Fisking George Soros

George Soros has a blustery op-ed in The Australian warning of disastrous consequences if America doesn’t see things his way. For someone who claims to be a student of Karl Popper, Soros seems to fail to understand what an open society looks like. The kind of society that Soros would imagine is one where the nebulous concept of “international law” trumps world ethics and the incredibly corrupt United Nations is treated like a fair arbiter of justice – at the same time it takes bribes from dictators, tyrants, and xenophobes like Saddam Hussein or Matahir Mohammad. So, here’s a Fisking of Soros’ Chicken Little warnings:

I HAVE never been heavily involved in partisan politics, but these are not normal times. George W. Bush is endangering the US and the world’s safety while undermining American values. For opposing him, I have been demonised by the Bush campaign.

Bush ran in 2000 on a platform promising a “humble” foreign policy. If he is re-elected, the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action – and the invasion of Iraq – will be endorsed, and the world will have to live with the consequences.

The Bush Doctrine is the only way to deal with the very real threat of international terrorism. As the President has said countless times, the threat of terrorism is not like conventional threats. The standard of “imminence” no longer applies. We can’t count on detecting a terrorist threat before it happens as we could with conventional threats. Terrorists don’t announce their intentions ahead of time, they can strike without warning and cause amounts of damage that could bring not only this country, but the world economy to its knees. Soros simply does not understand the magnitude of the threat.

By repudiating Bush’s policies at the polls, the US will have a chance to regain the world’s respect and support.

If the cost of the world’s respect is an America at risk, the cost is simply too high.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, required a strong response. But they also led to suspension of the critical process so essential to a democracy: a full and fair discussion of the issues.

Bush silenced criticism by calling it unpatriotic. For 18 months after September 11, he managed to suppress all dissent. That is how he led the US in the wrong direction.

Silence all dissent? The moment anyone issues such a patently idiotic canard, you know you’re not dealing with a rational person. There was plenty of dissent in this country from The New York Times to Michael Moore’s inane rantings. The fact is that most of the “dissent” was mere defeatism and arrogance. America had been attacked. Those who instinctively tried to find reasons why America deserved to be attacked were not held high in public regard – and rightly so. Choising to express an ideal that is both unpopular and idiotic and having it rejected is not silencing of dissent, it is the people thinking for themselves.

In fact, Bush played right into the hands of Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan’s invasion was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al-Qa’ida had its training camps. Invading Iraq was not. It was Bush’s unintended gift to bin Laden.

Immediately after September 11, there was a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for the US worldwide. It has given way to widespread resentment. There are many more people willing to risk their lives to kill Americans than there were on September 11.

Again, Soros completely fails to understand the world we live in. This war is larger than al-Qaeda. Simply going into Afghanistan would have never done a thing to make America safer. The only way to win this war is to change the conditions that cause terrorism.

Bush likes to insist terrorists hate Americans for what they are – a freedom-loving people – not what they do. But war and occupation create innocent victims. We count the body bags of American soldiers – more than 1000 in Iraq. The wider world also counts the Iraqis who get killed daily, perhaps 20 times more.

This is not the cause of terrorism. The sanctions regime and a Saddam Hussein left free to act would have killed tens of thousands more Iraqis than this war – along with allowing a source of terrorist financing and support to go unmolested. Furthermore, Soros fails to understand why we’re fighting this war in the way that we are. The terrorists don’t hate Americans for who we are, they hate the West for what it is. The ideology of terrorism descends from the Wahhabists and Sayyid Qutb – those ideologies that divide the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb – the House of Submission and the House of War. The *only* way to appease such people is to embrace _shari’a_.

lieves in the concept of the Open Society as he professes, he cannot have ideological blinders that shield him from the very real threat of Islamic terrorism.

Nor was the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison the work of a few bad apples. It was part of a system of dealing with prisoners put in place by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Public opinion condemns the US worldwide, and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.

Abu Ghraib was indeed a horrible atrocity, but Soros’ claims that Rumsfeld somehow authorized such treatment of prisoners is an outright lie. Furthermore, Soros fails to understand how sanguine the Arab world really is about Abu Ghraib – they’ve seen far worse from their own governments.

