The war is NOT over

Now that the U.S. has withdrawn from Iraq, we are beginning to wind down our activity in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden is dead. It certainly appears that many here in the U.S. believe that the war is over.

Although I did not expect us to get Bin Laden, I have expected President Obama to withdraw from both Iraq and Afghanistan prior to the election cycle of 2012. The death of Bin Laden is a great reason and excuse to execute what I believe was a priority of President Obama during his first term of office. The problem is that this is not the end of the war.

Osama Bin Laden believed himself to be a soldier of Islam. (Although I do not think of him as having been a ‘soldier’, strictly speaking, he was a soldier of Islam) He believed that Islam is a sovereign entity and acted upon it. He believed in ‘occupied’ Muslim land and Muslim ‘waters’. Notice how no nation would accept his body. Even Iran wanted nothing to do with his body, except for insisting that the body be treated in Muslim tradition. Bin Laden was loyal to no real nationality except to an Islamic caliphate. He believed in the national entity of Islamic government and was an Islamic nationalist. This belief is by no means uncommon, although he was more extreme than many and had plenty of resources to be able to act upon those beliefs. This is where the war begins. Take Iraq for example.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was resisted by not only the Iraqi military/population. After the fall of the Iraqi government, Iraq became ‘occupied’ Muslim land. Therefore, those who believed in Islamic sovereignty fought the United States ‘occupation’. Bin Laden’s forces were actually a minority of those that were deployed against our military. I am not referring to nationalist Iraqis. I consider Sadr to be one of those who fought for Islam, not Iraq. Sadr was an Imam who fielded his own militia to repel the ‘occupiers’ of Muslim lands. The army of Islam was mobilized, much the same as those armies of the Middle Ages had been, and how Islam has historically fielded its armies. Another case in point: Israel.

Arabs don’t really care about the Palestinians by themselves. Otherwise, they would accept the Palestinians within their own countries. They do not because they want to use them to fight the ‘occupiers’ of Muslim lands. In other words, Israel is ‘occupying’ land that Islam had controlled in the past. This is why no peace can be found without the destruction of Israel. A problem here is that even if the land that Israel is on does revert to Muslim control, the war will not be over.

By withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is not challenging the sovereignty of Islam. Because so many believe in Islam as a national entity, they will continue to wage war against us. The war will only move on to other places where Islamic nationalism conflicts with modern nation-states.

I don't know much about Ron Paul, but he (And the American public) is DEAD wrong about the war in Iraq. We attracted people who want to kill us into Iraq, a desert that is ideal for mechanized warfare, which the U.S. excels at. The match up was good for us, bad for our enemies.

The problem is that we are leaving. The war has not really begun yet and we seem to think that it is over. Our enemy is committing some assets in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the attrition is down. So the extra assets will be deployed elsewhere. Not a good match up for us. Our schools and shopping malls (I count the western world as being us) against their suicide bombers and people armed with machine guns. This war will go on. A major problem here is that time is NOT on our side. It can only be a matter of time before our enemies obtain WMD. Once this happens, all of the wars going on will be minor in comparison to the casualties that will be inflicted.