Bloodless Coup

I'm just a little confused. Kerry wants to internationalize the war on terror, aka outsource the war on terror, but when Bush uses international troops supervised by the best of our special forces, he's incompetent? What's the standard here, Kerry's political convenience? Why should we assume that French and German troops we would have never gotten even if Kerry were Prez (according to them) would have been better at fighting in the mountains of Tora Bora? Has everybody forgotten that the US military long ago learned to use enemy scouts when fighting in unfamiliar terrain, that that's how we caught Geronimo?

And considering there hasn't been another Al Queada attack since 9/11 and the best Bin Laden can do is rip off Michael Moore lines to insult the President from thousands of miles away since three quarters of his leadership has been neutralized, isn't that just a little progress?

be clear, morris: there hasn't been a domestic attack by al qaeda since 9/11. by any index, terrorism world-wide, much of it perpetrated by al qaeda and affiliates, much of it endangering american military personnel and contractors, has by any index radically increased during that span.

Morris,

Two points:

First, the "outsourcing" of Bin Laden is a somewhat silly attack on Bush, but your response is not accurate. Bush deliberately choose (technically, someone in the Pentagon suggested, and Bush agreed) that the way we decided to fight the war in Afghanistan was to use minimal US troops (no NATO troops were involved in the war; they came afterward for the reconstruction/occupation) and get the Afghanis themselves to do most of the fighting against the Taliban. This wasn't a bad strategy, as it reduced US casualties and did use local intelligence and terrain-knowledge well. The problem, and this is where Kerry's attack gets some traction, is that there were so few US troops in Afghanistan that once we did have a big chunk of al-Qaeda cornered in Tora Bora, we couldn't really go after them (not enough soldiers). And the local warlords were not good enough fighters to do it, and more importantly didn't care (they were self-interested actors who wanted to keep their strength for post-war power struggles, not use it going after a terrorist organization that was no threat to them). I'm not saying that Bush outsourced this, but by the strategy he chose at the outset, our options for going after Bin Laden were reduced. If you considered our failure to get Bin Laden at the time a serious one, you can and should blame Bush for deciding on a strategy that didn't allow for success. We didn't use the Afghanis as scouts: we used them as both scouts and our main force. That's the basis for Kerry's silly outsourcing argument, and it does have some validity.

Second, there have been numerous al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11: Bali (Indonesia) and Madrid (trains) are the two most commonly cited, though there are many more (Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and post-invasion Iraq come immediately to mind, and I suspect there are more). While the "three quarters of al-Qaeda leadership has been captured" argument may be true, that only refers to the people supporting Bin Laden three years ago: al-Qaeda has replaced them, and made more. There are fierce debates among terrorists experts about what al-Qaeda is today, but most agree that it has changed form (it is more decentralized today than it was; more of a network of like-minded groups than a hierarchical organization as it was pre-9/11). Is that progress? While there haven't been any attacks on American soil since 9/11, one can argue that al-Qaeda's focus on non-domestic America targets (the list I gave above) has actually made the rest of the world more dangerous since 9/11. Is this "progress"? Depends on what you mean. Give me some definitions of "progress" or "success" and we can start to debate whether we have made any in the past three years. I'm not saying we haven't, I'm just saying we need some metrics to try and figure out the answer. You want to fire up some definitions?

Maybe if other countries were as aggressive fighting these terroists as we are than they wouldn't be getting attacked. Right? You think they would take 9-11 as a lesson, and if nothing else, the school massacre in Russia should have opened their eyes as well. We are indeed making progress, but it is the rest of the world with their appeasement attitude that is costing them lives.

it was hardly appeasement that led to the tragedy in russia. it was, in fact, the product of an active "war on terrorism" in chechnya.

Big Country,

Who hasn't been active at fighting terrorism? We got support from any number of states to invade Afghanistan, which indicates all kinds of international support and aid to fight al-Qaeda. If you mean Iraq, then we're going to have to disagree - there were no terrorists operating in Iraq before we invaded (of all the states in the region, Iraq suppressed Islamic Fundamentalism more than most, or perhaps all). As for Beslan (Russia), the Russian under Putin have fought more than we - they have invaded Chechnya twice (1996 and 2002?) and have occupied the place for years, losing thousands of Russian soldiers and countless civilians. And what that has gotten them in an ongoing insurgency that clearly is stronger than it has been. How is that success?

