What George Bush is Really Up To! Home

What George Bush is Really Up To and the Liberal v. Conservative Debate on Iraq and Afghanistan Lately we've been working on a project with Dr. Anis Shorrosh and other folks who are experts on Islam. Dr. Shorrosh has advised Bush about Islam since George W. was governor of Texas. If you have wondered why George Bush has embraced Islam - calling it a "good and peaceful" religion - here is what Bush is thinking, according to Dr. Shorrosh: Bush's strategy is motivated by three concerns: Preventing a violent "backlash" against American Muslims here at home by folks who know that Islam's growing presence in America is the greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity we have ever faced. Keeping the "sleeper cells" of fundamentalist Muslims in the U.S. sleeping, and Preserving the flow of cheap oil to both the American and world economy until the U.S. can capture Iraqi fields and bring Iraqi production online According to Shorrosh, to our own contact within the administration, and many others, Bush does know that Islam as taught in Koran - not necessarily as practiced by many Muslims - is and always will be violent. But Dr. Shorrosh says Bush does believe he is following a biblical example in pretending to believe that Islam is peaceful. Bush thinks he is following the example of David, when he pretended to be crazy and sought refuge from Saul among the Philistines, with Acish king of Gath. You can read about it in 1Sam.21:10-15. David, you might recall, fooled Acish but not the other kings of the Philistines, who barred David from fighting with them in the battle where Saul was killed. The Philistines are the ancestors of modern Palestinians and it was from the name Philistine that the Romans named that part of the world "Palestine." The key point of Bush's strategy is Iraq. Bush believes a war with Iraq is absolutely necessary - and so he is completely committed to that war - because he believes America's greatest vulnerability to terrorist attack comes from the perception that the U.S. will not respond on a grand scale to Islamic terrorism. Osama and folks like him have consistently said that the U.S. is weak and unwilling to incur casualties to fight Islamic militants. Historically, Osama is correct. During the Reagan administration we withdrew from Lebanon rather than fight after a terrorist attack on a Marine barracks killed over 200 Americans. Arguably, we were weak during Bush 1 by failing to topple Saddam, and without question President Clinton showed weakness when he failed to take any action after the 93 bombing of the WTC, lobbed cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and failed to respond at all to the attack on the USS Cole. As we have often pointed out, Clinton made the U.S. the ally of Osama bin Laden in the war to take Kosovo away from the Serbs and give it to Muslims. Bush believes an American conquest of Iraq coupled with a permanent U.S. military presence in the country will achieve the following objectives, listed in order of increasing importance: Allow the U.S. to set up a regime that can serve as a model for freedom and democracy to other countries in the Middle East. For reasons we'll discuss below in the section on the Liberal v. Conservative debate, this is a low probability objective of little importance. What is of critical importance is establishing a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq, with at least a facade of peace. Replace U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, the usefullness of which depends on Saudi political whims. The U.S. has already obtained basing rights in Qatar and has moved with unprecedented speed to set up a new port facility in Egypt on the Red Sea. Allow the U.S. to conduct military operations inside countries that harbor terrorists and refuse to take action against them. If you look at a map, you'll see Iraq borders on Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Eliminate the need for appeasing the Saudis to ensure the West can continue to get cheap oil. This is the most important objective, because world support for our war on terrorism is already marginal and would collapse if it appeared U.S. actions were damaging the global economy. Bush also has to keep the U.S. economy humming to ensure domestic support. If Iraqi oil can be produced under U.S. control, the U.S. will take away a weapon that Muslims believe Allah has placed in their hands - control of oil prices. Will the Bush strategy achieve these goals? Can it give us long term security from the dangers posed by Islam? We think the answer depends on who is right in the Liberal v. Conservative debate on Iraq and Afghanistan. The Liberal v. Conservative Debate on Iraq and Afghanistan The debate over the past and present course of the war on terrorism has sharply split along liberal and conservative lines. Liberals want to create the perception that the Bush administration is failing, so they claim: That we have failed to achieve the goals of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan because the country is still torn by violence and largely out of control That military action in Iraq is unnecessary and stealing resources