James Carville On Bombing Muslims: Still Going To Be Doing It In 13 Years
There is a theory from James Carville on bombing Muslims: The United States will still be doing it 13 years from now.
That is what he told a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which included the show’s host and Republican Ana Navarro.
The discussion was about the aerial bombing campaign launched by President Barack Obama against the group known as the Islamic State, ISIS, or ISIL.
During the discussion on how best to challenge the terrorist group, long-time Democratic strategist Carville said if the United States kept the strategy in place now, it would be doing the same thing for the next 13 years that it has been doing for the last 13 years since the September 11 attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The following transcript of his comments are courtesy of Mediaite.
“Thirteen years ago this October we started bombing Muslims in the Middle East… We’re still bombing them. Does any sane person think that thirteen years from now we’re not going to still be bombing them? Of course we are…. Maybe there’s no alternative other than bombing people. But we’re getting the middle of four, count ’em, four civil wars here.”
CNN has a long piece on a modern history of the use of military action against terrorists. It points out actions taken following a series of terrorists attacks, including The Iran hostage crisis, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, the bombing of a disco club in West Berlin in 1986, the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the 9/11 attacks.
The article goes on to note the use of drones from the year 2000 to present, as well as the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq during the 2000s, following the American invasion of the country in its hunt for weapons of mass destruction, a hunt that eventually proved fruitless.
Aside from the recent beheadings of aid workers and journalists, the most visible terror attack was the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012, which lead to the death of American Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, a State Department IT expert.
In almost all cases, there was a direct military response of some sort, and yet after decades of fighting Islamic extremists with military weapons and strategy, the United States is no closer to eradicating Muslim extremism than we were in 1979, 1986, or any of the other years in the long fight against terrorism.
[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]