Terrorism at Cherryvale Mall

Dec 8, 2006

3:44 AM

Rockford made the national news cycle today. I will take it for granted that those of you who are interested will acquaint yourself with the facts, or have already heard them on the news.

Now that we know that even a poor, old, mundane city like Rockford can be the target of terrorism, it points out how this conflict should have been handled from the outset. Al Qaeda, and its ilk, needed to be treated like an organized crime group rather than a nation. Certainly, we were right to invade Afghanistan, but we should have finished the job there before proceeding onto other targets.

Sure, Sadaam Hussein confused things, and mishandled events, to encourage the invasion. As it turns out, he wanted his enemies to believe that he was at least capable of producing weapons of mass destruction at a moment's notice, or might have stockpiles of them secreted away. It was an idiotic strategy to foment doubt. He does deserve a large amount of blame for the way events unfolded. It was a huge miscalculation on his part.

That being said, it was a foolish on our part to invade Iraq on a premise supported by faulty evidence. We knew nothing. It was a huge intelligence failure, and yet, no heads rolled.

At the time I tried to make the best of things by reasoning that the war would at least provide an honorable front line for Al Queda, and other militant Islamic groups, to confront the West. But guess what, they don't want an honorable confrontation. These groups hide their identity behind scarves until it comes time for them to make their farewell video just before they enter "martyrdom" by blowing themselves up in a suicide attack.

So where are we now? We are the policeman involved in a mighty domestic dispute. The Kurds are the "good child" who harbors ambitions of going to college and making a life that has a promising future. The Sunni and Shia are the warring husband and wife whose trouble is probably irreconcilable and has a drug problem at its core. Remember what Marx said about religion and opiates? So how are we going to separate the warring factions? Are we going to get them to "play nice" for twenty seconds so we can get out of the apartment and let one of them shoot the other? Are we going to escort them to divorce court? Who thinks that we can train forces that can maintain control of the situation without using levels of Sudaam Hussein-like brutality?

Who thought we could invade an Islamic country and, as a result, Middle-Eastern nations would magically learn to embrace democracy and Israel?

After 911 we had the sympathy and support of the world. We squandered it through ignorance and poor planning. We mistook an entity that is very much like the Mafia for the Soviet Union. Our bad.

Now what do we do?