The Left's Paper-Thin Thinking On The War

Scarecrow at Firedoglake is mad that we killed some Al Qaeda soldiers/terrorists in Somalia.

On Sunday night, that failure [to have an alternative vision for responding to 9/11] led US forces to extend the war against Islam to Somalia, not because Somalia lies at some strategic coordinates on the geopolitical map, and certainly not because its people or non-existent government represent any serious threat to Americans or the United States. No, we unleashed a Specter (”Spooky”) gunship, with its awesomely lethal howitzer, cannons and gattling guns, on what was apparently a village at the southern tip of Somalia, because we wanted to kill certain people we claimed were al-Qaeda.

How is this guy able to handle a keypad if he can't handle the basics of reality? The attack was not on Somalia, it was on certain people. That's because our enemy is not a country or a religion, but certain people.

Out of one side of its mouth, the Left talks about how national borders have disappeared, and we must move onto a new era where we are no longer thinking like self-centered nations. But on the rare occasions when the Administration agrees with that crackpot theory, people like Scarecrow rage that national borders weren't respected. What hypocrisy.

He also refuses to accept internationalism -- the salve for all hurts in their orthodoxy -- when it's not their internationalism. We confired with the Somali government (such as it is), Ethiopia and others in a coordinated land-sea effort to get these guys. But to Scarecrow, it's "we claimed" they were Al Qaeda. That it turns out that they were, in fact, Al Qaeda makes no difference in his worldview.

Here's another Scarecrow caw about the UN:

And we were in apparent violation of Security Council resolutions, which we helped pass, banning the introduction of weapons into Somalia from outside nations. We are an outside nation. In short, we attacked people in another country because we claim we don’t have to obey any laws anywhere — not ours, not theirs, not the UN’s. And that, my friends, is exactly the belief that terrorists everywhere hold.

Ah, Bush the terrorist; UN the pillar. Scarecrow's globalist/socialist view will never allow him to admit that the UN is a body dominated by terror-supporting, repressive states; it's the ideal that matters, not the reality.

So he would rather we honor a resolution than kill a man who bombed two embassies and a hotel, all worked out very carefully to kill people he had no business killing. Bush, on the other hand, worked with other nations, waited until the rats were caught in a corner and worked hard to limit the killing to the guilty ones.

It doesn't matter, because like all the Left, Scarecrow is repulsed by people dying. Not if Che does it, mind you, but if we do it, Oh! The abomination! It doesn't matter what these people did or how they behaved, because -- and here's the rotten base of Left-think today -- it's all Bush's fault:

No, we did it because our President claims we have the right to murder people in other countries if he decides he wants to do so.

It's not about military action; it's not about strategic objectives; it's not even about making it impossible for someone who has killed innocents before in the name of a fractured, fascist philosophy to kill innocents again. It's all about what Bush "wants" to do -- but if you look back to the 2000 campaign and the president's first nine months, you see that Bush didn't "want" this at all; he had a much different vision for his presidency before Al Qaeda stepped in the way.

So what's his solution. Hold your breath; this is a shocker: The UN.

In a September 12, 2002 speech he delivered before President Bush spoke to the UN about Iraq, Nobel Peace Prize winner and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke about the need for member nations to strengthen and respect the rule of law. He emphasized the need to create and embrace international institutions and mechanism to further the rule of law, to respect international borders, to avoid unilateral military interventions, and to increase reliance on mechanisms for peaceful resolution of international disputes. We needed international law, he said, not unilateral lawlessness.

Scarecrow, you old coot, let's do this once again: Our enemy is not a nation. Our enemy does not respect the rule of any law other than the Koran. They have no borders. They are unilateral lawbreakers.

The UN, as an international institution, does not embrace the law; it waters down resolutions, then stands by as brutes from Gaza to Myanmar ignore those resolutions and murder people.

We are a democracy; we have to put up with these idiots. But we cannot minimize the harm they do by the influence they weld.

Hat-tip: memeorandum
Related Tags: War in Iraq, 9/11, Politics, Foreign Affairs, Bush, Leftist, Liberalism