What the President Should Do

by Richard J. Maybury

I'm often asked what Bush should have done after 9-11.

The Saudi royal family are the most powerful gangsters in the Islamic world. Bush should have said to them, give us everyone involved in the attack, plus all the evidence. The ones our courts find guilty will be executed.

In exchange, he should have said, we will reverse the foreign policy begun in the 1940s. We will sever all political and military connections throughout the Islamic world. We will become completely neutral, withdraw all our troops, and cease our meddling in Islamic affairs.

We will never again offer money, weapons or military training to killers such the Shah of Iran, the Saudi royal family, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Boris Yeltsin in Russia, or Musharraf in Pakistan. We will go home and leave you alone.

These are, incidentally, measures Washington should have taken decades ago, even in the absence of a war, on grounds of ethics alone.

Would the Saudi royal thugs have declined the offer? Would they have said to a billion Muslims, no deal, we want the US government to stay in the Mideast?

Maybe. But if they did, I think they'd all very quickly have been hanging from lampposts.

Instead, Bush immediately chose war, and now tens of thousands have been killed and wounded in a conflict that is not likely to end in our lifetimes.

War should always be the last resort, not the first. Odds are very high that eventually each of us will know one or more young men or women who will be horribly maimed or killed in this debacle.

However, the beauty of the plan Bush should have used from the beginning is, it's still available. At any time, the President can deliver that offer to the Saudi dictators.

If the offer does not work, he can always continue the war, so why not give it a try? What's to lose?

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