Knowing Your Enemy

by James Glaser
January 29, 2007

I was watching the news on Sunday and kept seeing the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi as she was making her tour of the Middle East Hot Spots. Pelosi first met with Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Then she was off to Afghanistan to meet with our puppet Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Nancy's next stop was in Pakistan, with General Pervez Musharraf.

Now, I suppose this visit is good for the Speaker and her understanding of what is going on in the Middle East. I don't want people to think that I am denigrating women, but in the Middle East, and more importantly in the Muslim world, in which all three countries the Speaker visited are found, women are not held in high esteem.

Here in America we all know women are supposed to be on an equal footing with men, and Speaker Pelosi's election to Speaker of the House proves that point. But women don't have that equal footing in the Middle East.

When we have women representing our government, women like the Speaker and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice going to Muslim countries, we are putting them and what ever negotiations we are trying to make at a disadvantage. Yes, I know all about equal rights, but you have to know your enemy and your friends if you want their cooperation.

You and I know women are just as smart as or smarter than men are, they can negotiate with the best, and when push comes to shove, American women can be tough as all get out, but men in the Muslim world don't have that same opinion. Sorry to say, women in the Middle East are pretty much second class citizens, and the leaders over there don't respect their opinions or their presence the way we do.

We should think about that, and before I get myself in any hot water over here, I'll leave it at that.

Another Thing We Should Know

President Bush and those who think we should escalate the war in Iraq with more troops keep telling us that if we pull our troops out, al Qaeda terrorists will use Iraq as a base of operations. There are thousands and thousands of patriotic Iraqis willing to fight us to the death, because they want their country to be free of foreign troops. What makes us believe that these same patriots wouldn't continue to fight to the death to kick al Qaeda out after we leave?

The War Goes On

This from Antiwar.com, telling us what Sunday was like in Iraq:

January 28, 2007
Sunday: 373 Iraqis, 5 GIs Killed; 166 Iraqis Injured; US Helicopter Shot Down
Updated at 3:25 p.m. EST, Jan. 28, 2007
In Iraq, at least 373 Iraqis were killed or found dead today and another 166 were injured in various attacks during the festival of Ashura. Three more American servicemembers were killed in separate incidents, and a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two more soldiers as well.

The reason this war in Iraq continues to go on and on, is that we had no idea what our enemy was capable of. Before this war started, Vice President Dick Cheney told the American people that Iraqis would lay flowers down in front of our troops as they thanked us for getting rid of Saddam. Not only Dick Cheney but George Bush and his whole administration believed that would happen.

We were not ready for the insurgents in Iraq, because we did not know our enemy. Oh yes, we did have American generals who knew what was going to happen, and they told us before we attacked we would need hundreds of thousands of troops to control Iraq after our invasion was over, but the Bush White House and the civilians in charge of the Pentagon didn't want to hear that. They thought they knew it all, but in truth they knew diddly squat, and that is why we are in the mess we are in today.

So, here we are repeating mistake after mistake. We send women into a male dominated area of the world expecting that their words and ideas will be accepted. Yes, because we are the most powerful nation on earth, the women we send over to negotiate are treated cordially, but you know that their presence is an affront to the leaders over there, and at best, our female dignitaries are given is lip service. You can't change the way things have been done over there for thousands of years over night. You have to know the customs of the people you are dealing with if you want their cooperation.

We are afraid that if we leave Iraq the terrorists will use the country as a training ground, but in point of fact that is what they are doing right now. Today and every day they are getting the best training it is possible to get. It is called, on the job training. The terrorists are doing what they have always wanted to do, have a chance to kill Americans. Before attacking Iraq we were several thousand miles away, George Bush moved us right next door and made everything easy and cheap for the terrorists.

Before this war in Iraq started, our most experienced generals told us we needed hundreds of thousands of troops. Now George Bush tells us another 20,000 will do the trick. George still thinks those generals were wrong, and he knows what is best. George doesn't know his enemy, and he doesn't know how to fight this war.

I am thankful that I am no longer in the Marine Corps, and that I have no children in the service either. George Bush is wasting some very fine young Americans for his hope of glory.

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