Democrats seeking to be "anti-Iraq but not anti-war" are wrong

There is a meme circulating inside the beltway that "Afghanistan was a good war which Democrats support, Iraq was a bad war which we oppose." This kind of analysis might "poll well" in a country that thinks Saddam was behind 9-11, but it is dangerously wrong as national security strategy.

I'll start with the correct thesis:

Our freedoms are more endangered by a centralized government run amok than by whomever is in Afghanistan or any other place.  Precious time and resources are being wasted on individual coutries when the world as a whole needs a comprehensive approach to the ultimate threat which is too many people and not enough to go around.

1: The CIA created Osama bin Laden as a weapon against the Communists.

2: Rather than learning its lesson, the CIA and the government in general continues to rely on unsavory characters especially in countries like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia.

3: The reaction to 9-11 was more damaging than the attacks themselves.

Had Bush came on TV and said we would follow Jesus's example and turned the other cheek and sought reconciliation we would be much better off today. Americans inflict dozens of 9-11s on themselves every year in the form of drunk driving, homicide, and pointless wars in the desert. Turning America into a police state, inventing new layers of bureacracy like Department of Homeland Security, no bid contracts to Halliburton, Hookergate... for God's sake I am forced to take my shoes and belt off at the airport but the cargo at the ports goes uninspected, and the borders are wide open! This is the Mayberry Machiavelli approach to security!

4: If there was a real lesson of 9-11 was that there were people out there who would use WMD against us if they had them. Our mission was to prevent their access to these weapons by targeting the only entities that can produce them and the entities that are responsible for policing their rogue citizens; states.

We completely f-ed up in 2003 with the occupation of Iraq. We ignored Iran and North Korea; we hoped that Pakistan and Uzbekistan and all the other nuclear "stans" wouldn't turn against us some day. We continued to aid and abet the Saudis and Egyptians who are looking the other way vis-a-vis terrorists in their own back yard. We let Africa (black, no oil) go to the dogs when poverty there is a huge malarial-swamp breeding ground for terrorism and instability in the future. We undermined regimes that could actually police their own people like Iraq and Syria. We abetted Israel in the undermining of an ally and "fellow democracy" in Lebanon which they felt they had to do as a direct result of Bush forcing the Syrians out and promoting "democracy" on the Palestinians.

5: Some Democrats, including John Kerry are so afraid they will be smeared by the brush of Vietnam, that they feel they must be seen to be "anit-Iraq but not anti-war".

Hey John! (et. al.) You were right about Vietnam! "Nixon's America" was dead (50,000) wrong! It went to the Communists lock-stock-and two smoking barrels but the domino theory was bogus! Afghanistan was not the "breeding ground of terrorism" we make it out to be until the CIA and the madrassas that spew hate got a hold of it. The West Bank, Gaza Strip, Iraq, Pakistan, Chechnya, Somailia, Sudan, and Egypt are much more the breeding grounds for terrorism. How many hijakers came from Afghanistan? Iraq? The terrorists have so many choices for a "breeding ground" now that "victory" in Afghansistan is irrelevant to the broader strategy of how 6 billion people are going to live together in relative peace on a shrinking resource base.

In conclusion; you can win the battle and lose the war; you can win the war and lose what you are fighting for. We need a progressive approach to the world and we need to abandon the "War on Terror" for the war on poverty, superstition, crowding in dehumanizinng slums, environmental degradation, and ruling elites run amok.