Lee P Butler

Kerry's Hypothetical Presidency And The War On Terror

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9-19-2004

People who continue to try and seperate Iraq from the War on Terror are fighting a futile battle. They continue to argue that we somehow abandoned the fight against al Qaeda Afghanistan by going to Iraq and have wasted funds that could have been used on the War on Terror and social programs in this country. By doing so, they claim the administration jeopardized the safety of the U.S. and our troops.

John Kerry told the New York Times, "They have taken their eye off the real ball," Kerry lamented. "They took it off in Afghanistan and shifted it to Iraq." He has also made the accusation that the money spent in Iraq could have been better spent here.

Here's the reason they are wrong...fighting the war on terror against al Qaeda...i.e. loose non-collaborative roguish groups of individualistic militants who fight under the guise of Islamic fundamentalism...isn't designed to utilize armored battalions of the military. Even if we had our entire military forces in Afghanistan today, it would in no way lead to the complete and utter destruction of al Qaeda or groups like them.

It bears to note...because it seems that few of these people, if any, realize the circumstances that took place on 9-11, that al Qaeda didn't use assault rifles or dirty bombs or armored artillery or even nuclear missiles to attack us on our own soil, killing over 3000 innocent Americans on that dreadful day.

They used commercial aircraft...our commercial aircraft...and nothing more!

How exactly can you 'take your eye of the ball' when you can't even see the ball to begin with? Remember that Bill Clinton ordered a missile attack against al Qaeda in the desert and still doesn't know how effective it was. But Democrats love pointing out that moment as if it somehow confirms Clinton's superior posture in fighting terrorism during his tenure as president.

What it does, in fact, allude to is just how elusive and clandestine the al Qaeda organization was and still is. The Taliban in Afghanistan, who were a ruthless conglomeration of radical Islamic despots, harbored the central core of the Al Qaeda regime. Al Qaeda was only in that country because Bill Clinton refused to take their leader, Osama bin Laden, when he was offered by the Sudanese three different times allowing the Taliban to accept them with open arms.

Since they were based in Afghanistan, that was where the administration, most notably the Defense Department, focused their initial military strikes in retaliation for 9-11. The surviving members of al Qaeda, possibly including bin Laden, scattered like the cockroaches they are to other parts of the world...many in Pakistan. It was no longer a necessity to focus the entirety of our military on that country, because finding and destroying al Qaeda had suddenly turned into a covert military action.

Attacks from this group of Islamic radicals have taken place in at least Paris, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Spain and Russia exemplifying just how scattered and subversive they are. Only covert intelligence will now stop their terrorist activities, which makes military intervention almost ineffective.

Terrorist activities have now so illuminated the world mindset that even Russian president Vladimir Putin has embraced the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emption to stop terrorist attacks before they have a chance to fully organize. To this day, President Bush is demonized over that strategy.

Now, Kerry and his cohorts are turning their attacks towards North Korea and Iran. Why intelligence now proves that it was Iran that allowed al Qaeda to move through their country to embed themselves in the mountainous area of the region. Funny thing with this assertion is that al Qaeda must have simply jumped over Iraq in the process, because they were not ever in Iraq before we went to war with Saddam's regime. No way! So what, we were suppose to bomb Iran instead?

Saddam Hussein had seventeen United Nation resolutions against him, all of which he had dismissed. How many United Nation resolutions does Iran have against them? Does it really matter? These people wouldn't support an attack on Iran or North Korea any more than they supported the destruction of Saddam's despotic regime. And they should explain exactly how military intervention in Iran would have more desirous results than what's being garnered in Iraq?

It also needs to be mentioned that President Bush stated that there are three specific countries in which the focus of terrorism needed to be addressed...Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Since Iraq was the country with the history of aggression against its neighbors and innumerable dealings with terrorists... we now know these included the countries of France, Germany, and Russia... it was presumed to be the largest threat to global security.

Using military interdiction to secure the country thereby creating a central democracy in the Middle East was deemed to be in our best interest and that of our friends in the region.

So Kerry and his cohorts now assert that North Korea is a 'nuclear nightmare'; which they were allowed to educate themselves about because of the handouts from the Clinton administration. They claim that Bush took his 'eye off the ball' on the problem too... because of Iraq and his supposed mismanagement of our dealings with North Korea.

Yet the president assembled together countries who have a vested interest in what North Korea does militarily; South Korea, China, and Japan, to better deal with the dictator of North Korea to thwart any possible future problems that country might present.

Kerry attacked this strategy saying it was 'basically a cover.' When asked what he would do if North Korea presented itself as a nuclear threat if he was president, he answered that, "Hypothetical questions are not real." After he was pressed on the issue he confirmed his true foreign policy and national security interest priorities by saying he would probably take the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are all part of the War on Terror and that's not hypothetical, it's real. But Kerry is right, hypothetical questions are not real and his hypothetical presidency won't be, either.

Lee P Butler

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