On to Yemen!
(Whoops! Too late! We're already there!)
So the plane bomber was trained in Yemen. And we're already arming the military there and firing missiles from drones, apparently.
But I thought we had 100,000+ troops either in or on their way to Afghanistan to shut down al Qaeda and the Taliban? What if the next terrorist comes from Malaysia? Or Saudi Arabia (you, know, like the bulk of the 9-11 attackers)? What do we do then?
How fast can we make drones? How many more troops do we have left to fight these battles? Will we invade Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Somalia...? The list goes on and on.
The latest terrorist incident undercuts the very pretense presented for our growing commitment to Afghanistan. Once again, the stark truth hits us between the eyes: attacking a nation-state has essentially nothing to do with rooting out al Qaeda.
(more)
The charade of our Afghanistan policy has long been plain to see for many of us. But never was its fraudulence offered up in such stark relief than on Christmas Day when a lone African with a powerful explosive rammed up his rectum (or strapped to his scrotum) nearly succeeded in taking down a plane with almost 300 people aboard.
Meanwhile, half a world away, we're busy flushing lives (our own, our allies', those of Afghan citizens) and billions and billions of dollars down the drain in a fight against... Against... Against... What, exactly?
(And never mind the ongoing flushing of lives and treasure in Iraq.)
I have written many times of the blatant hypocrisy of U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia. Rich Saudis have always been the primary funders of a global al Qaeda, if for no other reason than to preserve their own royal hegemony at home.
- They funded the 9-11 attackers.
- They fund the Wahhabist schools that preach hatred and violence toward the West.
- They fuel the Palestinian-Israeli feud, the perfect distraction for their own populace, unhappy that oil wealth remains in the hands of a few.
- They funded the Sunni insurgency in Iraq that led to the bulk of U.S. casualties there.
- And chances are, they are funding the terrorist training centers in Yemen where the latest (foiled) attacker learned how to shove a condom full of PETN up his behind.
Yet, we count the Saudis among our "friends."
Go figure.
But I note that no one, not even Joe Lieberman, is talking about invading Saudi Arabia.
We had an opportunity in the days following September 11, 2001, to finally close up shop in the Middle East and get off the insane Oil Merry-Go-Round™.
- We could have added a dollar tax to gasoline immediately and added 50 cents every six months thereafter and used that money to fund crash research programs in all kinds of alternative energy technologies.
- We could also have funneled money into bringing our intelligence networks up to speed and into the 21st century, so that someone like our most recent plane bomber would have been tracked before he ever got on a plane.
- We could have directed resources toward infiltrating al Qaeda cells, worldwide, with an eye to disrupting plots before they hatch.
- We could have told the Saudis and the other oil-rich nations that we were getting off the merry-go-round.
- We could have told the Arab nations, the Israelis and the Palestinians to clean up their acts and work out a deal because we were done being in the middle of that never-ending hornets' nest.
The main thing we need to do in the region is get out -- the sooner, the better.
I'm no foreign policy guru. Far from it. I'm just a guy who thinks rationally and likes honesty and practicality.
That said, I'm not expecting any honesty or practicality on this subject from anyone in Washington, Republican or Democrat. The entrenched interests have their hooks in far too deep to ever make the honest or practical possible when it comes to our policies in the Middle East, western Asia and north Africa.
We will continue to destroy lives and waste money on senseless nation-state attacks and occupations.
It's confounding, isn't it?