Bush convinced people that he is good for US security by playing on the fears generated by the September 11 attacks. At a time of peril, people rally around the flag, and Bush exploited this by fostering a sense of danger.

Bush had no need to foster a sense of danger. The danger is quite real, and there’s a large scar in Manhattan to prove it. Anyone who fails to take the threat of terrorism seriously has absolutely no right to lecture the US on how to deal with it.

His campaign assumes that people do not really care about the truth and will believe almost anything if it is repeated often enough. There must be something wrong with Americans if we fall for it.

For instance, some 40 per cent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected with September 11, although the September 11 Commission – set up by Bush and chaired by a Republican – definitively established that no such connection existed. I want to shout: “Wake up America. Don’t you realise we are being misled?”

The Commission said that there was no evidence of a connection, but they did not entirely rule out such a conclusion. Furthermore, the Administration has always state quite bluntly and clearly that they did not believe that Hussein and 9/11 were directly connected. And while Saddam Hussein didn’t have any direct connection to 9/11, he most certainly did have a connection to the climate of autocracy and tyranny in the Middle East that allowed groups like al-Qaeda to find natural purchase there. To paraphrase Fareed Zakaria, Saddam Hussein may not have been tied to the _terrorists_ of September 11, but he was undoubtedly tied to the _terrorism_ of September 11.

The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not necessity. Moreover, the US went to war on false pretences. Weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al-Qa’ida could not be established. Bush then claimed the US went to war to liberate Iraq. But democracy cannot be imposed by force.

Another typical canard. The claims of WMDs, support for terrorism, and the need for democracy in the Middle East all were made concurrently. Furthermore, does Soros truly believe that Bush really knew that WMDs were not present in Iraq? If Bush was going so far as to “mislead” this country into war why would he not simply plant them in Iraq and call it a victory? The entire argument that “Bush lied!” has always been an intellectually vacuous canard with no internal logic or consistency.

Saddam was a tyrant, and Iraqis – and the world – can rejoice in being rid of him. But the US had an obligation to maintain law and order; instead, we stood idly by while Baghdad and many other cities were ransacked.

If we had cared about the Iraqi people, we should have had more troops available for the occupation. We should have provided protection not only for the Oil Ministry, but also other ministries, museums, and hospitals.

Now, Soros veers catastrophically close to making sense here, and indeed in retrospect we should have committed far more troops to the immediate post-war period than we did. However, given what we had on the ground at the time, the protection of museums and hospitals were and should have been of secondary consideration to preventing Saddam from blowing the Iraqi oil fields and causing a massive ecological disaster as well as securing sites that could have posed a threat to the coalition. While Soros’ argument here contains an element of truth, it’s mere armchair quarterbacking at this time.

Worse still, when American soldiers encountered resistance, they employed methods – invading homes and mistreating prisoners – that alienated and humiliated the population, generating resentment and rage.

The Bush administration’s flip-flops and missteps are legion. First the Iraqi army was dissolved, then the US tried to reconstitute it. First the US tried to eliminate the Baathists, then the US turned to them for help. When the insurgency became intractable, the US installed an Iraqi Government. The man chosen to lead it was a protege of the CIA with a reputation for being a strongman – a far cry from democracy.

Wait, is the leftist argument _du jour_ that Bush never changes his mind, or that he does it too much? It’s hard to tell from day to day.

Yes, Bush changed things in his post-war plans for Iraq. He damn well should have. Gen. Garner wasn’t getting the job done. Allawi was the pick of the IGC and his government remains extremely popular with Iraqis who want someone to restore law and order to their nation. The plans for an Iraqi government were always there as part of the transition process. No plan of attack survives first contact with the enemy, and the President’s willingness to change things when existing plans are not working contradict the argument that Soros has made before that Bush is some kind of hard-headed zealot.

Despite the Bush campaign’s efforts at spin control, the situation in Iraq is dire. Much of the western part of the country has been ceded to insurgents, the prospect of holding free and fair elections in January is fast receding and civil war looms.

