BEAZLEY’S CONTENTION NO “GLOBAL JIHAD” IN IRAQ IS BRUISED LOGIC AND NO IMAGINATION
Con George-Kotzabasis
In the wake of Cheney’s visit and comments on the Australian alliance, the former leader of the Opposition argues in his piece in The Australian, Reports of the apocalypse have been greatly exaggerated, March 8, 2007, that “After all, there is plenty of room in the alliance for disagreement on actions and objectives”… and “Howard’s ‘constant refrain’ of redeployment of forces would be a victory for terrorists”, is completely wrong, as al Qaeda are not “at the cutting edge of global jihad” in Iraq. Furthermore, he amusingly contends, a “gradual redeployment and exit” from Iraq, “would be the choices made by the Iraqi people”, which presumably according to this artifact of Beazley would render the US led-coalition a cover that the withdrawal was not according to the volition of the latter but according the ‘wish’ of the Iraqi people. Finally he caps his contention with his incipient--must I say insipid--position that only in Afghanistan one can fight al Qaeda, hence attempting to justify his long held initial stand that the terrain of battle against cutting edge global jihad is Afghanistan and not Iraq and that is where Australian forces should be deployed.
Only someone cognitively maladjusted or militarily and strategically a dilettante would continue to adhere to the wrongness of his premise that currently Afghanistan and not Iraq is the front of global terror, and to shrug the reality that the latter by its nature cannot be “compartmentalized” geographically and is and will remain borderless. And what is rather amusing for a Rhodes scholar is that he cannot perceive the logical fallacy that while he accepts the obvious, that the war is a global war on terror, whose constant is that it has a fluid geographic location--as the Somalian Islamist attempt to take over the country and turn it into a launching pad of terrorism on the horn of Africa has shown lately--he nonetheless wants to fight it on a regional basis.
But let us deal with the points of his argument. He contends that within the alliance one could disagree on actions and objectives. While this is true on secondary issues of the alliance, it’s not true about primal issues such as war, when nations deploy the flower of their youth to fight it. It would be a debauchery of political responsibility to disagree with one’s allies on the primal and dangerous issues concerning them. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, “the greater the danger is, the greater is the need to reach agreement quickly and easily about what must be done; not misunderstanding in times of danger is what human beings simply cannot do without in their relations”. And indubitably, fanatic Islam poses the greatest danger to Western civilization in the twenty-first century.
The other point Beazley makes, is that Howard’s “refrain” of an early withdrawal and “redeployment of forces” from Iraq “would be a victory for the terrorist”, and would bring forth the “apocalypse” is “a greatly exaggerated” claim, according to Beazley. But this counter claim of the latter is based on the presupposition that al Qaeda is not the cutting edge of global jihad in Iraq. Even if this happens to be true--which is not--it would not prevent al Qaeda’s twin the Iranian jihad to replace it. The Islamist jihad is like the Hydra of Lerna, the many-headed monster whose slaying is a Herculean task and has to be chased all over the globe. Moreover, Beazley’s assertion that a gradual exit of the American-led coalition would be the choice of the Iraqi people in this decisive conflict between the former and the insurgents is vaudevillian farce. No great power, least of all a superpower, in such a conflict of historical meaning can leave its reputation and destiny to be determined by the volatile and fickle choice of any people. A great nation does not win a war or save its renown as an invincible power on the energy of the wind that moves the weathervane of the choices of the masses. Furthermore, Beazley is completely wrong about the real choice of the Iraqi people. The paramount choice of the latter, in the conflagrating circumstances of their everyday existence, is security. The majority of Iraqis, unlike Beazley, are aware that their security and future economic prosperity depends on the American presence in Iraq. And on the ability of US troops in conjunction with Iraqi forces to defeat the insurgency, while at the same time American know how and economic help is necessary to built the infrastructure of the country that will lead it to its future prosperity.
Hence, the wish of the majority of Iraqis to build their nation on a democratic basis--who in many instances during the election had risked their lives to elect the al Maliki government--that the Bush administration had sparked, makes the latter morally and politically responsible to the people of Iraq that their vote is not going to be squandered. This wish of Iraqis is demonstrated by the biggest poll ever conducted since the invasion by the Opinion Research Business, published in The Australian on March 19, 2007. The poll found out that Iraqis by 2/1 preferred the present regime of al Maliki than Saddam’s. Also, 73% of Iraqis believed that the country was not in a civil war, against 27% who believed the opposite. And many residents of Baghdad since the “surge” and the continuous presence of US and Iraqi troops in the cleared areas from insurgents, felt more secure.
All the above facts have gone over the head of the former Opposition leader. Nor does he recognize that in the fog of this global confrontation between the West and the Islamist fanatics, as in any war, perception and reality commingle and it’s impossible to tell which is which. Hence any premature US withdrawal from Iraq, whether it would have been instigated by the choice of the Iraqi people or by the political arrivistes and spineless opportunistic populists of the Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are pushing their irresolute resolutions in both houses of Congress, will be perceived by most people of the world, and especially by the jihadists, as an irremediable and devastating defeat of the American hegemon. American prestige as an invincible superpower being in tatters will inflame the global jihadists to perpetrate in the near future their most extreme, and indeed, apocalyptic actions, against the US and the West.
Kim Beazley’s call for the withdrawal of the Australian troops from Iraq rests on bruised logic and lack of imagination, and cannot be taken seriously. John Howard, in contrast, by his steadfast stand on Iraq is admirable for his realism about the catastrophic consequences of an ill considerate, slapdash exit from Iraq, before the latter is ready to take full responsibility for its own security. The defeat of the insurgents is both a prerequisite for the stabilization of Iraq as well as for the irreversible enervation of the global holy warriors of fanatic Islam, that will lead slowly but surely to their inexorable rout.
