Monday, November 01, 2004

Mortal Stakes

A long-time Iraqi blogger, the Mesopotamian, puts the election stakes clearly:
President Bush now represents a symbol of defiance against the terrorists and it is a fact, that all the enemies of America, with the terrorists foremost, are hoping for him to be deposed in the upcoming elections.

That is not to say that they like the democrats, but that they will take such an outcome as retreat by the American people, and will consequently be greatly encouraged to intensify their assault. The outcome here on the ground in Iraq seems to be almost obvious. In case President Bush loses the election there would be a massive upsurge of violence, in the belief, rightly or wrongly, by the enemy, that the new leadership is more likely to “cut and run” to use the phrase frequently used by some of my readers. And they would try to inflict as heavy casualties as possible on the American forces to bring about a retreat and withdrawal...

On the other hand if President Bush is reelected, this will prove to them that the American people are not intimidated despite all their brutality, and that their cause is quite futile. Yes there is little doubt that an election victory by President Bush would be a severe blow and a great disappointment for all the terrorists in the World and all the enemies of America...

Note that we are not saying that President Bush is perfect, nor even that he is better than the Senator, just that the present situation is such that a change of leadership at this crucial point is going to send an entirely wrong message to all the enemies. Unfortunately, it seems to me that many in the U.S. don’t quite appreciate how high the stakes are. The challenge is mortal, and you and we are locked in a War, a National Emergency; and in such circumstances partisan considerations must be of secondary importance.

If you lose this war, you are no more, and you will have to withdraw within you boundaries cringing and waiting for terror to strike you in your homeland, afraid to move around, afraid to travel, afraid to do business abroad. You will have to see all your friends abroad annihilated and intimidated and nobody will have any confidence or trust in you anymore. And you will have to watch from far with bitterness the forces of darkness and evil taking over in many parts of this earth, with feelings of impotence and inability to do anything about it. In other words you would lose all credibility, and the fiends of terror and obscurantism would go triumphantly dancing the macabre dance of mayhem and death, and darkness would descend and obliterate the light and the hope...

And all this for what? For failing to confront few thousands ex-baathists and demented religious fanatics and some common criminals, concentrated in some rural areas of a country of the size of just one of your states; and that for a nation that has defeated Natzism, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Empire!
We mustn't give up now.

The stakes are mortal!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Ten O',

I must differ with you. Though I have do not have the same connection with the will of Osama that Bush claims to have with the will of the Lord, I must assume that Osama favors the ignorant untargeted belligerance of Bush. Why else would he deliver an anti-Bush message, directly addressed to the American electorate? He may be Evil but he is not Stupid.

Ken

10:23 PM, November 02, 2004  
Blogger RDS said...

Ken,

Well, I'm not so sure about that, one could make the case that it was very stupid of Mr. OBL to attack the United States directly, given our full history.

Megalomaniacs like OBL, Hussein, Hitler, etc., were/are all apparently quite bright, especially tactically, but in their hubris miscalculate on grand strategy, believing they can get what they want by force of will.

OBL surely cannot have hoped for his current situation.

One could say W makes it easier to generate new jihadis. Well, it was always easy to generate jihadis. They were doing that quite well long before W came along. The difference now is, the effectiveness of said jihadis, regardless of their raw numbers, depends on their having sanctuary and support of terror-sponsoring regimes -- and W's doctrine to eliminate those regimes makes the existence of the jihadis irrelevant, and their operational threat to us greatly reduced. Nukes don't grow in caves!

RDS

8:42 PM, November 04, 2004  

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