CIA Disbands Bin Laden Unit
The left is going to have a field day with this, but I think it simply represents and logical step in the war on terror. People will be prone to overreact to this news, but this is clearly a step in the righ direction.
Critics of President Bush's anti-terror policies like to harp on the fact that we haven't caught or killed Osama bin Laden yet, but this is something of a canard. Those people are just using bin Laden as a political weapon against Bush. The reality of the war on terror is that Islamic terrorism is not a single nation with a single army and a single leader. While killing or capturing terror leaders like Zarqawi and bin Laden are certainly worthy and important goals, achieving those goals will not bring us overall victory in the war on terror. They can help, but this isn't a game of chess where capturing the "king" brings us instant victory.
Fighting terror means fighting an ideology. You don't fight an ideology by killing that ideology's leaders. Doing so only turns those leaders into sainted martyrs for the ideology's faithful. Instead, you fight an ideology by changing the conditions that create adherents to the ideology in the first place.
Islamic terrorism springs from the oppressive, fundamentalist rule Muslims have lived under in the middle east for centuries. By toppling oppressive regimes in the middle east and replacing them with governments that rule at the will of the people we end the conditions that breed terrorists.
Attacking the Islamic extremists by going at the very roots that supply them with a steady stream of zealots to take up their cause is the only way we are going to defeat them.
You don't get rid of weeds by simply mowing over them (nor, I might add, do you get rid of them by retreating to the inside of your house when getting rid of them seems too tough). You get rid of weeds by killing them at their roots.
Which is what we're doing to terrorism in Iraq.
Critics of President Bush's anti-terror policies like to harp on the fact that we haven't caught or killed Osama bin Laden yet, but this is something of a canard. Those people are just using bin Laden as a political weapon against Bush. The reality of the war on terror is that Islamic terrorism is not a single nation with a single army and a single leader. While killing or capturing terror leaders like Zarqawi and bin Laden are certainly worthy and important goals, achieving those goals will not bring us overall victory in the war on terror. They can help, but this isn't a game of chess where capturing the "king" brings us instant victory.
Fighting terror means fighting an ideology. You don't fight an ideology by killing that ideology's leaders. Doing so only turns those leaders into sainted martyrs for the ideology's faithful. Instead, you fight an ideology by changing the conditions that create adherents to the ideology in the first place.
Islamic terrorism springs from the oppressive, fundamentalist rule Muslims have lived under in the middle east for centuries. By toppling oppressive regimes in the middle east and replacing them with governments that rule at the will of the people we end the conditions that breed terrorists.
Attacking the Islamic extremists by going at the very roots that supply them with a steady stream of zealots to take up their cause is the only way we are going to defeat them.
You don't get rid of weeds by simply mowing over them (nor, I might add, do you get rid of them by retreating to the inside of your house when getting rid of them seems too tough). You get rid of weeds by killing them at their roots.
Which is what we're doing to terrorism in Iraq.
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