from the real war on terrorism, and That Bush policies are responsible for the present economic downturn Conservatives, on the other hand, claim: That the Afghanistan phase of the war on terror was successful because it knocked the Taliban out of power That military action in Iraq is necessary because of Saddam's WMD program, and That the present economic downturn is the result of the business cycle and can be reversed by supply-side policies like cutting taxes We think that both sides in this debate have fundamentally failed to understand both the nature of the threat the U.S. faces and the response that is necessary to preserve our freedom and prosperity. Point One: Islam Must be Displaced by Force Conservatives are correct that the Taliban no longer hold power in Afghanistan, but liberals are also correct that the elements required to create lasting free government and economic growth in Afghanistan are missing. There is a model for how to create a relatively free and prosperous nation from an Islamic dictatorship in history, it is Turkey. Unfortunately, following Turkey's example requires recognizing a truth that liberals will never admit and that conservatives only speak about behind closed doors. That truth is that Islam is violent, and replacing Islam with the values needed for freedom and prosperity requires violence. When Mustafa Kemal, known today as Ata Turk - the father of the Turks - created modern Turkey he first stirred up the passions of the Muslim street by claiming that the Ottoman Empire - Turkey's predecessor state - was run by infidels. He used Muslim peasants to lead a revolt that put him in power. Then he turned on the peasants by enlisting the professional classes to crush the influence of Islam. He outlawed the Islamic calendar, languages other than Turkish, including Arabic, the language of the Koran, moved the day of worship from Friday, the Muslim holy day, to Sunday, and outlawed the wearing of the Fez except inside of a mosque. To ensure his hold on power he put the entire economy under government control, slowing privatizing industries by passing them out to cronies who had proven their loyalty. Political opponents - including fundamentalists - were arrested and executed. In short, converting a fairly progressive Islamic state - Ottoman Turkey - into a quasi-western nation was a top down process that required the drastic use of force to impose new values. History shows the same steps were necessary to convert pagan Europe to Christianity. The evangelization of Europe was a top-down process in which kings, who were the first to be converted, used the coercive power of the state to impose Christianity and Christian values on the population. There is a rule here which neither liberals or conservatives will want to follow. Historically, Britain, likewise, did not follow the rule that the values that ultimately create freedom and prosperity must be imposed by force. Although Britian gave special political rights to Anglicans in its colonies, it relied on missionaries to produce voluntary converts. Britain did, however, recognize the importance of making Christian converts. The British understood that their government and legal system were based on Christian values, and if it was ever to be able to rule its colonies peacefully - and make them prosperous - the people in the colonies would have to adopt Christianity. British missionaries received the protection and support of the British government. Since the United States of the 21st century does not recognize that its government and laws are based on Christian values, it will never go as far as even Britian did, and will be less successful than Britain was in creating peace, freedom, and prosperity in the Islamic nations it "liberates." Point Two: Military Action Against Islamic Terrorism is a Short Term Strategy Conservatives are correct that Saddam's WMD program, COMBINED WITH THE FACT THAT IRAQ IS A MUSLIM COUNTRY poses an immediate threat that can only be removed by military action. The reason is that every Islamic nation, even those who are our "peaceful allies," has ties to terrorism. So called "peaceful" Muslims nations - nations that are friendly to the Infidel West - can only remain so by strictly controlling the content of sermons in the mosques, religious education, and even religious literature. Every Muslim nation has a portion of its population that read and believe Koran, and Koran requires Muslims to engage in war with non-Muslims. Thus, every Muslim nations has ties to the fundamentalists who carry out terrorism. The existence of fundamentalist Muslims who are willing to carry out suicide attacks makes it unnecessary for a nation to develop a missile delivery system before it can put a WMD on American soil. Because liberals deny that Islam is inherently violent, they are blind to the threat Saddam poses, but this means that they also cannot identify the real enemy in the war on terrorism. Thus, there argument that attacking Iraq is diverting resources from the real war on terrorism is just an attempt to fool Americans. The real argument against the Bush strategy in Iraq is that it is only a short term solution. Unlike peaceful Muslim nations, Saddam