Con George-Kotzabasis
In the wake of Cheney’s visit and comments on the Australian alliance, the former leader of the Opposition argues in his piece in The Australian, Reports of the apocalypse have been greatly exaggerated, March 8, 2007, that “After all, there is plenty of room in the alliance for disagreement on actions and objectives”… and “Howard’s ‘constant refrain’ of redeployment of forces would be a victory for terrorists”, is completely wrong, as al Qaeda are not “at the cutting edge of global jihad” in Iraq. Furthermore, he amusingly contends, a “gradual redeployment and exit” from Iraq, “would be the choices made by the Iraqi people”, which presumably according to this artifact of Beazley would render the US led-coalition a cover that the withdrawal was not according to the volition of the latter but according the ‘wish’ of the Iraqi people. Finally he caps his contention with his incipient--must I say insipid--position that only in Afghanistan one can fight al Qaeda, hence attempting to justify his long held initial stand that the terrain of battle against cutting edge global jihad is Afghanistan and not Iraq and that is where Australian forces should be deployed.
Only someone cognitively maladjusted or militarily and strategically a dilettante would continue to adhere to the wrongness of his premise that currently Afghanistan and not Iraq is the front of global terror, and to shrug the reality that the latter by its nature cannot be “compartmentalized” geographically and is and will remain borderless. And what is rather amusing for a Rhodes scholar is that he cannot perceive the logical fallacy that while he accepts the obvious, that the war is a global war on terror, whose constant is that it has a fluid geographic location--as the Somalian Islamist attempt to take over the country and turn it into a launching pad of terrorism on the horn of Africa has shown lately--he nonetheless wants to fight it on a regional basis.
But let us deal with the points of his argument. He contends that within the alliance one could disagree on actions and objectives. While this is true on secondary issues of the alliance, it’s not true about primal issues such as war, when nations deploy the flower of their youth to fight it. It would be a debauchery of political responsibility to disagree with one’s allies on the primal and dangerous issues concerning them. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, “the greater the danger is, the greater is the need to reach agreement quickly and easily about what must be done; not misunderstanding in times of danger is what human beings simply cannot do without in their relations”. And indubitably, fanatic Islam poses the greatest danger to Western civilization in the twenty-first century.
The other point Beazley makes, is that Howard’s “refrain” of an early withdrawal and “redeployment of forces” from Iraq “would be a victory for the terrorist”, and would bring forth the “apocalypse” is “a greatly exaggerated” claim, according to Beazley. But this counter claim of the latter is based on the presupposition that al Qaeda is not the cutting edge of global jihad in Iraq. Even if this happens to be true--which is not--it would not prevent al Qaeda’s twin the Iranian jihad to replace it. The Islamist jihad is like the Hydra of Lerna, the many-headed monster whose slaying is a Herculean task and has to be chased all over the globe. Moreover, Beazley’s assertion that a gradual exit of the American-led coalition would be the choice of the Iraqi people in this decisive conflict between the former and the insurgents is vaudevillian farce. No great power, least of all a superpower, in such a conflict of historical meaning can leave its reputation and destiny to be determined by the volatile and fickle choice of any people. A great nation does not win a war or save its renown as an invincible power on the energy of the wind that moves the weathervane of the choices of the masses. Furthermore, Beazley is completely wrong about the real choice of the Iraqi people. The paramount choice of the latter, in the conflagrating circumstances of their everyday existence, is security. The majority of Iraqis, unlike Beazley, are aware that their security and future economic prosperity depends on the American presence in Iraq. And on the ability of US troops in conjunction with Iraqi forces to defeat the insurgency, while at the same time American know how and economic help is necessary to built the infrastructure of the country that will lead it to its future prosperity.
Hence, the wish of the majority of Iraqis to build their nation on a democratic basis--who in many instances during the election had risked their lives to elect the al Maliki government--that the Bush administration had sparked, makes the latter morally and politically responsible to the people of Iraq that their vote is not going to be squandered. This wish of Iraqis is demonstrated by the biggest poll ever conducted since the invasion by the Opinion Research Business, published in The Australian on March 19, 2007. The poll found out that Iraqis by 2/1 preferred the present regime of al Maliki than Saddam’s. Also, 73% of Iraqis believed that the country was not in a civil war, against 27% who believed the opposite. And many residents of Baghdad since the “surge” and the continuous presence of US and Iraqi troops in the cleared areas from insurgents, felt more secure.
All the above facts have gone over the head of the former Opposition leader. Nor does he recognize that in the fog of this global confrontation between the West and the Islamist fanatics, as in any war, perception and reality commingle and it’s impossible to tell which is which. Hence any premature US withdrawal from Iraq, whether it would have been instigated by the choice of the Iraqi people or by the political arrivistes and spineless opportunistic populists of the Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are pushing their irresolute resolutions in both houses of Congress, will be perceived by most people of the world, and especially by the jihadists, as an irremediable and devastating defeat of the American hegemon. American prestige as an invincible superpower being in tatters will inflame the global jihadists to perpetrate in the near future their most extreme, and indeed, apocalyptic actions, against the US and the West.
Kim Beazley’s call for the withdrawal of the Australian troops from Iraq rests on bruised logic and lack of imagination, and cannot be taken seriously. John Howard, in contrast, by his steadfast stand on Iraq is admirable for his realism about the catastrophic consequences of an ill considerate, slapdash exit from Iraq, before the latter is ready to take full responsibility for its own security. The defeat of the insurgents is both a prerequisite for the stabilization of Iraq as well as for the irreversible enervation of the global holy warriors of fanatic Islam, that will lead slowly but surely to their inexorable rout.
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