Iraq and Vietnam: an international perspective from National Catholic Reporter

With all due respect to National Catholic Reporter, there are differences between Vietnam and the war on terror.
First of all, dear NCR, the US did not "skip to battle" against ISIS.
That's a gross simplification of the US response to the war on terrorism, especially in light of the growth of the evil Islamic State.
"..realities that have brought us to this point as we skip to battle."

Vietnam was a tremendous waste of American leadership when the undeveloped country united behind successful efforts to defeat the US military. National Catholic Reporter's editorial staff raises the issue again. Did America learn anything from the Vietnam defeat?  In other words, in raising our military might against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the US is likely repeating the same mistake.

NCR writes: 

The Vietnam War ended on April 29, 1975. That was the day we watched the last Americans scrambling to climb aboard helicopters to flee Saigon. It was a stunning U.S. defeat.

The seeds of that defeat were planted years before, most notably on March 8, 1965. That was the day the first U.S. Marine combat troops landed in Danang, Vietnam. That action gave a civil conflict a global stage, forming Vietnamese patriots overnight. If we had only understood.

The drums of war are again beating loudly as a new threat -- the self-proclaimed Islamic State -- engages in a particularly vicious takeover of territory in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is tempted once again to revert to a kind of reptilian revenge to assuage its anger over the unspeakable beheadings of two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker. We dance again with folly if we put aside the complex historic, social and religious realities that have brought us to this point as we skip to battle.

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My husband is a Vietnam war veteran, having served in Chu Lai with the US Seabees. Also, we both visited Vietnam several years ago. No question about it, the Vietnam War was a huge defeat against the US military.  

Nevertheless, the Vietnam War was fought under the false premise of the invented risk to the world order, as in the "domino theory" of allowing nations to fall victim to an axis of communism.  

Iraq, Syria, the war against Al Qaeda and it's subsidiaries, coupled with the evil ISIS and another Khorasan Group (embedded inside all of the above) clearly raises the threat of a new world order ruled by terror. An international effort must be launched to destroy the root cause of this collective momentum.

NCR raises the right concerns. An increase in US military response to the war on terrorism, especially targeted towards Muslim groups, will unite the Islamic hate against this aggression.  

NCR continues:

Saudi Arabia, we are told, is now unnerved by the Islamic State phenomenon and its intention to create a caliphate, or political-religious state, across Syria and Iraq. We all are repulsed by the reports of beheadings in the name of an Islam that is actually a perversion of the faith.

The Islamic State, however, grows out of a strain of theology called Wahhabism, named after an 18th-century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Wahhabism found a home within Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, where some of the most extreme forms of Islam are practiced. The laws of the Saudi state are, to put it mildly, draconian, and Saudi politics less democratic than that of our professed enemy, Iran. The Washington Post recently reported that according to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia executed as many as 22 people within the space of two weeks last month, and at least eight of those were beheaded. Most of those executed had committed nonlethal crimes, and, said Amnesty, four members of one family were beheaded for "receiving drugs."

Are we kidding ourselves, then, in our selective moral outrage? Is this a case where images and American victims are necessary to provoke revulsion? Do we want to rush to another protracted military commitment where the slippery slopes are being polished and are headed toward "boots on the ground," and where another era of unintended consequences lurks in waiting?

Islam itself is looking for a new Middle East balance as Sunni and Shiite sects wrestle with crumbling ecosystems, vexing social unrest often caused by endemic unemployment, and theologies attempting to come to terms with modernity. The West cannot provide the answers. These need to come from within Islam -- and they will. Whatever chances moderate Muslims might have in leading the way to find these answers will only be undermined by Western intervention, which in turn will undermine our own security.

"I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor," Pope Francis has said. "I underscore the verb 'stop.' I don't say bomb, make war -- stop him. The means by which he may be stopped should be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit, but we nevertheless need to remember how many times, using this excuse of stopping an unjust aggressor, the powerful nations have dominated other peoples, made a real war of conquest."

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Vietnam and it's people have repelled all aggression throughout it's long history. French  colonials warned the US to stay away from Vietnam after their nation was humiliated, following the  defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.  

