many, the catchphrase in itself is very simple of course. this war is not simple. the reason this war is not simple (4th generation warfare), is because its on the individual level. we are fighting an ideology, not like we fought an ideology during the cold war, because at least that ideology was backed by the soviet union. once they fell/failed, it was obvious to the world that their ideology fell/failed.
this radical islamic ideology is not backed by a state (openly), and therefore our perfected state vs state army is rendered almost inable to have any effectiveness. its an individual ideology that we must hunt down on the individual level.
NOW, these individuals must live somewhere, they must have some kind of 'safe haven' if you will....
over the past 4 decades, the US military has been involved in a very high number of deployments to various places. from peacekeeping, to small skirmishes, to simple aid relief distribution, to large scale assasination missions. now if you map out the countries that we have sent our military to (the grand majority begging for our presence), you will see a common correlation between those countries and world trade.
the countries that make up 90% of world trade, have not needed US military assistance over these decades. the countries that don't engage in world trade etc, make up all the countries that we just so happen to have to go in and keep the peace. they are not involved in world trade mostly because of their lack of security, which hinders any possible foreign direct investment.
NOW, we have this individual ideological enemy, it thrives in these countries..... in the instability of these countries. part of that instability is due to the ruling governments not adhering to the suggestions and requests of world governing bodies (g8, un, etc).
the statement, ur either with us or against us, is directed to those individual states' governments. u either wake up and deal with/listen to the rest of the world, and let us help you and bring you into the 21st century.... or we are going to do something about it. yes it seems simple, but thats how it needs to be presented to these guys. NOW, iraq was supposed to be our example country, 1. example that we mean business, we will march in and try to instil a democracy.
2. that it would be a sustainable, functioning democracy and set an example for the entire region.
so far, we have seen some progress on the first count, and not nearly enough on the second.
