Terrorist Who Should be Dead Rebounding
china confidential
The Taliban have grown fourfold since 2006, and their semiliterate leader--who should have been blasted off the face of the planet within days of 9/11--is making one of the most impressive military comebacks in modern history. Click here for the story.
Mullah Omar's rebound can't be blamed on U.S. President Barack Obama. His predecessor, George W. Bush, was responsible for failing to annihilate Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan after the worst-ever attacks on American soil. Struck by Pearl Harbor 2, the American people would have supported fighting World War III with World War II rules of engagement. Instead, they got CNN rules--and another Vietnam.
Why did that happen? One explanation: the Bush administration was hemmed in by liberal restrains and sensibilities. Decades of indoctrination prevented the President from (a) seeking a formal declaration of war against Afghanistan and Al Qaeda and other enemy (Islamist) organizations, and (b) using any and all necessary weapons to win the war, swiftly and decisively.
This reporter doesn't buy it. The American people, with some exceptions, were ready for a massive, merciless response to the Islamist attacks. What seems to have happened, however, is that Bush held back, did too little too late in Afghanistan, relying on notoriously unreliable, Islamist-sympathizing warlords, and needlessly invaded and occupied Iraq, a contained, secular dictatorship with no weapons of mass destruction and no meaningful Al Qaeda connections, to avoid destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan, which had created and sustained the Taliban, and Saudi Arabia--a major money source source for the Afghan group and Al Qaeda.
The protracted, purposely misnamed War on Terror failed; and the Obama administration is in the process of downgrading and redefining it so that Al Qaeda, alone, will (for the time being) remain "unreconcilable" and thus outside the pale of diplomatic engagement.
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