The Sunni Triangle is a relatively small part of the country. Already cities like Samarra have been retaken and law and order is being restored. Even Fallujah is seeing the natives resist the terrorists who have infected their city. Yes, the situation in Iraq is not good, but the civil war is a war between the terrorists operating out of the Sunni Triangle and those who support a free and democratic Iraq – and we’re doing what we can to ensure that the latter reigns supreme.

Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the US as well, impairing its military power and undermining the morale of the armed forces.

Odd since the military is overwhelmingly in support of Bush. What truly harms the morale of our armed forces are those who constantly tell them that the cause they fight for is a lie and those like Michael Moore who openly sympathize with the enemy.

Before the war, the US could project overwhelming force. Not anymore. Afghanistan is slipping from control. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and other countries pursue nuclear programs with renewed vigour.

Afghanistan is hardly slipping from control, it just had a free and fair election. Pakistan is far more stable now than it was before 9/11 and the long-standing worries of a nuclear exchange over Kashmir have diminished as President Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh continue diplomatic negotiations. The quiet shuttle diplomacy of the Bush Administration has helped to convince China to work towards containing North Korea, and such technologies as Aegis-based boost-phase defenses are working to ensure that a North Korean attack does not succeed. Soros opposed Bush’s decision to repeal the 1972 ABM treaty – a strategy that would have left America defenseless against such attacks.

The Bush administration can be criticised for many other policies, but none are as important as Iraq. The war has cost nearly $US200 billion ($273 billion), and costs will continue to mount, because getting into Iraq was much easier than getting out will be.

The costs of the Iraq war pale in comparison to the costs of the alternatives – which according to Dr. Duelfer would have ended with the collapse of the sanctions regime and Saddam Hussein gaining even more power, as well as restarting his WMD programs. In five years tens or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be dead, Saddam Hussein would still be in his palaces, and his WMD and military programs would have started up again right where they were. A delay in removing Hussein would have only been a delay of the inevitable. The lessons of September 11 are clear – Afghanistan seemed to pose no credible threat in advance of September 11, and waiting for an artificial standard of “imminence” is hopelessly naive in an age of terrorism.

Bush has been taunting John Kerry to explain how he would do things differently. Kerry has responded that he would have done everything differently, and that he would be in a better position to extricate us. But it won’t be easy for him, either, because the US is caught in a quagmire.

Even Soros realizes that Kerry’s claims are either nebulous or simply false.

Top military and diplomatic experts warned Bush not to invade Iraq. He ignored them. He suppressed the critical process, arguing that any criticism of the Commander-in-Chief put US troops at risk.

But this is Bush’s war, and he ought to be held responsible for it. Americans should step back for a moment and ask: who got them into this mess?

No, Mr. Soros, the question is who will lead us to winning this war. The question of whether or not it was wise to go into Iraq is now academic. The reasoning behind it has taken some hits, especially in regards to the issue of WMDs, but the underlying logic remains the same. The only way to win this war is to upset the status quo in the Middle East and push constantly for democratization. This cannot happen organically, there has to be some catalyst for change – and the removal of Saddam Hussein was that catalyst. Iraq is troubled, but we can achieve our mission in Iraq if we’re willing to stick to our guns and do what it takes to foster that transition.

Osama bin Laden believed that America was a paper tiger, that all he had to do is inflict a few casualties and we would run with our tail between our legs. From Mogadishu to the USS _Cole_ everything America did reinforced that assertion. If we prove him correct once again in Iraq, it will dramatically increase terrorist recruitment worldwide.

Terrorists aren’t innocents who decide to turn to terrorism because of US action. They are people who are steeped in a culture that systematically represses them and turns them towards terrorism. The only way to end this war is to end that system once and for all.

The same advice that Soros gives now is the advice of the Chamberlains of the world gave in the 1930s. One would think that someone with Mr. Soros’ background would never downplay the threat of fascist, anti-Semitic, and violent regimes. Sadly, he has.