In the war on terror, the current actions are hardly a "skip to battle". In fact, this war began on September 11, 2001, with a coordinated Al Qaeda destruction of the New York City World Trade Center, the death of the United Airlines Flight 63 passengers in Pennsylvania and the attack on the US Pentagon in Washington DC. Although the leader Bin Laden was eventually murdered as a result of the 9-11 attacks, the growth of Islamic extremism continues to threaten world peace. Growing Islamic extremist groups are intent on creating a world according to their power vision, whereby all infidels are assassinated.

Vietnam was a hard and expensive lesson for America's foreign policy. In other words, there was no "domino" threat. In the years since 1979, however, the Vietnamese people have become a vibrant nation with positive economic and social ties to the US.

In the growth of terrorism, there is no national identity, except for Islam extremism, associated with the affiliates of Al Qaeda, ISIS and their evil networks.

In all due respect to National Catholic Reporter, there is only one similarity between Vietnam and Iraq. Vietnam was launched without a real threat of a "domino" theory about the growth of communism. Similarly, in Iraq, the US "Iraqi Freedom" invasion was based upon the theory of destroying Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), where none existed. 

Therefore, following this logic, it was US failed intelligence that led to both of these deadly wars. Consequently, it is an ominous assumption, but one we must be willing to accept, that the outcome of the war on terror could be the same as Vietnam.  

National Catholic Reporter's editorial is wrong minded, but could, unfortunately, be prophetic.

Malaysia Airline 370 is an international terrorist game changer

All people identified as terrorist should be tried in absentia by an international court and sentenced to death. 

Malaysia's airline disappearance is a terrorist act of unknown etiology. 

Obviously, if the airliner had crashed into the ocean, there'd be evidence, by now, of floating debris. There are just too many who are looking for any piece of junk or substances to miss finding floating crash debris. Therefore, with an experienced but unknown pilot involved in the airplane's mysterious disappearance, it's clear the intention of the hijacking was motivated by terrorism of unknown etiology. Now that 9 days have passed without any substantial information about the flight, it seems like whoever or whatever happened has changed the nature of terrorist surveillance. 

This airliner plot is too sinister to understand, so whatever the world is doing to prevent or infiltrate terrorist cells must clearly be challenged. It's time to eliminate all the terrorists in the world, regardless of what it costs. A world council should be called the likes of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals. All people identified as terrorist should be tried in absentia by an international court and sentenced to death. 

In the past, terrorism has been something that happens to "other people". Usually, Americans are at risk for being victims of terrorist acts. Yet, in the Malaysian flight 370, the airplane's passenger list were predominantly Chinese!

So, while the Chinese were reticent in their response to the war on terror, maybe the disappearance of this airplane with their citizens on board and the mysterious incident will change their minds.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian government must help to destroy terrorism. Obviously, people with criminal, evil and terrorist intentions found the Malaysian nation to be a launching pad to execute their evil airliner plot.  

With the entire world, using every spy satellite and type of surveillance now on the lookout for the missing Malaysian airliner, the world has been issued a clarion call to unite against terrorism. Will this call be heard?

It's time for world leaders to put regional and historic disputes aside. Instead, they must form an allied coalition to destroy terrorism wherever it lurks.  

Our war on international terrorism is urgent and it must be won.

Meanwhile, the location of Malaysian flight 370 must be discovered so the evidence uncovered can be used to retaliate against the evil perpetrators who organized this heinous crime.

Declaring a War on Terror

American military strategies have tried, really tried, to focus the war on terror against the Al Qaeda extremists in their hide outs among tribes in developing nations, like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, in spite of billions of dollars spent on this effort, while countless lives have been lost, our nation's overall efforts to protect our national security against future attacks has not advanced much. We've protected our nation against some follow up attacks, we don't know how many were foiled, but our national security still remains fragile.

In other words, we obviously have not yet won the war on terror.  

Maybe, this failure to win is because a War on Terror has never been declared. Now, the world is faced with yet another conflict in Syria that, if left unresolved, will create, either, a change of regime that could be worse than the reign of terror now being waged by President Al Assad, or a humanitarian disaster of unparalleled proportions.  

Maybe, both events will, unbelievably, happen concurrently.  In which case, our world wide undeclared war on terror will continue to be fed by the carcasses of the collapse of Syria.  

At least, that's how I see it.

Americans witnessed the horror of the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country, but a formal war was never declared.

