In my recent post about Michael Charles Smith, I received a response from a reader by the name of Carl Deen regarding my support for the war against terror Islamofascism (Not the war on terror. Terrorism is the method the Islamofascist uses to accomplish his political-religious goals). I think his challenge is worth a post of its own so rather than responding in the original post, I have decided to answer him here.

Deen writes:

Letâ€™s see if I understand the author. Without provocation, much like Germany did to Poland, the USA invaded Iraq, a country that was no threat to us; however, because, we did, we cannot admit our mistakes and withdraw. I suppose, by that reasoning, we must stay there forever at a cost of $500 billion and the lives of several hundred solders a year. According to the author, Islam is a threat to us; therefore, we must attack and meddle in their affairs. It doesnâ€™t occur to the author that if you attack and meddle in their affairs, you make more enemies than if you leave them alone. Oh, I forgot; they hate us for our freedoms. Therefore, by using the war as reasons to turn the USA into a police state, they will stop hating us because we will have lost our remaining freedoms.

Was Iraq a threat to the United States?

First of all, the comparisons of the U.S. to Nazi Germany are getting very tiresome. Whatever â€˜atrocitiesâ€™ the U.S. has committed pale in comparison to the Holocaust. I also reject the premise that Iraq was no threat to the U.S. Regardless of whether or not Saddam had WMD, he was a threat to the U.S. Saddam did in fact invade Kuwait in the early 1990â€™s to steal the Kuwaitâ€™s oil. Had Saddam been allowed to proceed, there would have been national security threats as well as economic threats to the U.S. and the world.

When Saddam surrendered to the international coalition, there were certain conditions that he agreed to so that he could continue to be in power. Among those conditions were that he was not to reconstitute his WMD program and was restricted from flying in the â€˜no fly zones.â€™ To enforce the agreement, coalition fighters patrolled the no fly zones from the time of the surrender to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam routinely fired with anti-aircraft weapons on the coalition fighters patrolling the no fly zones, directly putting the lives of U.S. and coalition pilots at risk. These attacks were provocative acts of war.

Letâ€™s also not forget that Saddam attempted to assassinate former President Bush. Regardless of how you feel about President Bush, he was a president of the United States. An attack on the presidentâ€”any American president is a provocative act of war against the United States.

And then there were the families of the suicide bombers who Saddam paid to spread terrorism throughout Israel. Sure, he was not paying suicide bombers to make attacks in American cities (as far as we know anyway), but this still proved that he was not above such tactics. Though the 9/11 commission found no links between Saddam Hussein and the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the commission did find that attempts were made between Saddam and Bin Laden to form an alliance. Their ties however, were non-operational. Had Saddam been as far along in his WMD program as most of the worldâ€™s intelligence agencies and world leaders had thought, it is not out of the realm of possibility to believe that those ties could have eventually become operational making it possible for Islamofascits to gain access to this material and carry out an attack on the U.S. Based on Saddamâ€™s track record (his use of chemical and biological weapons on his own people, for example), there was no reason to believe that he did not have WMD. U.S. intelligence had underestimated Saddamâ€™s progress in his WMD programs in the past. If left unchecked, he would have.

Whoops! We were wrong, time to go?

We can debate whether or not the invasion of Iraq was justified and can even argue that preemption is a bad military philosophy. Fine, thatâ€™s fair. A case could be made that other outlaw regimes such as Iran or North Korea posed a greater security threat to America. But right or wrong, we have troops in Iraq right now as a direct result of that philosophy. What possible good can come from surrendering and allowing Iraq to become quite possibly the largest hotbed of Islamofascism? If we leave Iraq in its current state, I am absolutely convinced the Islamofascists will follow us home. We also have a responsibility to the Iraqis to leave their country in a better situation than we found it. If we leave now, there will likely be a humanitarian disaster and the blood will be on our hands for allowing it.

I do not believe that our troops should stay in Iraq forever but I do believe they should stay until the Iraqi government is stable enough to handle the violence by itself. I also believe that our government should put more pressure on the Iraqi government to make this happen. Rather than a time table, there needs to be reasonable benchmarks that should be met before a pullout should occur. Hopefully, there are people in the Pentagon much smarter than me who can determine what these benchmarks should be.

If we leave them alone, they will leave us alone?

Carl Deenâ€™s suggestion that if America simply pulled the troops out of all of the Islamic countries, the Islamofascists would forgive, forget, and leave us alone is typical of the â€˜peace at any priceâ€™ crowd. America has made foreign policy mistakes in the past, no question. But does anyone seriously believe that if we say â€˜weâ€™re sorryâ€™ the Islamofascists will forgive us? These people havenâ€™t forgiven Europe for the Crusades for crying out loud!

The Islamofascists grudge against the West generally and America specifically is by no means limited to Americaâ€™s actions in â€˜Allahâ€™s land.â€™ The Islamofascists do in fact hate America and Western culture because its freedoms are an anathema to the teachings of Islam. America is often referred to as â€˜the great Satanâ€™ because America is very liberal when it comes to rights of women, the freedom of religion, the separation of church (mosque) and state, and representative government.

Islamofascists are afraid that our â€˜decadenceâ€™ will spill over into their counties and undermine their precious holy laws. I am aware that itâ€™s not PC to say anything negative about oneâ€™s religion but the Quran itself states many times that non-Muslims are to be converted, enslaved, or killed. If you donâ€™t believe me, read it yourself here.

Should we negotiate our way out of this war?

Ever heard that line in the Marine hymn â€œFrom the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoliâ€? The Tripoli part of the hymn has to do with Americaâ€™s first encounters with Islamofascists– the Barbary Pirates. President George Washington sent Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to try to solve the crisis diplomatically. The pirates refused. Instead, they demanded the U.S. government to pay tribute (ransom) in exchange for promises that they would no longer attack and capture U.S. ships.

The Adamsâ€™ administration agreed to play ball (this surely would please the peace at any price Left of today). When Thomas Jefferson became president, he decided to put an end to paying tribute and instead used the full force of the Navy and Marines. As it turned out, force was the only thing that worked against the Muslim Barbary Pirates. After the pirates were defeated, they left American vessels alone and the European nations who were dealing with the same problem followed suit. Our leaders of today could learn a valuable lesson from this experience.

Sacrificing freedom for safety

This of course is a very valid concern. When we trade freedom for safety, we deserve neither. Many of us complain about the so-called domestic spying, warrantless wiretaps, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and the creation to the Department of Homeland Security. Some reasonable security measures can be taken without sacrificing the freedom of Americaâ€™s citizens but we all know that government often over reacts and over reaches.

Supposing we pull out of Iraq or go even further and withdraw troops from every Islamic state and the inevitable happens (attacks against American cities worse than 9/11), then what will happen to our freedoms? Let just one nuclear device take out just one American city and life as we know it in America will change forever. Expect martial law to be declared in every metropolitan area in the country and other government actions that will make the Patriot Act look like nothing. This will happen irrespective of whichever political party is in power at the time.

So yes Mr. Deen, I do believe that America was right to go into Iraq based on the intelligence available at the time and no I do not think our troops should stay there forever. Iraq is now a central front in a much larger war against Islamofascisim; a war which will continue as long as there are Islamofascists who intend to destroy our country and our way of life.

Related Posts:

Peace on the Enemy’s Terms

Placing the Blame Where it Truly Belongs

A Treatise on Treaties

Newsflash: War is Messy