And who is appeasing al-Qaeda? No one speaks to them, or has relations with them (at least publically - there is considerable support for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but since those are allies of ours we don't do anything about that). What country is trying to negotiate with them to avoid conflict? I really don't see that.

I'll tell you one, France. The headscarf incident? They arent actively fighting terror yet they get held hostage and killed just like any other country. And what about the Madrid bombings? Spain went and elected a socialist after that happened. Tell me those 2 countries arent appeasers. Spain was a good ally. But now they have a government that is weak on defense, just like the Democratic party here in America.

i'm not going to argue re france and spain, because bloodless has more able staff on such matters.

but this dems-weak-on-defense meme continues to chap my ass. the GOP-led government has fumbled the ball on afghanistan (yes, elections, millions registered, yadda yadda, except that two third of the country is under the de facto rule of warlords), let both osama bin laden and al zarqawi slip through our fingers repeatedly for political purposes bearing on iraq, slashed funding for equipment and veterans benefits as well as nixing combat pay, all while instituting involuntary war service on the "all-volunteer" army and mocking the very notion of a draft. furthermore, this admin ignored the clear cautionary notes emanating from the out-going clinton administration regarding bin-laden.

the bottom line is, we haven't had a truly democrat government in 10 years, so blanket assertions about what the party is or isn't a propos defense are pretty unfounded. meanwhile, we've had all we can handle of the republicans, and on every front -- overseas combat theaters, international alliances, the homeland -- we simply are no safer than we were when bill clinton left office, and indeed we might be less so.

i'm not saying kerry would have made us safer. but i'm pretty sure he couldn't have done more than bush and cronies to endanger us.

"The headscarf incident? They arent actively fighting terror yet they get held hostage and killed just like any other country. And what about the Madrid bombings? Spain went and elected a socialist after that happened."

First, France went against what the terrorists demanded regarding the headscarfs. The people of France, including the moderate muslims, came out and said to the kidnappers, how dare you tell us not to create a headscarf bad, we are French and secular and we will do what we want. So, if you meant that France appeased the kidnappers by changing their stance on the headscarf (as well as cross, yarmulke, etc) ban, that is incorrect.

Second, regarding Spain, it was likely they would have elected a socialist government anyway. As I recall, it was not so much the attack itself that drove people to the socialists, but the conservative government's mishandling of the information, with secrecy and an attempt at a cover up to affect the election their own way. In effect, the Spanish government had already defied its people's preferences (the soul of representative democracy, right?) to enter the war. That the government would try to whitewash the true nature of the attack (blaming it on the Basques) apparently seemed to many people to be another attempt to ignore and manipulate the popular will. In addition, a socialist win is not such a dramatic event. The popularity of socialist parties in Europe and around the world (e.g. Brazil) is stronger than we might imagine here in the US. Likewise, Eurosocialism is pretty mainstream, left of center politics. Additionally, socialism isn't necessarily associated with being weak on defense. This is not to say that Spain's administration might not be weak on defense, but it's not necessarily a causal relationship.

As to Spain ... if you believe exit polls (not saying I do, but if you do) the Madrid bombing had very little impact on the voting preferences of Spanish voters. As Binky notes, the Spanish people were overwhelmingly against involvement in Iraq, and the incumbent Spanish government had other problems too. The vote to oust the old government may have been partially related to the old government's support for the war in Iraq, but it doesn't appear that the attacks had much to do with it - though Binky is right in saying the the astonishingly ham-handed cover-up and manipulation practiced by the government after that incident does appear to have clearly cost them so votes in the election (again, if you believe the exit polls).

As to France ... as I have written before, they have been fighting Islamic terrorists for a long, long time. And they were of course active supporters of our action in Afghanistan. They, however, do not construe the war in Iraq as part of the war on Islamic terrorism.