Including this:
There is no evidence at all that the Spanish public desires the new Socialist government to pull back from a counter-insurgency effort against al-Qaeda. The evidence is only that they became convinced that the war on Iraq had detracted from that effort rather than contributing to it. This is not a cowardly conclusion and it is not a victory for al-Qaeda.
...With the secession of Spain from the "coalition of the willing," the rug has been pulled out from under the Bush doctrine of preemption, the Bush commitment to US military action without a proper UNSC resolution, and the Bush conviction that you can fool all the people all the time. Since Bush administration militarism and desire to go about overthrowing most of the governments in the Middle East actually was highly destabilizing and created enormous numbers of potential recruits for al-Qaeda, the Spanish actions are a great victory for the counter-insurgency struggle against al-Qaeda.
...There is not and cannot be such a thing as a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic. There can be a global counter-insurgency struggle against al-Qaeda and kindred organizations. But a large part of such a struggle must be to deny al-Qaeda recruitment tools and propaganda victories. The way the Bush administration pursued the war against Iraq, as a superpower-led act of Nietzschean will to power, simply made it look in the Middle East as though al-Qaeda had been right. Biin Laden's message was that Middle Easterners are being colonized and occupied by the United States.
...The initial outlay for the war against Iraq was $66 billion. Then Bush came back and asked for another $87 billion. He will ask for a similar amount again after the November election if he is reelected. It is outrageous that Congress allows him to postpone this request instead of being held accountable for it. The Iraq adventure is likely to have cost the US nearly $250 billion by next year this time. The US is no safer now than it was before the Iraq war, since Iraq did not have any weapons that could hit US soil and would not have risked using them even if it did.
Let me repeat that. Maybe $1.3 billion for Afghanistan. $250 billion for Iraq. Bin Laden and his supporters are in Afghanistan. What is wrong with this picture?
...With the secession of Spain from the "coalition of the willing," the rug has been pulled out from under the Bush doctrine of preemption, the Bush commitment to US military action without a proper UNSC resolution, and the Bush conviction that you can fool all the people all the time. Since Bush administration militarism and desire to go about overthrowing most of the governments in the Middle East actually was highly destabilizing and created enormous numbers of potential recruits for al-Qaeda, the Spanish actions are a great victory for the counter-insurgency struggle against al-Qaeda.
...There is not and cannot be such a thing as a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic. There can be a global counter-insurgency struggle against al-Qaeda and kindred organizations. But a large part of such a struggle must be to deny al-Qaeda recruitment tools and propaganda victories. The way the Bush administration pursued the war against Iraq, as a superpower-led act of Nietzschean will to power, simply made it look in the Middle East as though al-Qaeda had been right. Biin Laden's message was that Middle Easterners are being colonized and occupied by the United States.
...The initial outlay for the war against Iraq was $66 billion. Then Bush came back and asked for another $87 billion. He will ask for a similar amount again after the November election if he is reelected. It is outrageous that Congress allows him to postpone this request instead of being held accountable for it. The Iraq adventure is likely to have cost the US nearly $250 billion by next year this time. The US is no safer now than it was before the Iraq war, since Iraq did not have any weapons that could hit US soil and would not have risked using them even if it did.
Let me repeat that. Maybe $1.3 billion for Afghanistan. $250 billion for Iraq. Bin Laden and his supporters are in Afghanistan. What is wrong with this picture?
Bush?
I highly recommend you read the entire post. Cole hits the nail on the head, and doesn't mince words doing it.
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