The recent victory of anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut was largely down to the intervention of the foreign-born billionaire George Soros. In a recent article on this website I drew attention to Soros’ role in financing activist groups of extremists in the US and around the world and promoting the Media Class agenda. I also described him as a shadowy figure. This is no longer true.
It seems that his first real success in influencing a US election has brought him out of the shadows, for on the 15th August he wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. In it, he denounces the “war on terror”.
The man obviously did not make his vast fortune as a result of clear thinking and honest argument. Under the title “A Self-Defeating War”, Soros sets out a most disingenuous critique of US policy and the global struggle against Islamic imperialism. Not surprisingly, Islamic terrorism is viewed uncritically by Soros in the article and instead it is Bush’s “war’ that is under fire. Soros omits to mention Islamic imperialism.
He begins by declaring that the war on terror is a false metaphor and has led to “counterproductive and self-defeating policies”. In the next sentence he alleges that post 9/11 this “misleading figure of speech” has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts – Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia – a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world”.
Well, Gaza, Lebanon and Somalia were not unleashed after 9/11. The fighting in Gaza (between Israelis and Palestinians) has been going on for as long as I can remember and will probably continue long after my passing from this world. Similarly, the recent Lebanon fighting is just another round in the struggle between Arabs and Jews and there will be more to come, as the two sides are irreconcilable. Many powerful Arab factions, backed by several Muslim States, have long held that Israel must be destroyed. And, yes, thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in the Arab Israeli conflict, and on the Arab side there is a willingness to sacrifice many more thousands of the innocent, since the destruction of Israel is not negotiable. All of this has little to do with Bush’s metaphor, and Soros knows it. Why Soros should include Somalia in his list is not clear. Why not include Eritrea, Chad and any other Middle East conflict that has or will erupt. Let Bush be responsible for all of them!
When 9/11 shocked us all, I doubt there was one person in the US, perhaps in the world, who thought that it was a one-off event. We all expected that within weeks, months and certainly over the following years, there would be many more devastating attacks on the US mainland. I will bet that the devious Mr. Soros shared this belief. However, the long respite from further attack gets no acknowledgement from him. Unfortunately, and this has much to do with the Media and its agenda, the people of the US have been lulled into complacency and encouraged to have memory loss. The indisputable fact is that in the rest of Bush’s presidency not one attack has occurred. Could this be down to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that took the war to the enemy? This taking of the war into the enemy’s territory would have been even more effective if American Democrats had set aside bi-partisan politics and disavowed the mindless Leftist “peace people”. Unfortunately, the “peace people” of San Francisco and other decadent places, together with the Left of the Democrat Party, and the Media Class that orchestrated the “peace marches”, signaled to our enemies that the US (and its potential allies) has no stomach for more and lacks the will to defend itself. From the moment it became clear that America was disunited, our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan were rescued from demoralization. Iran and Syria (though not Libya), also regained confidence in their willingness to support terrorism.
Soros has funded, and is funding, many of the organizations that have been sending out a defeatist message from the US and this Journal piece is yet another of his defeatist ploys. Soros goes on to make four points in this article. The first is “war by its very nature creates innocent victims” and “war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists TEND (my capitals) to keep their whereabouts hidden”. Our enemies in the terrorist movements do more than tend. They use civilians as shields at all times, hide in hospitals, send unsuspecting children out strapped with bombs, and execute, bomb and maim fellow Muslim civilians by the tens of thousands.
As Mr. Soros well knows, it is impossible to fight any war that does no harm to innocent people on the ground and the war against these terrorists in particular has to be fought around civilians or it cannot be fought at all. Civilian casualties are certainly not bothering the Islamic imperialists and there are few voices in the world of Islam condemning the terrorists for the loss of innocent life – neither that lost on 9/11 nor that recently lost in Lebanon. I have no doubt that many German civilians shook their fists at British and US aircraft after bombing raids on Germany during World War II, but they got over their rage after defeat. My parents also cursed the Germans for the destruction of their home and for the loss of loved ones, but they got over it eventually. It was the price to be paid for victory and for defeating Hitler and his Nazis.
