Tag: 2003
ISIS Is a Monster of Our Own Creation
Guest Post by Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
PARIS – Paris was calm last night.
We walked across the River Seine…
Pausing to take this photo of the Eiffel Tower along the way.
We were living in Paris in 2003 when President George W. Bush and his team decided to attack Iraq.
Our misgivings were recorded in the Daily Reckoning e-letter we were writing at the time. As we put it:
The U.S. invasion was arguably the best thing that ever happened to jihadists. It challenged them. It forced them to grow and adapt. Like an oversupply of antibiotics in a New Delhi hospital, U.S. interference has wiped out the weakest of the terrorists and forced others to mutate into much more lethal varieties.
The war in Iraq led to dozens of experiments and innovations — in the art of insurgency as well as in organizational skills and management. What was just a handful of nut-job jihadists a few years ago, under pressure from the U.S. military, has become far more powerful and much less amateurish.
But the worst thing that could come from an aggressive attack, we warned, would be victory. It would encourage even more stomping around where we have no business.
We reported that the French had wisely, in our view, decided to stay out of it and suggested that Americans might be better off out of it too.
This view so infuriated readers that thousands canceled their free subscriptions. One wrote to say he hoped the U.S. would “bomb Paris on its way to Baghdad.”
The Onion Predicted All Of This Back in 2003
Guest Post by Carey Wedler
(ANTIMEDIA) “George W. Bush may think that a war against Iraq is the solution to our problems, but the reality is, it will only serve to create far more,” read a 2003 article on The Onion a week after then-President George Bush launched the Iraq War. While a wide variety of organizations and individuals also rebuked that invasion, the satirical newspaper offered one of the most accurate assessments to date. So accurate, in fact, it all but predicted the rise of the Islamic State.
In the mock-debate piece, entitled, “This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t,” The Onion highlighted the very real risks of war.
As fictional debater Nathan Eckert warned:
“This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make possible their further proliferation. And it will not lay the groundwork for the flourishing of democracy throughout the Mideast; it will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence.”
He continued:
“If you thought Osama bin Laden was bad, just wait until the countless children who become orphaned by U.S. bombs in the coming weeks are all grown up. Do you think they will forget what country dropped the bombs that killed their parents? In 10 or 15 years, we will look back fondly on the days when there were only a few thousand Middle Easterners dedicated to destroying the U.S. and willing to die for the fundamentalist cause. From this war, a million bin Ladens will bloom.”
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