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Clueless Candidates Make Osama's
Day
By Michael Scheuer
12/27/08 "Antiwar" -- - While McCain, Obama, and Clinton attend
services of their choice on Sunday, all worship at the shrine of
intervention-that-spurs jihad the rest of the week. Just in the
past month, all three have pushed an interventionist agenda in
Pakistan and Kosovo, and, notwithstanding claims by Obama and
Clinton, to a great extent in Iraq. At day's end, each is ready
to intervene abroad to champion abstractions such as democracy
rather than U.S. interests; each is ready to spend the lives of
soldiers and Marines to do so; and each advances the Islamist
cause by failing to see that Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S.
interventionism more than any other factor.
In Pakistan, we are seeing the last stage of the destruction of
our most important anti-Islamist ally, Pervez Musharraf. Here is
a man who helped us destroy his nation's ally, the Taliban;
caused al-Qaeda to mark him for death; and brought his nation
near to civil war by sending Pakistan's army into the tribal
region. True enough, he has received billions in return and at
times duped us, but what other U.S. ally has done so much that
is counter to its national interests? The answer is none; most
of our allies have deserted the Iraq and Afghan coalitions.
As thanks, Washington strengthened Pakistan's Indian enemy,
hectored Musharraf for not doing all of America's dirty work,
and generally blamed our coming defeat in Afghanistan on his
refusal to destroy his nation to help us. McCain, Obama, and
Clinton endorsed all this, and they were as aggressive as
President Bush in demanding Musharraf reestablish democracy via
an election that further eroded stability and will open the
country's treasury to Pakistan's biggest thieves, Nawaz Sharif
and Asif Zadari. This "success" will force America to spend more
money and lives in Afghanistan, because we neutered a vital ally
for an abstract, unachievable goal – a secular Pakistani
democracy. Only al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their Pakistani
allies benefit.
And then there is Kosovo. Again, McCain, Obama, and Clinton
joined Bush in gleefully applauding Kosovo's declaration of
independence from Serbia. And what has that action yielded? It
lit the fuse burning toward a new Balkan war because America's
bipartisan political class wants to peddle its version of
democracy even if it means stripping the most politically sacred
portion of Christian Serbia and giving it to a Muslim regime
that will be a magnet for support from al-Qaeda, other
Islamists, and America's jihad-supporting Arab Peninsula allies.
Bush and the three candidates have committed America's prestige
in a region where no U.S. interests exist. These
interventionists will eventually waste the lives of U.S. troops
in a bloody attempt to protect "U. S. credibility" by trying to
stop Serbia's inevitable Russian-backed recovery of Kosovo and
the attendant slaughter of Muslim Kosovars. When the Balkans'
smoke clears, only the Islamists will be victorious.
And finally, Iraq. Bush's stay-the-course doctrine is stridently
echoed by McCain and rhetorically opposed by Obama and Clinton,
but the difference is more apparent than real. Moqtada al-Sadr
has extended his cease-fire surge for another six months; the
U.S. military can now continue killing Sunnis so Sadr will have
fewer to kill later. Sadr's brilliant, Machiavellian surge keeps
U.S. casualties down, gives a false sense of increasing Iraqi
stability, and allows McCain to rattle his saber while
permitting Obama and Clinton to begin hedging their demand for
withdrawal to avoid appearing as lefty surrenderistas this fall.
Flash ahead to Inauguration Day, 2009. Now in power, the new
president – be it McCain, Obama, or Clinton – will begin seeing
"nuances" that require America to stay in Iraq: to fight
terrorism; to prevent civil war; to continue the Awakening; to
plant deeper democratic roots. The list of mitigating nuances
given Americans will be both endless and false.
What the new president will find is that three decades of U.S.
intervention in other peoples' wars – in this case the
Arab-Israeli conflict – has locked us in Iraq because leaving
would undermine Israel's security. As I recently argued in the
Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, al-Qaeda has secured its
goal in Iraq, a base to project influence and terror into the
Levant and Israel and is already doing so. If America leaves
Iraq, al-Qaeda's base will solidify and Israel's security will
deteriorate; pro-Israel American campaign funders will demand
McCain, Obama, or Clinton defend the Jewish state by staying in
Iraq no matter the cost; and each will do so because each
operates under the delusion that U.S. and Israeli
national-security interests are identical. And the Islamists
will have another win.
So vote as they will, these candidates offer Americans no chance
of a foreign policy that accurately gauges the Islamist threat,
let alone defeats it. Indeed, the debate over which candidate is
experienced enough to be commander in chief is farcical; each
candidate is an interventionist and will simply abide by the
dogma kept in place by America's political class for 30-plus
years. After all, it takes no experience whatsoever to follow a
script whose pages are now discolored by both age and the blood
of America's soldiers and Marines.
And on Inauguration Day, 2013, Americans will find our ruling
interventionists – Republican or Democrat – have U.S. forces
fighting in Iraq; have more forces fighting in Afghanistan; have
committed forces in places like the Balkans and Darfur; and have
motivated millions more Muslims to join the jihad by their
policies' impact. For bin Laden and the Islamists, McCain, Obama,
or Clinton equals precisely the same thing – game, set, and,
perhaps, match.
Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author
of
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.
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