Freedom on the March
After the Cold War ended and our long time enemy the Soviets fell apart, it was wondered what age the world would be in now. It appeared to be another American century, but defined by what? The Communists lost most of their power, military, and empire; the Europeans are too complacent and decadent, and haven’t held power since World War II, in the case of the French, not since Napoleon. Who could have possibly thought that Fascistic Islamic Fundamentalism would be the threat we face today and that our age would be defined by the War on Terrorism?
This is a unique war because the enemy breaks all the rules of war and our forces are held to the highest standards of warfare ever. They are barbarians that attack civilians, torture and kill civilian hostages, don’t wear uniforms, owe no allegiances to any country, and don’t obey any rules of war. And while all this is going on the New York Times puts the Abu Ghraib prison abuse on the front page over and over again, Human Rights Watch criticizes the treatment of terrorists in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, Micheal Moore makes Fahrenheit 9/11, and the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan declares the war in Iraq illegal.
And despite all this we are winning! It’s not over, as Winston Churchill might have put it. This isn’t the end, just the end of the beginning. But who could imagine the progress we have made? Who would think that the Iraqi election would have the effect it did? It’s like the Berlin Wall came down in the Middle East.
In Lebanon the people are in the streets demanding that the Syrians remove their troops and puppet regime. Lebanon was once a democracy in the middle-east that brought in many tourists, until the Syrians turned it into an Islamic dictatorship and a haven for terrorists in the 70s. On Saturday Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak called for a constitutional amendment to allow other candidates to run against him for the first time, Egypt for the last 55 years has been a dictatorship and before that was a monarchy. In late 2003, Libya announced its decision to give up plans to develop weapons of mass destruction. Even the Israeli Palestinian conflict is headed towards peace; terrorist attacks have been thwarted by the Israeli wall, Israel is removing settlements, and the Palestinians have a new democratically elected leader.
This is a unique war because the enemy breaks all the rules of war and our forces are held to the highest standards of warfare ever. They are barbarians that attack civilians, torture and kill civilian hostages, don’t wear uniforms, owe no allegiances to any country, and don’t obey any rules of war. And while all this is going on the New York Times puts the Abu Ghraib prison abuse on the front page over and over again, Human Rights Watch criticizes the treatment of terrorists in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, Micheal Moore makes Fahrenheit 9/11, and the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan declares the war in Iraq illegal.
And despite all this we are winning! It’s not over, as Winston Churchill might have put it. This isn’t the end, just the end of the beginning. But who could imagine the progress we have made? Who would think that the Iraqi election would have the effect it did? It’s like the Berlin Wall came down in the Middle East.
In Lebanon the people are in the streets demanding that the Syrians remove their troops and puppet regime. Lebanon was once a democracy in the middle-east that brought in many tourists, until the Syrians turned it into an Islamic dictatorship and a haven for terrorists in the 70s. On Saturday Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak called for a constitutional amendment to allow other candidates to run against him for the first time, Egypt for the last 55 years has been a dictatorship and before that was a monarchy. In late 2003, Libya announced its decision to give up plans to develop weapons of mass destruction. Even the Israeli Palestinian conflict is headed towards peace; terrorist attacks have been thwarted by the Israeli wall, Israel is removing settlements, and the Palestinians have a new democratically elected leader.
posted by Camilo at 11:23 AM
1 Comments:
The Vulgar Moralist has an excellent entry about the ideological dimension of the War on Terror: http://radio.weblogs.com/0143188/2005/02/10.html#a30
It is certainly the strangest war yet waged. But it seems to have brought great hope to an area of the world that many had assumed there was no hope for--and on such a level!
Wonderful times that we live in.
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