It's Time to Cut and Run

In recent years there have been no more hackneyed and discredited terms than "cut and run" and "stay the course." They've been used, quite disgracefully, by the American administration and their cronies to butress gross incompetence bordering on criminal negligence by impugning the patriotism and motives of their critics. Anyone notice how Harper and MacKay slipped so seamlessly into this same nonsense?

Iraq and Afghanistan are and may be doomed to remain "failed states" but a lot of the blame for that lies squarely with the failed leadership of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice. They've shown the world, with breathtaking clarity, that the greatest military might on the planet can be ground down and broken by incompetent political leadership.



We need to cut and run, not from Islamic terrorism, but from the American executive. They have amassed a record of persistent failure over the past six years. They failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks. They didn't even try. They failed to exterminate bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Taliban when they had them on the ropes in 2001. They failed to support the Karzai government when it most needed their help. They failed to quash the warlords and drug lords who, quite independent of the Taliban, destabilize the Karzai government. They invaded Iraq but failed to win the peace in the wake of the ouster of Saddam Hussein. They couldn't be bothered. They failed to salvage a Palestinian state by forcing Israel back to its pre-1967 borders (there is no other solution, we all know it). They failed to uphold the integrity of western democracy by creating secret prisons, imprisonment without arrest, charge or trial and resort to torture.



This president, this vice-president, this defence secretary, this secretary of state - they're all utter and complete failures. Despite that, they expect the free world to follow them. The time has long passed to "stay the course." That course is set by a bunch of people with no vision, who can neither navigate nor steer. Their course puts us up on the rocks every time.



It's time to "cut and run". We need to cut ourselves free of this failed leadership. We need to run in a new direction and run hard because we have so much wasted time to make up. We need to tell Bush/Cheney that they've had their chances, plenty of them, and we just can't afford to keep failing. We don't have the luxury of tolerating another two years of their bungling.

We need true statesmen with vision who can give us a new course. Unfortunately we don't have anyone of that measure in our government so we will have to look to Europe.

We can't run away from Islamic terrorism. Bush/Cheney have so stoked the fires of radical Islam that turning our backs on the problem is not an option. We know they can't be defeated by force of arms so we might as well stop beating our heads against the brick wall of reality. There will always be an essential military role in defusing this threat but it can only be a small part of a much greater effort.

A good first step is to start to listen to the "Arab street." There is a lot of discontent among the Islamic peoples, particularly in the Middle East. While only a tiny minority of them become terrorists or jihadists, it is their discontent, their legitimate grievances that serve as the essential fuel for terrorism.

We need an honest examination of what we in the west have contributed to this unrest. Let's look at the tyrants we have propped up - from Mubarak in Egypt to the House of Saud to Saddam Hussein himself - not to help their people but to secure our supply of their oil. We need to recognize how our often unbalanced support for Israel has created such an enormous rallying force for Islamic extremism.

We have to stop treating these people as though they're some species of bloodthirsty subhumans. They need to know that we're going to fully respect their culture, their religion and their social values in our dealings with their nations. They need to know that, until they have democratically formed whatever sort of government they choose, we will support the individual over the state and abandon our policy of supporting undemocratic government suppression of the individual.

We need to drive a wedge between the Islamic peoples and the Islamic terrorists. That may seem an impossible goal but I believe it can be done if we're willing to go forward with the necessary degree of commitment, honesty and good faith.

We simply have to stop failing.