Foreign Policy and the Mosque

The US plans to sell 84 advanced F-15’s to the Saudis. True they may go without long range weapons systems onboard but primarily due to objections from Israel. Couple that with military jurors being flown to Guantanamo this weekend to hear a war crime trial under a military tribunal. Right here and now the Patriot Act is still the law. Warrantless wiretaps are being conducted by the NSA under the Obama administration. We’ve got 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. And so I ask you:

“Can you please explain to me the difference between the Bush Administration policy and the policy of the Obama Administration when it comes to fighting the war on terror??”

It is apparent that the warriors on both sides of the political spectrum do not want to admit the glaringly obvious which is the question I just asked. For those on the right, they don’t want to admit it because they want to continue to demonize Obama as they declare that everything he’s doing is 180 degrees opposite of Bush. And the left doesn’t want to admit it because Obama was supposed to be the anti-Bush. More and more however, this current administration appears to be nothing but a continuation of the Bush foreign policy which is a point I and others made early on and in some cases prior to Obama’s inauguration. We are set to draw down troops in Iraq (though the largest deployment of National Guard members from Minnesota since WWII are set to deploy next summer to Iraq and Kuwait) even though we had elections there 4 months ago which did not yield any permanent results; thus a stalemate in Baghdad. Some of you might recall that Bush was scheduled for a draw down which would have gone into effect during a Bush third term (or Obama first). On Afghanistan, we don’t know that Bush would have escalated force there. But, we do know that Obama has. We’ve now reached the TRILLION dollar mark for military expenditures for both of these conflicts. And yet……NO ONE SEEMS TO WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!

There is little that Michael Steele and I agree on but on this point we do. It is political suicide for the United States to get caught up in a land war in Afghanistan. He was spot on while at the same time silenced by liberals and even a number of “conservatives” who want to apparently cheerlead (albeit silently) the Obama administration’s policy in the Middle East.

I bring this up [that latter part about Michael Steele] because what did Osama Bin Laden say when he finally had his communicate as to why Al Qaeda was formed, and why he had been leading the charge in this horrific terrorism for 15 some odd years??? He said (paraphrasing a bit here):

“I want foreigners out of Saudi Arabia.”

And 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were from where?? Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden has even said he wants the royal family out of Saudi Arabia. Of course you don’t have to take these people at face value. They are of course barbaric. They are terrorists.

I just wish to bring up the juxtaposition however, in the wake of the mosque controversy in New York where the Cordoba House project is getting a lot of flack for going up so close to the 9/11 memorial. Think about this…it was 65 years ago that the United States dropped not one but two atomic bombs on Japan. 120,000 Japanese died instantly and as many more were killed afterwards by radiation. Yet, the United States has a military presence in Japan and Okinawa. And so on the one hand, we’re giving aid to Saudi Arabia and other countries (as we’ve done since the entire post-WWII era) propping up the Saudi royal family and countless other Arab dictatorships to the chagrin of the people and hence you get this constant revolution.

My intention is not to be overly provocative here…all I’m suggesting is that for all the people complaining about the Cordoba House and the mosque near the 9/11 memorial, (bear in mind they already own the land and don’t have to go through any zoning; they can do what they want) shouldn’t we probably ask ourselves what we’re doing in Japan? I mean let’s be honest, isn’t this an affront to the Japanese people? Here we are the people that incinerated over 100,000 of their people and yet we’ve got military bases there?? We’ve got military bases throughout the Middle East and people don’t want us there. The two aren’t exactly parallel but it most definitely is an interesting juxtaposition and one worthy of reflection.