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Happy New Year! Time to Leave Iraq Lyndon Johnson would tell anyone who would listen that he did not know how to get out of Vietnam. The result is a memorial wall in Washington, D.C. with the names of some 50,000 or more servicemen and women who died in a war this nation unequivocally lost. Four Presidents wrestled with the questions of whether to get into that civil war and then how to get out. In the end, having failed to leave years earlier, our departure was ignominious. In failing to leave for political reasons, Richard Nixon compounded that ignominy in blood. I wonder how many more of our soldiers will die in Iraq while President George W. Bush tries to find a way to leave as events in that nation and the Middle East conspire against him. There is no good way. There is only leaving.
If we could recover from the devastating homeland attack of September 11, 2001, we can do so by swiftly, but deliberately departing Iraq. History teaches us that we can and do make peace with our former enemies. Not long ago, President Bush was in Vietnam meeting with them. We have, in fact, accomplished much in Iraq, not the least of which was removing a brutal, psychopathic dictator from power, along with his two equally vile sons, and the coterie of thugs around him. We have overseen two elections there. We have helped train and equip a new army and some semblance of a police force. It is time to leave. We are now witnessing the irrationality, the endemic and historic veniality of the Middle East where most "political" issues are decided with a gun. The transition of power in the Middle East, a region of dictators and monarchies, has always occurred by assassination or military coup. The notion that America could export or impose democracy on a region where Islam and its Sharia law is the only recognized form of government is false. Islam is not just a so-called religion; it is a form of political power and control administered by Koranic clerics, not elected representatives. It has been this way since Muhammad invented it and since his death in 632 A.D. His death was followed by a schism in Islam between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites who, only in Iraq and Iran, are the major element of the populations of both those nations. We are watching an ancient struggle for the soul of Islam play out in Iraq and we are watching Iran seek nuclear weapons for the very same reason. The likelihood is that the entire Middle East and parts of Africa will remain in turmoil for years, if not decades, to come. If it saps or destroys Islam’s militaristic intention to dominate the world, the West will be the ultimate winner. The United States cannot be the policeman of the region. It can, however, provide military protection to those Islamic states that provide us with the oil we require to function. That is why we liberated Kuwait in the early 1990s. We can and must protect the Saudis, along with the other Gulf States. We may, given unforeseen events, have to intervene in the Maghreb, the northern tier of Africa that is also Islamic. We have a moral and practical obligation to protect the only true democracy in the region, Israel, against Islam. The moral justification for removing Saddam from control was valid. The fact that Iraq sits atop the second largest reserves of oil in the region is equally valid. That oil is the true reason for the conflict as Sunnis and Shiites battle for its control while the Kurds gird to protect their oil fields as well. In terms of our military involvement, the United States can leave Iraq. The time to do it is now. I do not want to listen to future historians tell us that Bush, like Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, was repeatedly asking his advisors for an "exit strategy" while more of our soldiers died. In the words of the aircraft carrier banner from which Bush announced the successful capture of Baghdad, "Mission accomplished." For now. On December 4, then Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) issued a statement protesting the lifting of a presidential moratorium protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay from oil and gas exploration. Rep. Pelosi had to reach back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 to find a reason why this energy-rich area should not be opened to exploration. "Allowing oil drilling to go forward in Bristol Bay," said Rep. Pelosi, "puts our precious environmental at risk." We are all in for heavy doses of global warming propaganda and hearing politicians piously blather about "our precious environment." In recent months, the volume of global warming hysteria has markedly risen and with it came demands from two U.S. Senators that any dissent from this Big Lie be silenced. Coincidently with Rep. Pelosi’s announcement, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion titled "Global Warming Gag Order" in which it noted that "Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can’t quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senator’s line on climate change, or else." The Senators demanded that Exxon Mobil "end its dangerous support of the (global warming) ‘deniers’." They went on to demand that the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." This is comparable to the house arrest imposed on Galileo for saying that the Earth was not the center of the universe and that the sun is the center of our planetary system.
