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Mistakes Were Made
I no longer believe that, but I recall some others who did. "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear." That was President Clinton on February. 17,1998. "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction." That was former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright on February 1, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." That was Rep. Nancy Pelosi on December 16, 1998. "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." That was former Vice President Al Gore on September 22, 2003. Others who pretty much said the same things include Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and the whole gamut of government figures and others, before and after 9-11 scared the living daylights out of all of us. Having enjoyed some success chasing the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, mostly using northern tribes and our unassailable air superiority, it was easy to assume that the invasion and occupation of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would be a cakewalk. We had had success against his military in 1991 after he had invaded Kuwait, but then-President George H.W. Bush had stopped short of removing the tyrant. He did so on the advice of then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell. We tried sanctions, only to discover that the United Nations Food-for-Oil program was rife with corruption, harming the Iraqi people, and doing nothing to rein in Saddam’s continued rape of the nation. He had a lot of help. For some thirty years, Saddam and the Sunni minority had ruled the Shiites and Kurds with a ruthlessness that defies the imagination. Surely, if the United States liberated the Iraqis, they would welcome us and set about creating a democratic nation with our help and guidance. Wrong. Very wrong. The invasion and subsequent occupation unleashed an orgy of corruption and violence, equal to anything Saddam and the Baathists had pursued. The indications were there from the very beginning. The taking of Baghdad was immediately followed by massive looting and the breakdown of all civil law. I have recently finished reading "The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace" by Ali A. Allawi. Every member of Congress should be required to read this book and, of course, everyone in the White House. Allawi was one of many Iraqis who fled the Saddam regime, taking up residence in London. Highly respected, he was asked to return and participate in reconstituting a free and sovereign Iraq. As such he served as the country’s first post-war civilian Minister of Defense. He was elected to the Transitional National Assembly, and was appointed Minister of Finance after the elections. He remains an advisor to the Prime Minister of Iraq. His book details the utter folly, the misplaced optimism, and the endless succession of decisions made as it rapidly became evident that Iraq was tearing itself apart based entirely on whether one was a Sunni or a Shiite, as well as whether one was a Kurd in the north or Shia in the south. The term "insurgents" masks the determined effort of the Sunnis to regain the power that was wrested from them by the invasion. It includes the foreigners, whether members of al Qaeda or Iranians, who see Iraq as a battlefield to defeat the infidel Americans. It barely describes the chaos and anarchy that has been post-war Iraq and continues today. Allawi says of the insurgency, "It was to do with some form of existential struggle, where the Sunni Arabs’ entire history and identity was at stake." The epilogue of this 460-page, detailed and documented review of what is widely viewed to be an American blunder testifies to the failure of the Bush administration to grasp what they did and their desperation to put as good a face on it as possible. It cost the Republicans control of Congress in 2006 and it will be the central issue of the national elections in 2008. What the invasion unleashed were, Allawi says, "the divisions within the world of Islam" that became "more pronounced. They are about to move on to an altogether different plane of mutual antipathy and internecine warfare." "It was the Bush Administration," says Allawi, "that acted as the unwitting hand-maiden to history and denied, ignored, belittled and misunderstood the effects of what it had created." And here is why the Middle East will remain in turmoil. "Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, the linchpins of the American security order in the Arab world, cannot accept the principle of a Shi’a-dominated Iraq, each for its own reasons. These countries will do their utmost to thwart such a possibility, and, failing that, will probably try to isolate such an entity from any effective role in the region." I have written that we should begin to withdraw our troops from Iraq and many warn that chaos will follow. No, chaos exists in Iraq and only the Iraqis can sort it out. Our small military force cannot, nor should it be asked to try. The Center requires your financial support, but does not engage in traditional fund-raising practices. We don’t keep a list of those who have donated to dun them for more. We depend, however, on your donation. Please send any amount you can afford so that we may continue to help you make sense of a complex world. Thank you! Here’s one of those statistics that sums up everything you need to know about America’s immigration crisis. The May 14 edition of US News & World Report had a small item noting that, "Mexico has lost more people to migration to the United States than to death since 2000." "An average of 577,000 people moved to the United States annually during the 2000-2005 period, while 495,000 people died in Mexico." The U.S. agency providing this data estimates that about 11 million Mexicans are living, legally or not, in the United States. This is not about disliking Mexicans. Many have come here legally, become citizens, and have risen in our society to contribute in business, academics, and government. This is about saving America from a wholesale and entirely illegal invasion, and its consequences.