has always encouraged the fundamentalist message in his mosques. This is how he stirred up his people to fight the Shiite Iranians, by explointing the view of Sunnis that Shiites are heretics. If we do invade Iraq, we will have to use the same violent tactics that peaceful Muslim nations use to control their Muslim clerics, but since this would be viewed as violating free speech, a part of the freedom we want to create in Iraq, we are unlikely to have the gumption to do it. Consequently, we are likely to face continuing hostility in Iraq, whipped up by Imams, and may find Iraq's new ruler, whoever that may be, will be not much different than Saddam in his view of the U.S. Bush's decision to invade Iraq also poses tremendous potential for blow-back. One distinction between fundamentalists and so called "peaceful" Muslims is that the peaceful Muslims do not believe in engaging in jihad until a Muslim nation is overtly attacked. By invading Iraq, we will provide just the trigger needed to greatly increase the number of Muslims willing to engage in terrorism. The greater threat will not manifest itself immediately - we probably won't see Muslim nations severing diplomatic ties with us - but it will appear over time unless we do what is really needed to stop Islamic terrorism, read on! Point Two: We Are Our Own Worst Enemy Conservatives are correct that our economic downturn is in part cyclical, but liberals are also correct that Bush policies are partially to blame for the downturn and are unlikely to restore healthy economic growth. What we believe is the correct view of the problem is a little complicated, so let's start with some basics. Wealth is created by transactions, by one person voluntarily exchanging what he has produced with another person. If we want to increase wealth we need to do two things, increase productivity and make it easier for trades to happen. Increasing productivity requires increasing the amount of capital workers use when they make things and this includes both human capital in the form of education and physical capital like tools and machines. Making it easier for trades to happen means reducing government interference in the market, increasing the flow of information about goods and prices, and promoting values like honesty. Unfortunately, we have been waging war on our own prosperity for about 130 years or more. For at least that long, our society has been steadily moving away from the Christian values that promote industry, accountability, and honesty, and this slide has accelerated in the last 40 years. We've also slowed our population growth, which by itself would cause the number of transactions to increase, through legalized abortion. Our moral decay has created a problem that is difficult to perceive. The market, though it has been restrained by our moral slide, has not been eliminated. It has contiued to deliver goods and to innovate, but we have no way of knowing if we are as well off as we would have been had we stuck with the right values. But our moral decay has created a weakness that is not only economic but also political. Because we don't recognize the values that are essential to increasing wealth, we also do not recognize the values that are essential to liberty. Conducting the war on terrorism puts us very much in the same position as Britain was in trying to fight against our colonial forefathers in the American War for Independence. The costs we will face in training and equiping our troops and sending them overseas will be very much greater than the costs our enemy incurs. Over the long term, this means that a military war on terrorism is ultimately doomed to failure. The real war on terrorism is a war of ideas, a war of values. Unfortunately, we no longer know what the values are that are essential to freedom and prosperity, and we are unwilling to admit that our enemy - Islam - teaches values that are the exact opposite of those ideas. President Bush will likely learn the same painful lesson President Reagan learned - that tax cuts don't stimulate the economy when the increased revenue they produce is eaten up by spending, in this case, the military spending made necessary by our military response to Islam. You just steal from future generations by racking up deficits. What's worse, if we do not turn back to the God of the Bible and recognize that our freedom and prosperity are blessings from Him produced by honoring Him and following His rules, our slide away from right values will become irreversible. This is because the greatest threat Islam poses is right here at home. As Muslims grow in number and political influence, they will move us incrementally away from the values we have left, just as liberals have done for the last 130 years. The Bible tells us that the most central teaching of Islam - that Jesus was not God in the flesh - is the exact teaching of the antichrist. 1 John. 2:20-23. It warns us not to take people who follow such teachings into our house or welcome them. 2 John.7-11. If we want to defeat Islam, we need to start here at home, by recognizing that Islam's true teachings deny Christ and command violence. Until we do that, we have no hope of defeating Islamic terrorism.