Mark Phillips: The American Question

9/12/02: A fellow comes along claiming to be a doctor.

A fellow comes along claiming to be a doctor. "I'm the world's most powerful doctor, and I'm going to eradicate bubonic plague from the world. I'm going to do it with my fabulous high-tech anti-bubonic plague cream. This is the most powerful plague cream in the world. It wipes out bubonic plague sores on contact. And, I have the most accurate delivery systems in the history of medicine. With my satellite-guided plague cream guns I can precisely target individual sores from across a room and hit them with 90% accuracy." Since you're a lot smarter than this idiot you'd realize he doesn't know the difference between symptom and disease. His plague cream may indeed eradicate individual sores, but the disease is the microscopic organisms which live in the patient's blood stream. Wipe out one sore, more will appear elsewhere. Treat the disease the wrong way and you'll kill the patient.

Bush and his war are like this doctor. Bush drops bombs on symptoms without a thought for their cause. By doing this he's strengthened terrorism, made America less safe, made the world more dangerous. His war in Afghanistan is worse than a failure: he's on his way to killing the patient. He's killed more innocent Afghani civilians than the Americans who died on 9/11. Nice going. Smart doctor.

Want to fight terrorism? Attack the disease, not the symptoms. Here's how:

1. End the war in Afghanistan. Don't invade Iraq. Don't expand the war to new countries.
2. Broker a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, where "just" and "lasting" mean recognized as such by both sides.
3. Withdraw support from the antidemocratic regimes in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan , Pakistan and elsewhere throughout the Islamic world.
4. Invest in a strategic "Marshall Plan" of massive aid and technical assistance to end the endemic poverty from which terrorism arises.

Here's how William Arkin, one of the most respected military experts in the world and quite some cry from a bleeding heart liberal, puts it. "The war against terrorism is not the core United States national security interest. The conundrum of our asymmetry is. If we hope to secure our pride and economy, and our way of life, we need to recognize a year after Sept. 11 that we are not doing very well at convincing the world that we are good friends and good neighbors. All we are doing is leading with our chin, taunting tomorrow's warrior to find the next World Trade Center disaster." The rest of his article is valuable reading.

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