Is It Time to Come Home?
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by Patrick J. Buchanan, September 14, 2012
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http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2012/09/13/is-it-time-to-come-home/
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Is it not long past time to do a cost-benefit analysis of our
involvement in the Middle and Near East?
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In this brief century alone, we have fought the two longest wars in our
history there, put our full moral authority behind an 'Arab Spring' that
brought down allies in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and provided the air
power that saved Benghazi and brought down Moammar Gadhafi.
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Yet this week U.S. embassies were under siege in Tunisia, Egypt, and
Yemen, and U.S. diplomats were massacred in Benghazi.
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The cost of our two wars is 6,500 dead, 40,000 wounded, and $2 trillion
piled onto a national debt that is $16 trillion, larger than the entire
U.S. economy. And what in heaven?s name do we have to show for it?
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We face pandemic hatred of our country from Morocco to Pakistan. The
sight of American flags being ripped to shreds and burned by mobs has
become so common over there we seem almost to have gotten used to it.
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What are the roots of that Arab and Islamic hatred?
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Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war against us gave three reasons
as his casus belli.
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His first reason for war was the presence of U.S. troops on the soil of
Saudi Arabia, sacred home to Mecca and Medina. His second was the U.S.
sanctions on Iraq then said to be causing the premature deaths of as
many as 500,000 Iraqi children.
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Third was U.S. support for Israel, seen in the Arab world as a colonial
implant to humiliate them and deny to the Palestinian people their right
to a nation of their own.
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Lately, new causes of Arab and Muslim hatred of us have arisen.
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The first is what devout Muslims regard as our immoral and decadent
culture, which they see as a threat to their societies and their young.
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The second are the Islam haters and baiters in America and the West who
deliberately provoke them with insulting and blasphemous portrayals of
the Prophet and their faith.
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While the U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia have by now largely been closed,
and the United States is largely withdrawn from Iraq and the sanctions
there have all been lifted, America is not going to change herself to
accommodate their world.
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Support of Israel is the declared position of both parties. And, though
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly called the crude amateur film
Innocence of Muslims, which caused the latest anti-American rioting,
both disgusting and reprehensible, we are not going to repeal the First
Amendment, which protects provocateurs and pornographers.
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Yet, worldwide, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims for whom their
faith is their most priceless possession. They live it. They will die
for it. And not a few will kill for it. Others will seize upon real or
imagined insults to that faith to excite the crowds to expel us from
their world.
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And some Americans will accommodate them by using books, films, and
videos to manifest their contempt of Islam.
So we have here an irreconcilable conflict. .
The Islamic word, especially across the Arab region, is undergoing a
transformation, a Great Awakening. Muslims from Nigeria to Mali to
Ethiopia to Sudan to the Maghreb and Middle and Near East are growing
more militant and more hostile toward Christianity and other faiths.
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we are not going to change our position on Israel, or our culture, such
as it is, or our First Amendment, clashes between us are inevitable.
Perhaps the best course of action for America is to lower our profile in
that region, bring most of our diplomats and troops home, and let these
people work out their destiny themselves.
Second, given the costs and consequences of our wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq and intervention in Libya, let the Syrians settle their war
themselves. There is no guarantee the fall of Bashar Assad, given the
jihadist and al-Qaeda presence in the forces seeking his overthrow, will
be an improvement for the United States.
Third, the United States should tell the Egyptian government that its
failure to provide security for our embassy was an outrage, that if we
cannot see them as a friendly government with common interests, we will
not hesitate to cut off aid and warn U.S. citizens not to travel to
Egypt.
Without U.S. aid and Western loans and tourists, Egypt's economy would
sink with President Mursi in the wheelhouse. We must make it clear to
them that, denied the respect our nation deserves, we are willing to
pull the plug on his regime.
The Middle East appears to be undergoing a sectarian and tribal conflict
not unlike our Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648. As they stayed out
of our Thirty Years' War, let us get out of theirs.
If they will not protect our embassies from mobs who come to burn our
flag, let us lower the flag ourselves and bring Old Glory home.
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COPYRIGHT 2012
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Read more by Patrick J. Buchanan .
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Has Obama Called Bibi's Bluff? - September 10th, 2012
The New World Disorder - August 20th, 2012
"The Most Dangerous Man in the World?" - August 16th, 2012
The Natural Map of the Middle East - August 6th, 2012
Is Mitt Being Neoconned Into War? - July 30th, 2012