that America is a threat to them.

Our military men and women were relatively safe and sound before Bush chose to put them in harm’s way with orders to kill innocent people 6,000 miles from American shores. Even Iraqi fighters are innocent from my perspective because their country has been invaded and occupied. The most hawkish among us here in America would be the first to take up arms against an invading force, but we villainize the Iraqi resistance. Nobody in Iraq attacked America. That there would be people there with enough courage to try to defend their own soil is actually rather admirable. Now, over 4,000 American men and women are dead, needlessly, as the threat of terrorism has increased due to global anger over the carnage that we have wrought in Iraq.

We really have no moral authority to be in Iraq at all. Iraq has never threatened us. Bin Laden can incite would-be terrorists to acts of violence on American soil with the truth on his side.

With all of our troops surrounded by Arabs in the Middle East, we make a pretty tempting target if the Muslim world was to decide that all bets were off, perhaps in response to a strike on Iran.

Bin Laden manipulated our economy into ruin. Deficit spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hefty price tag on “homeland security” (that provides an open border for 1500+ undocumented people daily) has eroded the value of the dollar. As a result, we are paying over $4.00 per gallon of gas. Chalk up another round to bin Laden.

In summary, bin Laden has drawn us into a costly and permanent war, stretched our military thin and placed them in the crosshairs of Muslim extremists, ruined our economy, and enticed us to tarnish our reputation around the world, putting us at further risk of a terrorist attack by people who may have taken no umbrage with us before our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

If things are worse for Americans today than they were on September 10th, 2001, bin Laden won, and Bush failed the United States miserably.