Winds of War: Looking Back 30 Years from 9-11

From The Gathering Storm

Recently, I blogged a response to Time Magazine’s article – the Nation that Fell to Earth - looking back 30 years from 9-11 and how the war on terror was fought and supposedly won. I was critical of the ‘noted historian’s’ scenario and said so.

So, here’s my take on that future history.

It's the year 2031 - one generation removed from Sept. 11, 2001 - and Americans are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. As part of the commemoration, ABC is airing a documentary on the mistakenly called ‘war on terror’ – now correctly called the Great War for Democracy.

It was a global war that reshaped the both the geography and ideology of the world. This time the pundits were right. Except for a few backward countries in Africa and South America who still practiced the defunct ideology of Marxism, the nations of the world had embraced some form of democracy – Republic or Parliamentary (even one or two small nation practiced a direct form of democracy similar to the ancient Greeks) under The Federation of Nation’s (replacing the defunct United Nations) Bill of Rights for Humanity.

As the Presidential election of 2008 approached, many Americans and, in fact, the world watched to see if outgoing President Bushes’ foreign policy that had been discredit by then, be replaced with the more liberal version of Democratic Party Presidential candidate George Sperry, a dark horse candidate who was a compromise choice between Hillary Clinton and Al Gore – neither of which could gain a majority at the convention. The body politique was in disarray as the decade came to a close with the country polarized on the war and how it was to be fought.

Sperry’s ‘Take America Back’ campaign was helped by the disillusionment of the American voter with Bush’s approach to winning the war by democratizing the Middle East. By early 2008 the security for Iraq was turned over to the new democratically elected government and except for a few advisors, the US presence in Iraq needed. The civil war began shortly after that and was in full swing by the 2008 elections. In addition, the newly re-constituted Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar and OBL planning and striking from the sanctuaries sin Pakistan made Afghanistan look like the years following the defeat of Saddam Hussein. The Taliban used the same tactics which they claimed drove the infidels from Iraq and were successful in bogging down the NATO forces that took over the role from the US.

Besides pointing out the errors of the Republic strategy, the Democrats were successful in their argument over security vs personal freedoms. Their position on the Patriot Act and other monitoring programs by the Republican government gained traction with voters. The Republican Presidential candidate, a right wing born-again Christian from Iowa, could no longer defend the position of ‘hold the course’ and the Democrats won the White House and re-gained control of Congress with the overwhelming financial assistance of George Sorros and movon.org.

But by the Presidential election of 2012, Sperry and the Democrats were in trouble. Sperry did keep his promise that in his first 100 days he would return America to the people. He and Congress dismantled many of the secretive terrorist monitoring programs and gutted the hated Patriot Act. His newly appointed UN ambassador replacing Bolton worked tirelessly with the UN creating resolution after resolution hoping that these hollow threats would prevent Iran from getting the bomb, cease it’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas in their terrorist campaign against Israel, and pressuring Pakistan to help destroy the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan that were used to wreak havoc on NATO troops in Afghanistan.

He worked closely with the primary Muslim organizations like CAIR and proved that bowing to their demands had kept the peace within the nation’s borders. This was important because civil strife boarding on civil war was occurring in Europe between Islamo-fascists and right-wing fascists who waged a street war against Muslims on the Continent.

But just after the mid-term elections of 2010, the appeasing and apologetic policies of the Democrats in power came under suspicion by the public. They were promised security by the Democrats when done their way. But a foiled plot planned by terrorist changed all that. One early morning during rush hour on a New York subway train a dirty bomb exploded. It was determined shortly there after that the explosion was an accident. The terrorist were on their way to plant and detonate the bomb in the south Manhattan business district the next day. The FBI and HomeSec quickly found the safe house of the terrorists and discovered a plot to explode 5 to 10 dirty bombs in the nation’s top cities the following day. The terrorist cells were identified and captured. This was a drastic wake up call for the public and they demanded and investigation.

