Osama, Obama, Bush and Us – How History See’s It

by Jack

Thoughts on Osama, Obama, Bush and Us…the mistakes we made, the damage we caused and  The Big Bang Theory – 9/11

Have you noticed that Obama is always quick to tell the world what America is NOT going to do? For example, “We’re not going to put boots on the ground in Iraq.” Not that I want boots on the ground in Iraq again, but how smart is it to limit our options? He’s in effect telling ISIS we are not going to deploy soldiers into Iraq, so have at it.

How does this put any pressure on them to consider what their aggression might bring? Before this Obama was telling the world what we’re not going to do in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Chad and Egypt. Previous presidents have at least said, “All options are still on the table.” But, this only invokes fear (and cooperation) if the enemy doesn’t think we’re a paper tiger. Last May Obama outlined his plan to withdraw all but 9,800 American troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.   He then told the world the rest of our troops will be out by the end of 2016.  I’m sure the Taliban has these dates on their calendar and they no doubt appreciated knowing, so they can make their war plans.

In essence Obama is saying to our enemy, continue to snipe at American’s because there will not be any military consequences to pay. We’re now committed to withdrawal! We’re done fighting and now we’re just looking for an exit.  You know that must be good news for the jihadists!  Sounds like victory to them.

I’m all for an exit in Afghanistan, but we should be smart about it.   Speaking of being smart, if only we could go back in time to the start of this conflict.  In the beginning our strategy was to back the Army of the Northern Alliance and use our Special Forces with air support.  This was a limited involvement and that was all we needed to send the Taliban and Al Qaeda bullies into the Tora Bora mountains. We rained Hell down on them -  we made them suffer for 9/11, even though the actual planning was done in Germany.   Afghanistan was still a safe harbor for terrorists back then and the bad guys were led by Osama bin Laden, so we had more than enough justification to go after them.   Unfortunately, we expanded on that limited involvement by spending billions on nation building as we tried to get them to be a western style democracy.

Of no surprise to most of us, the general Afghan population did not seem too appreciative of our efforts.  So, both missions (routing the bad guys and creating a new and stable democracy) have pretty much failed, despite 12 years of costly trying.  Instead, the Afghanis have grown tired of our presence.  To them we now look more like occupiers, not liberators.  On balance, some Afghani, in particular women have benefited greatly from a more liberal environment absent the troglodytes we call the Taliban.    There’s something good, some positive amid so much bad!  But, what will happen to those liberated, educated women if the Taliban return?

It should be obvious to anyone now that whatever is wrong with Afghanistan and it’s people…we can’t fix it, only they can.    President Bush made a huge mistake to even try, because this played right into Osama’s plan and it cost us plenty to find that out 12 years later.

The citizens of America were never pounding on the door to the White House, pleading to do some nation building, in either Iraq or Afghanistan!   That was not even remotely on our minds, and the majority of us, when asked, said it was foolish to even try.  Too bad Washington wouldn’t listen.

The long history of conflict and diverse ethnic demographics in these two countries backed us up – not the not the nation builders.  In this case the American people were a lot smarter than the advisors in Washington.   Building a democratic nation can only come about when a strong majority of the indigenes population really demand it.  They didn’t.   We know that now.  And we know we should have been in and out, perhaps one year tops and called it mission accomplished.   But, we just couldn’t do that could we?  We had to stay to ”shore up” the new government, no matter how corrupt or incompetent.   Then we threw truck loads of money into their hands and what did that get us? Not much, is the obvious answer.

The Taliban and a smidgen of Al Qaeda started out with a generation of battle hardened jihadists when we invaded Afghanistan. Now they have two generations of battle hardened jihadists.  This is not the picture of success.

In Iraq we started out with a ruthless, self indulgent tyrant and we wound up with a radicalized rogue Caliphate nation bent on spreading jihad around their neighbor. These guys (Isis in Iraq) have proclaimed they won’t stop until their black flag flies over the White House.   Oh great, again not the picture of success is it?