In spite of the three terrorists attacks, led by their ring leader, the Egyptian born Mohamed Atta, on the Twin Towers at New York City's World Trade Center, coupled with the deliberate crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 on the Pentagon in Washington, DC, most Americans have yet to experience the sacrifice of living in a nation at war. 

Indeed, these brazen and evil attacks on our country caused a retribution against the terrorist networks led by Al Qaeda, leading, eventually, to the bold killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottobad, Pakistan. Nevertheless, there's no declared war to end the zealous networks of extremists feeding off of the unjustifiable passion for killing innocent people, especially Americans.  

Now, Americans are on the threshold of yet another Middle East conflict, this time in Syria.  Another dictator, different name, same tyranny, named Bashar Al-Assad.  This is a man whose days are numbered, regardless of how the Syrian carnage called a civil war plays out.  

Syrian President Al Assad can't possibly retain control of his country when many millions of his people are living in refugee camps outside of his nation's borders, while he sprays innocents inside his country with Sarin poison gas.

Al Assad has lost his mind. He never should've sprayed his people with Sarin poison gas, especially hundreds of innocent children.

Obviously, I'm not a foreign policy expert; moreover, I have absolutely no experience in international diplomacy.  But, this is my blog; so it's the world as I see it - "this way", according to me:

• America has never declared a War on Terror. Why?

• Meanwhile, our nation has experienced a litany of terrible attacks on our way of life, both within our own nation and, especially, abroad.  These attacks may  have started in 1993, in the Reagan administration, with the Beirut attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon; maybe, even before then. 
• Now, because we never declared a War on Terror, America and our allies haven't been able to resolve conflicts where our nation's security are at risk.  As time goes on, our nation and allies are perceived as vulnerable, because we can't overcome the forces that want to destroy our way of life.  

Of course, Syrian President Al-Assad isn't currently threatening the US. Instead, he's fighting to retain leadership, all the while, his days are numbered, regardless of the outcome of the civil war he's obviously unable to resolve.  The leader who comes after Al-Assad- and there will be a leader after him - may be even worse, especially if the pro-government forces remove him from power because of ineptness.

If America doesn't do something definitive to help the victims of this Syrian Civil War, our credibility as a world leader will erode even more than it has already.  As a result, terrorism will spread, because it can intimidate our national resolve to fight.

In fact, I wonder if Al-Assad would have dared to use poison gas against his own people, if he perceived the threat from President Obama to "draw a line in the sand" about using weapons of mass destruction, as being serious.

Therefore, in an inverse correlation, if Al Assad prevails and his terror increases, our nation's credibility will be diminished.  As a result, the threat of world wide terrorism will expand even further, because that's how evil works.  Evil is something like carbon monoxide, it will fill the world unless civilized nations open up the environment to the expansion of oxygen.

Al Assad used Sarin gas on civilians and this evil act must be addressed; it's just inconceivable for any human being to do this.  

Al Assad now joins a demonic  historic line up, with the Germans in World War I, Adolf Hitler in World War II and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, a demonic line up.  

Frankly, the civilized world must once and for all declare a War on Terror, define it, fight it and win it.  Similar to how Allies after World War II recreated Western Europe, the world must take the same strategy against Al Qaeda and all terrorism.

By doing nothing to intervene in Syria, the terrorism networks will feed on the inaction to fuel their growing networks of groups that want to destroy civilization as we know it.  

Humanity must win the War on Terror.  There is no alternative.

Polarized Government While Fighting the War on Terror - Speaker John Boehner Must Stop the October 1, Quagmire

Speaker John Boehner may shut down the American government on October 1, 2013, because he wants to waste more time to force a repeal of President Obama's Health Care Reform. 

Indredulously, the threat of a government shut down on October 1st, is real. Government services could stop, all the while our state department personnel and US military are in harms way, prepared to defend our nation against renewed terrorist threats. A government shutdown, by the way, means these people probably won't get paid. 

U.S. officials have emphasized they have been watching growing threats emerging from Yemen for weeks.

An intercepted Al Qaeda message has startled Americans, once again, about the dangers of living in a world at war with terrorists.
Extremist warriors with the Al Qaeda network are continuing to plot attacks to kill Americans, especially in areas of the Middle East, where some populations are easily intimidated to become complicit with terrorist groups.

Extreme caution against international terrorism is the new normal, but especially so since we're coming up on one year since the deadly September 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks, when Ambassador Stevens was killed in fiery street demonstrations.

