Originally Posted by
Odysseus
It's worse than that. Obama is unable to even grasp that we face a fundamental threat, much less its nature. The basic structure of warfare is changing, as non-state actors (terrorists, criminal cartels, tribal chieftains, warlords, etc.) fill in the vacuums in those parts of the world where established states are incapable of enforcing their will, or in collusion with those who would prey upon them. The conventional states that oppose us do so through surrogates that can act in the interests of their patrons while providing them with plausible deniability. China, for example, is all over the global Jihadi movement. China subsidizes the North Korean weapons that flow to Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda through Iran. China also provided nuclear instruction to Pakistan, which was spread to Iran. But that's just one example. The entire world is riddled with small, deadly groups of losers who are subsidized by monstrous states for their own ends. North Korea supplies rockets to Hezbollah, nuclear tech to Iran and provides arms and equipment to Hamas and anyone else who is willing to shoot at Americans or Israelis. Narcotraficantes in Colombia are supplied by Hugo Chavez, who also provides them with safe havens, while they, in turn, work with Islamist terror groups and communist terrorists such as the Sendero Luminoso.
Imagine that a terrorist wants to enter the US through the southern border. He will be recruited from a tribe in Afghanistan or Pakistan, train in Syria or Lebanon, then travel to Venezuela, where he is received by the Iranian embassy staff. He is housed by the Venezuelans until he can be escorted by Colombian drug smugglers to the Mexican border, where he is greeted by Zapatista rebels who place him with human traffickers for the border crossing. The ideological differences between these groups are not so great that they will not form alliances in order to attack their common enemy, namely us, because each of them gets something for their efforts. The smugglers get money, the terrorists get to strike a blow to advance the global jihad, the tribal chieftains gain weapons with which they can dominate their enclaves, the communists disrupt the west and the traffickers get to indulge their darkest impulses with the people who have been turned over to them (except, of course, for our terrorist). Each group works with, and protects, the others, sharing information and facilities and providing each other with critical support.
BTW, this is not new. We've fought warlords, international criminal cartels and Islamist insurgents before, but the things that make this a more deadly time are that most governments are incapable of marshalling the will to address the threat, and those that do are routinely subjected to the opprobrium of those who won't. Thus, when Hamas and Hezbollah fling rockets at Israeli cities, it is Israel that is attacked for defending itself. When 3,000 Americans are murdered in one day by terrorists, the major powers of the world are more frightened by what we might do in response than they are by the fact of the initial carnage. Also, the networks of criminal, terrorist or tribal organizations are far better organized and capable of exploiting the weaknesses of the lumbering governments that they seek to undermine, as well as being far more capable of playing the media.
Second, the emergence of the internet and globalization has taken regional conflicts and expanded their scope in ways that no one could have anticipated. Non-state actors can communicate over borders, oceans, mountains and any other barriers that nations can build, and follow up that communication with action. Grievances (real or imagined) against the west result in terror within formerly safe enclaves. Arabs who lived in Afghan mountain caves were able to bring down skyscrapers in Manhattan. Hate crosses borders more easily than goods.
Finally, the assumption by western liberals that these groups want to live in peace is fatally wrong. Peace does nothing for these kinds of men. Violence provides them with the means to satisfy their deepest, darkest cravings for power, money, women or just more violence. An Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was a petty sadistic thug, rotting in jail after jail in Jordan, until Al Qaeda turned his propensity for beheading innocents into a recruiting tool. Pablo Escobar was an impoverished peasant until he learned that decadent westerners will pay through their noses to have powder to put up them. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was just another dopey college student until the US Embassy takeover, which made him into a romantic revolutionary and absolute ruler of Iran, just as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Robespierre, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara and a host of other losers were transformed by revolutionary violence into dictators whose power allowed them to indulge their worst impulses, and for every one of them, there are hundreds of thousands of wannabes who seek the same power (Bill Ayers, anyone?). These men came to power and glory through violence, and they will not willingly relinquish the means of their glory, no matter what you offer them.
That's what Obama doesn't get, and that's why he is the wrong answer.
06-21-2008, 12:11 AM
