Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

We're back!

Old Rumsfeld told us that we were going to be into this anti-terrorist deal for the long haul and it looks like he wasn't lying. The news is just in that we have landed troops on the Philippine Islands.

The government there has been having problems with rebel Muslim revolutionaries for years. The current regime has been unable to root them out as they terrorize remote areas of the country and take hostages with impunity.

It occurs to me that it is mighty convenient that this particular band of Muslim insurgents has been connected to Al Qaeda. This gives us a chance to send our forces back to where we once belonged.

If you will recall we were tossed out of the Philippines ten years ago at the demand of the government. Now we are back to help the government deal with what looks to me like a domestic problem.

I still haven't heard of any Philippine Al Qaeda training camps. There weren't any Filipinos involved in the 9/11 murders or the bombing of our African Embassies, or any of the other acts attributed to Osama and his ilk.

Are we being made a pawn of this Philippine government or are we using our war on terrorism to regain a foothold in the Pacific? Did we receive some information that leads us to believe that a band of Muslim fanatics based in the jungles of Luzon is preparing to attack the U.S.?

This action by the military is beyond fishy. It reeks of clandestine motives, prevarication, and misdirection.

I know this sounds cynical but the last time we invaded the Philippines was to help them in their fight for freedom against Spain during the Spanish-American war. When the Spaniards were routed we stayed. This didn't sit well with the population to whom we had promised independence. Two years later over 4200 American soldiers were dead along with 16,000 Filipino soldiers; 200,000 civilians died from disease and malnutrition attributed to the war; 90 years later we went home.

Further cause for skepticism is the fact that most of the 9/11 assassins were Saudi Arabian. Shouldn't we be putting some pressure on the Saudis to flush out terrorist cells on their territory?

Oh, but wait -- Saudi Arabia contains a lake of oil under their sand.

We need that oil. The Saudi Royal family has one oily hand on our throats and another in our pockets. At best the Saudi government tolerates the activities of terrorists. At worst it supports them.

It sure appears as though we are fighting this war on terrorism in places where it is convenient to do so.

By taking on a Muslim force that appears to have a tenuous -- if any connection -- to Al Qaeda, we are on dangerous territory. How can this not be viewed as a "holy war" if we lash out at rebellious Muslims around the globe. We need to make it crystal clear that it is Al Qaeda we are against. It is terrorism that we abhor and not just any government's enemy that happens to be Muslim.

There was a similar attitude in the 50s when Communism was the enemy. Joe McCarthy had us believing that there was "a red under every bed" in the State Department. The hangover from this fanatical time was Vietnam -- 50,000 American boys died fighting Communism. It was a fight we not only lost but are further humiliated to discover that, if we had just minded our own business, Communism was going to collapse anyway.

Our fight in Afghanistan is right and righteous. We had to respond to those who murdered our people. We are also right to excise the Al Qaeda chancre wherever it festers. What we must not do is take on Islam.