It wasn’t hard to see why the plot was not discovers no that the clandestine intelligence networks and programs were gutted by the Democratic Congress. The Democratic government could not deal with the growing political conflict between security and personal freedoms that unshed them into power and the government ceased to function. This and the growing victories of the Al-Quaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq and the powerful influence of Iran over the Middle East was capped off by Iran’s successful long range ballistic missile tests, ushered in a new Republican President and the control of Congress back in the hands of the Republicans in 2012. The man who became the Republican president was a multi-decorated Iraq war veteran who convinced the American voter that this was a war and a war that had to be fought and won to victory.

President Olsen identified the enemy and its goals and convinced the American public that was right. The enemy was an ideology that was clear and concise. Any person that sought to advance the agenda of Sharia law and re-establishment of the caliphate were considered an enemy of the state. Any person or organization that preached or supported such and ideology was deemed seditious.

The message his gave to Muslims in America was this. We know that the vast majority of your living here are peaceful and do not support the jihadist Islamist agenda. But you will have to become involved and vocal. Muslim Americans need to distance themselves from the radical elements in their community that preach sedition and hatred for America with more than just words. They need to do the following:

1. State loud and clear as individual Muslims that they are Americans first and Muslims second by stating that their allegiance is to the American nation and not the nation of Islam (the ummah) and that our secular laws supersede the Shari when and if their is conflict between the two.
2. Muslim need to monitor their clerics, neighbors and even family for those that would preach sedition and report these people to the authorities.
3. Muslims should volunteer as interpreters for the government and security institutions to help them decipher any possible threats to the nation.
4. All Muslim organizations should take the same actions that individual Muslims should take supporting and ecnougaing them to take actions that will prove to that they share the same values of non-Mulsims and can function in a rough and tibble secular society protesting peacefully and shouting down the seditious elements of their community who protest in support of the radical Islamists..

President Olsen used the now raging civil war in Europe to make NATO pour hundreds of thousands of troops into Afghanistan to stabilize the country against al-Qaeda. Europe was eager to agree knowing that the support for the Muslim rioters was coming from Pakistan and Iran and that the war they wanted to ignore could not be ignored any longer.
President Olsen also used the current political environment to advance the democracy agenda and remove the support structure that the Jihadist Islamist had enjoyed. It was Turkey for one and the Sunni States as another that helped bring down the jihadist support structure. A new Turkish Prime Minster came to power in 2012. He was called the ‘Son of Ataturk’ because he reestablished rule of the Islamists who had gained much political ground the decade before. With the help of his military, he firmly placed Turkey in the secular government camp. The EU also helped him by agreeing to admit Turkey into EU.

But what Turkey did next, with the help of President Olsen promises of foreign aid and military support, was to cut off the flow of support from Iran and Syria into the Europe that the jihadists were using to wage the civil war. The Sunni states like Saudi Arabia who feared the growing dominance of Iran, also helped in curtailing the Shiite led Islamists. Olsen, in partnership with the EU and Turkey, poured money and military arms into Pakistan so the Pakistani president could reassert his control of the country and remove the influence of the Islamists similar to what was done in Turkey. By 2020 the old ‘war on terror’, now renamed the War of Democracy had turned the tide on the Islamists. Radical American Muslims saw their counterparts in Europe being defeated, new sedition laws were in place in the US that prevented and show of support – peaceful or otherwise – for the Islamists and their agenda including the closing of mosques were necessary, and embargoes on Iranian oil which was their lifeblood and the tool they used to fund the Jihadist agenda around the world, and the sanctuaries for the Jihadists were drying up in the Middle-East. In addition, the alternative energy “Manhattan Project’ that President Olsen ordered into existence through executive order had removed the US considerably for the need for Iranian or Iraqi oil.

A short decade later, looking back from 2031, the War of Democracy was won using the Cold War strategy of containment, sanctions, and the selective military power of the Allies of the free world.