Terrorist "chatter" threats, combined with the coming end of the month of Ramadan, plus the concern over several major prison breaks in the region, all contributed to the U.S. decision to shut down diplomatic installations.

Nevertheless, while our nation faces renewed terrorist threats, our government is nearly paralyzed by political polarization that takes only a majority vote to fix. While our state department and the military fights, putting their lives on the line, to defend us against perceived and actual terrorist threats to national security, by groups hell bent on killing us, our government is entrenched in a difficult to explain political quagmire.  

Imagine how history will judge our priorities during the war on terror?  Congress can't pass immigration reform, won't repeal the stupid budget sequester that's hurting our economic recovery, refuses to take action on the President's Jobs Act and repeatedly wastes time voting to repeal Health Care Reform.  Yet, somehow, we're supposed to win the war on terror, being fought by brave state department and military personnel, although a polarized government may cut their salaries. Incredulously, these brave people could see their salaries frozen if Speaker John Boehner shuts down government on October 1st, just to prevent Health Care reform from moving forward.

It can't escape terrorists, who obviously watch CNN or the BBC news networks, that the American Congress can't even vote to build roads and bridges, advocated by the President's Jobs Act, never mind, unite to fight terrorist attacks.  

Although American vigilance has spared us many potential attacks, our luck could run out at any time. 

Republicans are clearly engaged in dangerous reasoning. Their priorities are screwed up. 

Congressional Republicans are willing to put state department and military personnel in harms way to defend us against terrorism, but won't vote to support economic security in programs for our citizens, like Social Security, Veterans Benefits, Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid, Head Start, Food Stamps or Meals on Wheels programs, to name a few.  

Rather, Congressional Republicans could soon waste more time to vote to shut down government, just because they can.  

A polarized government is no way to win the war on terror. This war defines our 21st century. Americans must find a way to win this war, just like we won the Cold War, regardless of how much money it costs.  It's time Republicans, who take an oath to protect the United States Constitution, show patriotic dedication by solving our nation's resolvable problems and winning the war on terror, too.

Let's vote out of office the Republican obstructionists, like Speaker John Boehner, and others who can't share the vision of a world at peace, where our people share in the wealth of a successful democracy. 

Speaker Boehner has the power to dredge our nation out of the quagmire of a government shutdown. Moreover, he has an obligation to put our national priorities in the right order.

Fanatics, Terrorism and Addictive Drug Use Among Enemy Combatants

Americans should know more about the probability that terrorist enemy combatants in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, are often fed by drug addiction.

US Navy Seal, the late Kris Kyle (1974-February 2, 2013) writes a vivid account of his experiences fighting to hunt down and kill terrorists in his best seller, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History".  (Unfortunately, Kyle and a colleague were killed by a gunman in a tragic incident when they thought they were in the process of helping a fellow veteran who experienced post traumatic stress disorder.)

Kyle wrote explicitly about his fighting experiences during the war on terror.  Beyond his graphic stories, the reader learns about how the combatants Kyle faced were often heavily drugged zealots.  In other words, US Navy Seals, writes Kyle, are often fighting against men who are addicted to drugs.  

"The fanatics we fought valued nothing but their twisted interpretation of religion.  And half the time they just claimed they valued their religion - most didn't even pray. Quite a number were drugged up so they could fight us", he writes (page 86).

Drug crazed terrorists are described in oral accounts recently shown in "Fight for Falluja", shown on The Military Channel.  In the interviews, US Marines provided first person accounts of fighting in Falluja in Iraq (December 2004) when they were attacked by frenzied combatants who continued fighting while they were mortally wounded.  These Marines realized they were fighting men who were high on drugs.

In another account of drugged terrorists, a 60-Minutes interview with American citizen Jessica Buchanan spoke about her horrific experience as a kidnapped humanitarian worker, who was captured and rescued by US Navy Seals, in Somalia.  She described a few of her captors as being addicted to cocaine.

This series of revelations about drugged terrorists seems to be evolving slowly from first person accounts, told by Kyle, US Marines in Falluja and by Buchanan.  Additionally, there's a reference to terrorist addiction by the author of "No Easy Day", the story about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  

Obviously, drug addiction on the scale that must be subsidized to keep an entire terrorist network high, requires plenty of money.  Weapons cost money.  Ammunition costs more money.  Drugs are costlier still.  