Foreigners are admitted only after proving they have "the necessary funds for their sustenance" and they can be fined or jailed if they show false papers. Any Mexican who helps an illegal alien is breaking the law there. On the average, annually Mexico grants citizenship to just 3,000 people, compared to the U.S. rate of almost 500,000. Compare this with the insidious and stupid immigration law, S. 1348, that Majority Leader, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and other members of the U.S. Senate are trying to fast-track to passage with the support of President Bush. Co-sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Ken Salazar (D-CO), this bill would provide amnesty to those who are here illegally and invite a whole new rush to the border by more Mexicans and others. By way of illustrating why the virtually uncontrolled flow of Mexican and other aliens represents a problem that cannot and must not be ignored, let me share some facts about its impact on just one State, New Jersey, where I live. In a recent study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform on the "Cost of Illegal Immigration to New Jerseyites", the executive summary notes that, "The illegal alien population residing in New Jersey is costing the state’s taxpayers nearly $2.1 billion per year for education, medical care, and incarceration." Bear in mind that New Jersey is essentially broke thanks to the huge debt it has been incurred under several governors. When you add in the costs of an estimated 372,000 illegal aliens, you just exacerbate a bad situation. In sum, the "annual tax burden amounts to about $800 per New Jersey household headed by a native-born resident." Even if you subtract the sales, income, and property taxes that might be collected from illegal aliens, you still have net costs of $1.6 billion per year. New Jersey is small, but when one extrapolates such costs to a State like California, you begin to see why illegal aliens pose an enormous cost to educational, medical, and other institutions and agencies trying to cope with people who have absolutely no right to be here. It is estimated that 40% of all workers in Los Angeles County are working for cash and not paying taxes. In Los Angeles, 95% of warrants for murder are for illegal aliens and more than two-thirds of all births in LA County are illegal aliens. And that’s just for one county. Then there’s the issue of national security. In November, a report from the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security revealed that half of the 91,516 illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring countries and those of ‘special interest’ apprehended at the border between 2001 and 2005 were released into the U.S. population. I grant you that Mexico is not a sponsor of terror, but it provides an avenue for access to America from nations where the drug industry rivals all others. In addition to the high-risk aliens who were released, the report notes that authorities also released 27,947 known criminals over a period of five years between 2001 and 2004. When you consider that only one in four aliens attempting to enter the U.S. during this period were caught, the actual numbers of those who were not are some 350,000 from high-risk nations and an estimated 400,000 criminal aliens. A 2006 study by Edwin S. Rubenstein, a former contributing editor for Forbes, commissioned by the National Policy Institute last year stated that, "Illegal aliens cost the American taxpayer $25 billion more than they pay in taxes." Titled "The Economics of Immigration Enforcement", the study concluded that they cost U.S. citizens an estimated $81 billion per year. "Amnesty would make things worse," stated the study, "by adding another $44 billion to government spending for services." Something is very wrong when, given just these few facts, there are members in Congress seriously considering the granting of amnesty—no matter how they mask the true intent of the legislation—and that the President of the United States is one of its leading advocates. The tyranny of numbers is that they cannot be ignored. The U.S. faces a new torrent of illegal aliens; seeking to absorb them despite ample evidence we are endangering and burdening current native-born and naturalized citizens. The proposed legislation is a demographic time bomb. America is being turned into a Third World nation and one whose borders are meaningless in light of President Bush’s relentless assault upon them, whether it be so-called immigration "reform", the North American Union plan, or his support for the United Nations Laws of the Sea Treaty. Some might call this treason. To keep you informed on the events of our times, the Center requires your financial support. Please send a donation of any amount so that we may continue to make sense of a complex world. If you would prefer to send the Center a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 29 West Third St., Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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Always after some fiasco that, in hindsight, should have been avoided, someone will say, "Mistakes were made." I was among those who thought that George W. Bush was justified to invade Iraq. The tipping point for me was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s United Nations speech asserting that Saddam had vast amounts of weapons of mass destruction. 
Mexico has an entirely different view of people who would move there. The Center for Security Policy points out that Mexico prohibits foreigners from owning land within 100 kilometers of the Mexico border and within 50 kilometers of the Mexican coastland, prime real estate. Mexican law permits the government to revoke the naturalized citizenship of anyone who chooses to live in his country of origin more than five years.