As I write, we’re suffering more casualties from our allies, the Afghan soldiers we trained, how outrageous is that? We’re the infidels and they hate us so much they’re willing to go on a suicide attack if they can take a few of us out in the process. The whole region from Afghanistan to Pakistan is unstable. Pakistan teeters on the very knife edge of revolution thanks to the influx of radical Muslims refugees from Afghanistan. The northern portion of their country is now controlled by the Taliban in exile. Back in Kabul we have a head case for a President. President Karzai can’t be trusted, he plays both sides and is known for leaking military secrets to the enemy as well as condemning our battlefield actions on his countries behalf.

We’ve had a combine 22 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s taken thousands of lives and many more causalities. We’ve wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in two sink holes. And worse we inadvertently supplied our worst nightmare (Isis) with high quality American made weapons they use to lay siege to 90% of what was once Iraq and now is becoming a terrorist state run by a death cult. Could it be any worse? Really, I’m asking you honestly – could this have worked out any worse?

In the very beginning before these two wars, and pre 9/11, one man sat in a sand strewn tent in the desert heat and collaborated with a few key advisors as he drew up diabolical plans how they were going to cripple America. This was Osama bin Laden. Also included was Mohammad Fazl (Obama released him from Gitmo this year), Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (he was the planes manager on 9/11 and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), Riduan Isamuddin (better known as Hambali, and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri. Together these terrorists crafted 9/11 and served as Osama’s lieutenants in later years.

Their sole purpose was to draw America into foolishly overspending on security wars and doing dumb/aggressive things that would derail relations with Middle East nations. If they could do only that they felt they could call 9/11 a great victory. But, the actions by Bush following 9/11 exceeded their wildest expectations. America did overreact by invading two nations that morphed into 22 combined years of war. This would ultimately lead to many diplomatic failures in Arab countries. America has never had less influence or fewer friends in the Middle East. We’ve even managed to alienate Israel, the only true friend and democracy that we’ve ever had in the Middle East!

Osama wanted a symbolic victory on 9/11 and what he got was much more and more enduring.   He succeeded into provoking America into doing many stupid things out of anger and fear, not the least of which was Homeland Security and the TSA.

Osama long range goal was the classic objective of all terrorism, bleed your enemy until they are weak and moral is low. In the bright light of history Osama won. He outsmarted Bush and Obama as we played right into Osama terrorist plans. He could not have been more pleased with the unwitting cooperation by President George W. Bush and Barrack Hussein Obama. Bush rushed recklessly into war without a good plan to win the peace. President Barack Obama helped Osama succeed when he mismanaged our occupations and grossly bungled our exit strategies. However, Obama was the greater fool because he felt he could charm his way into influence with Muslims. He was quick to side with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and that ended in disaster. He encouraged the over through of Khadafy in Libya, but he had no idea what would feel the void he left behind – now we know. Radical Islam has never had a stronger role in Libya.

Barrack Obama has bungled every crisis he’s ever encountered, be it the Great Recession, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and now Israel.  No president in history has ever made more profound foreign policy blunders!

Now back to Osama bin Laden. Osama had a crude plan that involved only the most basic elements of terrorism: Bleed your enemy from a thousand cuts, use hit and retreat tactics. Force your enemy into spending his finite resources while deploying his military on too many fronts. We saw that tactic used to some success in Vietnam. The ease in which two US presidents (Bush and Obama) fell for such an obvious trap is disturbing, to say the least.

Osama was not a particularly brilliant man, so what does that say about our side?

Osama used a low budget operation that worked. We used a high budget operation that didn’t. Osama spent pennies in offense and we matched it with billions in defense. Osama had soldiers by the hundreds and we deployed soldiers by the hundreds of thousands and made ourselves look like enemy occupiers. Our forces became spread around the world. Osama relied on volunteers to make their own plans in whatever country they were located.

