Winning Wars on Extremism

[sandnsea]

The reality of increasing violence in Iraq is unmistakable when seen through the eyes of Dr. Jamal Enad, a Baghdad emergency room doctor, who says "The blast injuries is not the real job of a doctor." This comes on the heels of Howard Dean’s statement that we can’t get out of Iraq because “that’s where Al Qaida will set up”. While I believe we have a moral obligation to put Iraq back together for the benefit of the Iraqi people, I think it may be time for Democrats to begin questioning why there is still an Al Qaeda threatening to set up shop in Iraq.

The obvious question of bin Laden aside; what exactly is Bush’s strategy on extremist terrorist organizations? Other countries have had great success with law enforcement and intelligence operations, as we reported when the UK broke up a network of over 100 terrorists. There are numerous reports of this kind. What are we doing?

More important than what we are or aren’t doing to apprehend current terrorist groups, what are we doing to turn people away from these groups? That got me to thinking about the extremist groups we are facing overseas today, and the extremist groups here at home.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City. In 1996, Eric Rudolph bombed the Atlanta Olympics. There were over 150 abortion clinic arson attacks, bombing and shootings between 1982 and 1996. Extremism leading to terrorism. We certainly realize that we can’t drop bombs on the extremists who use terror to advance their political views in this country, so it becomes clear that other answers must be found outside a military response. It also becomes clear that freedom and democracy, alone, do not offer complete answers.

Senator Frist’s plan to appear in a transmitted video to hundreds of churches, along with recent comments by Tom Delay and John Cornyn, also make clear how easily appealing to extremists for political purposes can spiral out of control. A comparison could be made to Saudi Arabia and their pandering to the Madrassas because they taught hatred towards the west which kept the people from focusing on the real source of their problems.

Let me make clear, I am not remotely suggesting that any Republican Senator is advocating domestic terrorism. Rather, I am suggesting that we must look to the correlation between our own extremist terrorist attacks and those from extremists abroad. Something is incredibly wrong when the US is attacked from within and without and it certainly isn’t God’s vengeance against abortions and gay sex.

This Administration has manipulated the American people on Iraq and terrorism for far too long. As Ron pointed out, if democracy doesn’t work in Iraq , this Administration will do what they’ve always done, change the reasons for being there. While I still believe it would be immoral to abandon the Iraqi people, I don’t believe we have any clear understanding of extremism, terrorism, or how to prevent it from taking root in Iraq .

Links:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=770