However, the Global Warming Gestapo wants to make sure that their plan to retard the use of energy sources such as oil, natural gas, or coal be forced upon an unwilling public. In addition to endless, non-stop bogus studies to prove global warming is not only real, but affecting everything from polar bears to petunias, they want to suppress any suggestion by what The Wall Street Journal calls "a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper." (http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm) I haven’t seen any "proof" beyond the bloviations of the likes of Al Gore that indicates a significant warming of the planet, because there isn’t any. It’s not as if there haven’t been plenty of studies debunking and disputing global warming. The problem is that the mainstream media takes no notice of them, denigrates them, or mentions them only briefly as an effort to appear even-handed. No self-respecting scientist, other than those in the thrall or on the payroll of environmental organizations, will assert there is any unusual or significantly increased global warming. On July 25, 1997, by a unanimous vote, the U.S. Senate rejected participation in the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that requires participating nations to greatly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. At the time, the Senate noted that it "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States." Neither the Clinton, nor Bush administration submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. What we are witnessing now is a deliberate effort to impose the conditions of the Kyoto Protocol on the United States despite the Senate’s rejection. This is manifest in the recent California "emissions" legislation that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has announced she wants to extend nationwide. The theory put forth is that "greenhouse" gases such as carbon dioxide generated by the human use of so-called "fossil fuels" are "causing" global warming. This is the justification for schemes intended to mandate energy use limitations, but CO2 is a natural part of the Earth’s ecology. All plants, trees, crops and other vegetation are dependent on CO2 for growth. Also ignored is the fact that water vapor is a major so-called greenhouse gas, along with the constant emissions from the Earth’s many active volcanoes. These and other factors are completely beyond the control or interdiction of mankind. We are being subjected to demands that we alter our economy to accommodate an utterly false assertion of global warming. At the same time, environmentalists are actively involved in schemes to put as much of the U.S. landmass as possible off-limits to any development. All of this has been neatly spelled out in a United Nations plan alleged to insure "sustainable development", but is designed to inhibit and prohibit any development anywhere.
There is a reason why oil companies have been impeded from providing the United States with "energy independence" by restrictions on where they may explore and extract this vital source of energy. There is a reason why coal is under constant attack, particularly as regards the building of coal-fired utilities to provide more electrical power for a population that now exceeds three hundred million. Coal is one of America’s most abundant energy sources.
There is a reason why automobile manufacturers find themselves under attack for the use of gasoline and diesel fuel. There is a reason why those engaged in agriculture are under attack from an utterly failed and fraudulent "Endangered Species" act, sometimes deprived of the water for irrigation that generations of farmers had in the past or deprived of the herbicides and pesticides needed to protect their crops. There is a reason why the member nations of the European Union have always exceeded the emissions limits placed on them by the UN Kyoto Protocol while nations such as China and India are exempt. The Protocol is an economic suicide pact! The whole of America, Europe and other nations that are the engines of the global economy, has been under attack by the environmentalists because an evil, corrupt United Nations wants to be an unelected global government and we stand in their way. This is why the worldwide environmental movement is directed from the United Nations. Behind the United Nations are those who subscribe still to the failed economic theories of Marxism and who hate the success of the United States and others who have embraced capitalism. They are the people who would suppress the truth about the greatest modern hoax, global warming. They are the ones seeking to destroy the sovereignty of the United States by stealth, creating a North American Union to merge our nation with Canada and Mexico, sinking the individual protections afforded by our Constitution into a morass of regulations over which there will be no vote by Americans. Global warming is the mask, the charade, the Big Lie by which the destruction of the United States of America is being advanced. The new Congress, controlled by Democrats advancing the environmental agenda, is a renewed and increased threat. The mainstream media and press will continue to support the Big Lie by its daily repetition. We have entered a period of global warming on steroids. It is a period in which every possible effort will be made to impose this Big Lie on all of us and the reason for this is the increased skepticism of everyday Americans who have concluded that there is no massive increase in global warming. You can help the Center insure that these weekly commentaries can continue with a donation. Start the year with an amount you can afford, but do send what you can so that you, too, can be part of the Center’s work to debunk the many hoaxes and warn of the many threats to our freedom and economy. If you would prefer to send a check or money order, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you for being part of the team!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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By "leaving" I mean withdrawing our troops to a level that will vastly reduce the day-by-day loss to improvised explosive devices, snipers, and suicide bombers. That’s not the way our military is constituted to fight a war. That’s an internal guerrilla action intended to determine control of Iraq while ridding it of the American military presence. It is the needless sacrifice of young men and women in uniform for the notion that America cannot recover from leaving. 
Today we know the truth that Galileo revealed and we know, too, that real science, true science, is under attack by the global warming catastrophe charlatans. Simply stated, meteorologists and climatologists have long established that the Earth goes through regular cycles of warming and cooling with the occasional blip of a mini-Ice Age or other anomaly.