When Osama launched 9/11 he attacked through a few holes in our security that should have been closed. We had many opportunities and even advanced warnings but for whatever reason we didn’t pay attention. So Osama used a few open doors of opportunity and of course he did it at his leisure. The dollar damage from his attacks was far from crippling, but the spending that followed in the name of national security was crippling. The 9/11 damage was multiplied many times over when the Bush Administration rushed around the country foolishly trying to fortify all America from improved lighting at county fairs to armored vehicles in small town police department.

No request was too absurd, even when the county sheriff in Idaho wanted scuba gear to patrol the earthen dam above his town. This unbelievably gross overreaction caused incalculable damage to our economy and it ultimately impacted all Americans in the form of spiking the national debt. This rush to secure everything from all possible threats was a fools errand.  It was a pointless gesture, done ostensibly to reassure a terrified citizenry that our government was on the job doing everything they could to protect us… and thus helping us avoiding a complete mental breakdown from our fear.   History says this was not the case.

We weren’t fearful, we didn’t want this kind of stupid spending and the inconvenience that went with it. Fear did not cause us any paralysis,  we were clear in what we wanted to do and how much invasion of our privacy we didn’t want.  But, government had other ideas.

Historians would later write we were damned angry after 9/11 and yes, we wanted to hunt down and kill every #$%^@ player in this terrorist plot, starting with bin Laden! The idea of hunting and killing terrorists gained a global consensus, it made perfect sense – even among the world community… for once. Ah, if we could have only just done that and avoided all the rest of the junk! If we could have stuck to our original plans with a laser-like focus like Israel did following the Black September terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics. But, unfortunately it’s the nature of government to allow mission creep.

There is this penchant in Washington to spend like crazy whenever we are confronted by a problem…and 9/11 was a big problem.  And I admit, it did expose a number of holes in our security.  However, those holes were caused by agencies being too big and top heavy.   These were administrative mistakes caused by bureaucrats.  We didn’t need more bureaucracy to fix this!!!   No, it was not from a general lack of good intelligence from  law enforcement or a lack of agencies.  Iraq was never the enemy we thought it was and many will now argue if we didn’t make matters worse for the war on terrorism because of Iraq.

After 9/11 everybody in Washington wanted a piece of the action so they could have bragging rights about doing something patriotic.  This is called the snowball effect.   Basically all elected officials can do is appropriate funds for projects and create more government via sub-contractors.   This allow gov. sub-contractors to become millionaires overnight.  As long as they had something to sell under the pretext of national security they got funded!   Government had shifted from the bright light of democracy to the shadowy world of sub-contractors (many were mercenaries).  The average American did not demand any of this!   The public never once demanded all that extraordinary airport security after 9/11, but we got it just the same! Even little Chico Airport closed the front parking lot to save us from car bombs – they can say it worked because terrorists never blew up our terminal.  We never demanded Blackwater to be in Baghdad or civilian contractors to be eavesdropping on us!

(On left – Anti-terrorist device deployed to Colorado) Some of the measures we took in the name of security might have been totally laughable if they had not impacted our pocketbooks so much. In hindsight, I suspect all those foolish measure happened because of two basic things: First, we (the public) felt obliged to cooperate with our gov. leaders in this difficult time. It was right after 9/11 and patriotic feelings were running high. So when government asked for it we gave them free reign. Second, government always feels compelled to do something, even if doing nothing is the more prudent course of action.  The list of goofy ideas that popped up and cost us money could only come from career bureaucrats in Washington.  So, big government was our true enemy, because of their gross overreach.

The majority of us felt what was happening at the time was the wrong direction, but we played along because it seemed like our patriotic duty. Then there was the idea that government probably knew best, that they knew more about situation than we did, so we deferred to their judgment. What a big, big, mistake! And that one is on us – we earned that footnote in history.

Let me close with a question. Who looks more clever now, Osama bin Laden or our last two presidents? Oh, better make that one more question… do you think we will we EVER learn from history? My answer would be…I seriously doubt it.