This is Your Wake Up Call

More bombings in Istanbul. Yesterday in a post I noted that Iraq seems on the verge of civil war. The latest bombings in Turkey almost make that assessment sound optimistic.

The level of density in the Bush Administration could make solid lead ingots float. The only surprising thing is the knee-jerk support that Tony Blair has given as junior partner in the enterprise.

I've never really liked Blair all that much--his reputation is sort of a Clinton lite, as if that could even be possible. I will give Blair some credit, though: at least once a week, he's forced to at least practice some basic elocution skills and show a degree of quick thinking during Prime Minister's Questions (shown on C-SPAN on Sunday evenings). Sure, it's not entirely candid--most of the questions are known in advance, particularly those put forth by the ruling party--but I seriously doubt George W. Bush could stand even thirty seconds of this without his head exploding. But I digress...

Right now, considering how the war is going in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the round of explosions in Turkey, you have to wonder if bin Laden somehow has managed to construct effigies of Bush/his neo-con advisors/Blair, and has been poking them with pins, whispering in their ears, and pushing his own sick agenda for the region. Because our policy has become Osama's dream situation. Large numbers of US troops in the region, anarchy in Iraq, anarchy in Afghanistan, terrorism in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and, for those with short memories, Indonesia (remember the Bali bombing). Osama's Jihad, courtesy of the mule headed Administration of George W. Bush.

Well, he'll reply, at least we're doing SOMETHING--and, of course, we had to DO SOMETHING after September 11th. We had to take the war to the trrists. Excuse me? The Iraqi resistance is IRAQI--the terrorists are multinational and multiethnic--the latter uses a collective if demented interpretation of scripture/history to wage a bloody struggle against both the West and secular institutions in the Middle and Far East (again, for those who might not understand the reference to the Far East--this means INDONESIA--and the Phillipines, although we need to be careful, because religious fundamentalism could well spread BEYOND the major hot spots).

Fighting a conventional war against an enemy of this kind is ridiculous. To use a well worn cliche, it's like trying to swat a fly with a sledge-hammer. Of course, you COULD use an alternative conventional strategy--genocide. But I think Hitler and Stalin made use of this method roughly 60 years ago and failed. I also think that civilized people are rightly horrified by policies of genocide--duh.

The fact is, to fight against an unconventional enemy like international fundamentalist terrorism, you have to adopt different tactics. And the first thing you need is genuine, reliable INTELLIGENCE. Well, yeah, that also means plain old smarts, which Bush is obviously lacking, but I also mean you need pretty daring/brave folks who can infiltrate terrorist cells, identify genuine leaders, alert civil authorities BEFORE terrorists are able to act, and so on. Guess what that means--yeah, that's right: you've got to work with locals in the regions where sympathy for terrorists is high. You've got to provide a positive example of why fundamentalist terrorism should be opposed. This means respect for and understanding of customs, practices, and habits of a particular region. It means listening and being patient. It means, most of all, demonstrating a basic concern--something soldiers are neither trained to do, nor should be expected to do. We need, instead, to work with local individuals and groups to identify and deal with terrorists via the criminal justice system. That's our ONLY chance.

I'd go on, but already I've been noticing system issues on this computer, so I'm hoping this will just post, damnit, then it will be time for a reboot. Windows--the George W. Bush of Operating Systems....