Mr. Soros next writes that “terrorism” is an abstraction because “it lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics” Instead, he argues, we should see Al Qaeda, Hamas etc as very different forces. Well, forces for what? And “Bush’s global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly” It also “inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups”.
It is difficult to know where to start with this nonsense. Why does lumping them together as enemies in a war, prevent us from fighting each with appropriate methods? It does not, of course, and there is no evidence that the US forces fail to differentiate. Some of us might argue that US policies in Iraq have been too much fine-tuned and that a more ruthless sledge-hammer approach to both the Sunnis and the Mahdi army might have been more effective. And what are we going to negotiate with Iran and Syria about? Perhaps Mr. Soros would like to tell us all just what there is to put on a negotiating table. Would he suggest that we offer them the dismemberment or destruction of Israel and offer the return of the Iberian Peninsula to the Muslim empire? That, and more is what they are demanding. What will dissuade Iran from arming and funding Hezbollah other than a convincing threat of attack from the US? Mr. Soros is so lacking in specifics.
He writes that “the war on terror emphasizes military action whilst most territorial conflicts require political solutions.” Which territorial disputes have ever been solved solely by negotiation and political solutions? In an attempt to isolate Bush, he continues “as the British have shown, Al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England”.
How does occupying Iraq and Afghanistan make it more difficult to gain intelligence information? Was it easier to track bin Laden when these two countries were in the hands of totalitarian psychopaths and we knew virtually nothing that went on in them? And the British failed to detect the London tube and bus bombs only last year. Meanwhile, in Bush’s US, the terrorists have failed to mount a single successful operation. Perhaps their plans have been foiled many times but the Bush administration has refrained from taking credit so as not to imperil sources of information. Are we not focused on trying to catch bin Laden or can we only focus if we abandon military action? What empty puff this all is!
Soros’ fourth point is that “the war on terror drives a wedge between “us” and “them”. Well, there is more than a wedge, there is an ideological chasm and it is Islamic imperialism. Mr. Soros, like all Leftists, likes to go in for moral equivalence – the US on one side and the Islamic terrorists on the other. There are no good guys and bad guys. Perhaps he would have pedaled this line in Europe in 1939 and in the Cold War with Soviet Communism.
Contradicting his opening statement, Soros claims that the “war on terrorism is diverting attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan”. Does he mean that Bush got this one right? There is much more of this vague and dishonest nonsense in the remainder of the Soros article but presumably the point of it all surfaces when he writes “it is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions”.
9/11 (a predicament if ever there was one) took place before George W Bush had formulated a foreign policy and must have been planned during the Clinton era. It was just the latest in a sequence of attacks that had been escalating in intensity and deadliness over many years and it was an act of war that was celebrated throughout the Islamic world with dancing in the streets.
Soros is peddling defeatism under the guise of pretending there is a more effective way of defeating our sworn enemies. He does not tell us what would be effective and he misrepresents what is being done now. The US and its allies are resisting each terrorist group in every way possible. Those operating directly against Israel are being resisted by the Israelis, and the US helps the governments of Pakistan and some other Muslim countries to fight terrorists within their societies. It is an uphill struggle for the US and its allies simply because many nations play the same game as Soros – pretending there is an easy option somewhere, like working through the UN.
Why Soros tries to undermine the war effort is something we can only guess at, but he probably made his billions in currency dealing by concealing his moves and motives. I doubt he shares the Leftist fantasy that the Islamic threat would go away if only we were conciliatory. He hates Bush and his Christian beliefs, of course, and maybe something in his own lifestyle explains the unrelenting effort to bring down the Bush presidency. But perhaps he would reap great financial benefits from an American defeat. He would not be the first international financier to benefit from playing both sides against the middle. We might never know, but at least he has emerged from the shadows and conservatives and nationalists should direct as much public attention on him as possible. The mainstream media will remain hand in glove with him and his many underhanded organizations.