On the subject of UBL, I have yet to hear how the Democrats would have gotten anyone in Waziristan to give up a man whom many feel is on the right side of the clash between Islam and the rest of world. The Bush Administration and the Pakistani army tried to move into that area but to no avail. The bottom line their was even if we blanketed the lawless areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, most of the people living in those regions would not have turned him in for any amount of money.
Even if UBL had been caught, nobody has shown me how that would have made he world safer. The invasion of Afghanistan fundamentally changed the structure of Al Qaeda. Instead of it being a top-down chain of command with UBL and Kalid Sheik Mohammad at the top and their soldiers at the bottom, once UBL became a fugitive, the structure transformed from vertical to horizontal. Now what we have is independent cells attempting use whatever resources are available to commit as much mayhem as humanly possible. That’s right, instead of sleeper cells waiting for word from the executive branch of Al Qaeda, all of the cells are acting autonomously in whatever way they are able to. I don’t know about you but the thought of thousands of cells all over the world with lots of bombs and no leadership doesn’t make me feel safer and I seriously doubt that the Democrats have a comprehensive plan to put that genie back into the bottle.
As I’ve said before, endless diplomacy with a group of people who have stated that there can be no peace until we are all dead or converted is a recipe for defeat and disaster. While the Bush Administration has made a ton of errors prosecuting the War on Terror, making the world “safer” was never in their ability nor was it most probably even a goal. The world is too complex for that kind of simplistic thinking. There are too many variables to consider when making an assessment on how one should make the world safer. Essentially, the way to do that is to get rid of all ICBM’s and nuclear devices. Under Clinton there was no real progress there. Neither Kerry nor any other Democrat could convincingly explain how they would go about getting members of the nuclear club to voluntarily give up their arsenals. Let us remember, even France has nukes and there are fixing to give them up.
In short, it is fallacious thinking to believe that anyone can make the world safer. One can argue that invading Iraq was poorly timed or even poorly planned but the invasion itself has nothing what-so-ever to do with the safety of the world. Again, the world was a great big mess before Iraq and there has been real measurable change in the fundamental structure of the world and the way it works since. In other words, don’t believe the hype, nobody, not even Hillary Clinton can make the world safer, they can only expose us to more danger.