Therefore, cutting off the money used by terrorists to sustain their drug habits must be essential to defeating them.

Where do terrorist networks find this extraordinary amount of money?  Of course, it's highly likely the US National Security Agency is tracking the source of the money train that's funding terrorism.  It's entirely possible the recent leaks to the media about the dragnet of electronic surveillance are somehow a ruse, intended to flush out the trails leading to the drug money.  

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how separating terrorists from addictive drugs will evoke a monumental addiction withdrawal problem.  

Rather than combat terrorists in deadly battles like Falluja, the smarter war on terrorism will be focused on their money supply and forcing their drug addicted fighters to die from cocaine withdrawal.

But, I wonder why Americans don't know more about the drug addiction among terrorist enemy combatants?  It just seems odd to learn about this situation from our own troops and a rescued humanitarian worker, rather than from our government spokespersons.  Curious.

Drone Warfare: Terrorism and Winning a War

Winston Churchill encouraged people to read quotes.  
He said, "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

As deadly as Drone Warfare is, it's Sir Winston who gives me the  words to support my opinion about how our nation's National Security is dependent on killing terrorists, with drones (Winston Churchill is my authoritative source):

"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."

"If you are going to go through hell, keep going."

Critics of American "drone warfare" say killing terrorists with drones creates threats to National Security, because we're motivating more enemies to take the places of those who are killed. Of course, if the Pakistan and Afghan government were diligent allies against terrorism, a war threatening all Americans, then, maybe, we wouldn't need drones.  Instead, it's the Pakistan government that's most critical of drones - yet, they're the same country where National Security Enemy Number One, Osama Bin Laden found refuge for nearly a decade!

Since I'm uneducated about war, I take Sir Winston's advice about how to respond to critics of drone warfare.  "A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."  Americans will never change the minds of the terrorist fanatics who want to kill us.  Terrorists who follow Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda movement want to kill us because they disagree with American and Western society's freedoms of speech, religion and how women are treated with respect.  

I'm wondering if drone warfare might effectively bring an end to terrorism, if we keep it going?

What little I know about warfare tells me that, when the drone critics, in Pakistan, provide harbor for the enemies we're fighting in the War on Terror, then the "drone warfare" is working. Maybe, we need more, rather than fewer, drones to finish this war.  

Although I have enormous respect for NBC news reporter Richard Engel, his apparent criticism of drone warfare, in my opinion, is misplaced.  Rather than count  how many armed militants are killed by drone attacks, Engel might consider how many civilian lives are potentially saved, when drones strategically target and kill those who want to kill Americans.  

Americans invest enormous resources to win wars.  Not winning is more costly than winning.  "If you are going to go through hell, keep going."

Let's count the casualties in the three years of the Korean Conflict.   Data from the US Department of Defense reports 33,686 battle deaths, along with 2,830 non-battle deaths during the Korean War and 8,176 missing in action. South Korea reported some 373,599 civilian and 137,899 military deaths.  

Of course, drone warfare was unheard of in the 1950s, but after loosing so many lives, it seems to me the huge numbers of deaths were not worth the peace.  Drones, had they existed, would likely have accomplished more than all the reported deaths. General Douglas MacArthur was fired over his conflict with President Truman about how win the Korean War.  Instead of winning in Korea, an unacceptable truce was declared. Since then, millions of North Koreans have suffered human rights indignities, tyranny and starvation because of our reluctance to win the "Korean War".  

Operation Desert Storm, or the Gulf War, is another example of the cost of not winning a war.  During the successful campaign of 1990-91, the Middle East war expert, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. recommended finishing the war by attacking Baghdad, in Iraq.  Instead, President George H. Walker Bush disagreed.  Therefore, Americans didn't finish this war and now Iraq continues to be a nation in strife as a result of a subsequent American led invasion, begun on March 20, 2003, to capture and kill the dictator, Saddam Hussein. 

Americans cannot be paying, with lives, and money, for a war on terrorism and then not win.  

Sir Winston said, "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

Let's finish the war on terror, begun on September 11, 2001, when America was attacked by terrorists who continue their pursuit to kill all who disagree with their fanaticism.  If drones are winning this war, then we must support their continued use.  

I'm not educated about warfare, but I can read quotes and understand what history taught us about the cost of loosing wars.