NOTE FROM Mike Jaquish: "TN" is a friend and former associate from my years in Africa. He responded to my September 11th blog entry and I wanted to give everyone a chance to read (and respond to) his thoughts on the global war on terror.


Dear Mike the Merc,

At this moment five years ago America was a united country, and the world was united with us. Today, five years on, America is ideologically divided, alienated and polarized, and the world wants little to do with us. I wish we had a better state of affairs to report to the three thousand killed on 9/11.

Little progress has been made. In fact, instead of having to contend with a few hundred or thousand al-Queda operatives in Afghanistan, we face the prospect of hundreds of thousands of young, angry Muslims and Arabs eagerly wanting to test themselves against our troops. It would be easy to point out the many mistakes made by this administration, but the bigger issue is what we should to today. The invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder, but our president has made it impossible to leave.

Little progress will continue to be made until our leadership recognizes that the enemy is not one who "hates our freedoms". Rather... it is an enemy who resents that our freedoms are paramount over the rest of the world. These millions of disaffected youths hate that it has been American leadership that propped up the dictatorships throughout the Middle East that limited their lives and made it easy for radicals to persuade them that better lives could be lived through Jihad. Robert Baer in his books describes rather well the history of our relationships with those dictatorships over the decades and how they crossed party lines. To think that there would be no consequences is naive. Foreign policy experts have warned about this possibility for years, so there should have been no surprises.

Instead of terrorists threatening our freedoms, I expect that many in America would consider the greatest threat to be from our own leadership. We have yet to suspend rights and restrict freedoms in conflicts that we didn't later regret and apologize for.

Until we know and understand who we're fighting we'll continue to plod.

-TN

MIKE'S RESPONSE:

Unlike when we invaded Afghanistan with the full support of the world, our image has deteriorated since we invaded Iraq and found no WMDs. The borderline Muslim fundamentalists have been motivated to become activists and align themselves with terrorist groups all over the world. We have successfully stirred up an angry nest of hornets that will be around to harass and harm the civilized world for decades to come. Diplomatic solutions are far more difficult as a result.

I am not sure I agree with you that Bush is not taking the GWT (Global War on Terrorism) seriously. I see no reason to believe he does not take it VERY seriously. He is inept and inappropriate in his approach at significant moments though, so one can easily receive the overall impression he is not focused on the problem as much as he could or should be.

Let us not forget that GW inherited this problem, he did not create it. This problem has been growing for decades, going all the way back to the Carter administration. These previous administrations contributed to the growth of terrorism by a variety of failures or by simply ignoring all the red flags and trip-wires. The war began officially when bin Laden issued his Fatwa and we (those in positions of power within our government) failed to take him seriously or even consider the possibility he represented a serious threat to western civilization. (It IS true we had him in our cross-hairs and failed to take him out due to politics in DC.) During this time, we were distracted by Saddam in Iraq who was considered the greatest threat in the region.

The attacks on 09-11-01 caught many off guard and drew GW into the game. Prepared or not, he picked up the banner and struggled to react in the best interest of the United States. It was no secret back when GW was elected that his lack of global awareness was a significant liability. I still recall this being a topic of discussion back when he was running for president. This has proven to be a very serious disability for our country. I do not believe GW ever actually lied about anything, but I do believe he was given inaccurate information and that he made poor choices in terms of who to believe when he was deciding what approach to take. There again... our poor Intel was a result of negligence that went back years to a point where the decision was made to cut back on intelligence gathering operations following the end of the cold war. (You may want to read Robert Baer's book: See No Evil, listed on my website as recommended reading.)

Unfortunately, the GWT is being politicized by both political parties and the truth(s) of the situation are getting very blurred in the process. I believe we need to dispense with all the political rhetoric and get focused on the fundamentals in order to win the GWT. The fundamentals are: (1) We ARE at war. (2) This IS a religious war, which makes it far more difficult to fight than any conventional war ever waged. (3) If we do NOT win this war, our civilization will cease to exist. (4) The enemy is smart, adaptable, hard to find and numerous. (5) Just as we did in WW ll, we must all be willing to alter or temporarily suspend our expectations of personal liberty in the interests of intelligence and security until we win this war. (Remember... loose lips sink ships?) (6) We must be willing to change standard rules of war if necessary in order to avoid providing our enemy with advantages in the fight. (Rules of engagement must be flexible enough to deal with the constantly changing face of our threat.)

These are only the fundamentals. Leadership should take each point and expand upon it with specific details that will allow us to accomplish the task. If they fail in this, all that we hold dear will be forfeited.

-Michael Jaquish (AKA: "Mike the Merc")