John Kerry claims support of world leaders favoring European anti-terror tactics aka Franco-European Law-Enforcement Tic-Tac-Toe Engagement of Tic-Tac-Terror.

Mar. 16, 2004 : Poli Sat.Com's Political Satire/ Commentary* Daily Update # 01·· ™©·2004·(Home)·
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John Kerry claims support of world leaders favoring European anti-terror tactics aka Franco-European Law-Enforcement Tic-Tac-Toe Engagement of Tic-Tac-Terror/Tick-Tock-Terror.·

John Kerry claims ardent support among "world leaders," while coyly claiming a need to maintain "confidentiality" of the transparently obvious identity of such leaders-- e.g., the French and leaders who embrace the Franco-European model for fighting terrorism. With the exception of support for overt military action in Afghanistan, the Franco-European model favors law-enforcement over overt military action. In modern jargon, it's the equivalent of Law-Enforcement Tic-Tac-Toe Engagement of Tic-Tac-Terror/Tick-Tock-Terror, for which the acronym is "FELETTTETTT/TTT." The unwieldy length of the acronym, coupled with the nature of the tactics it represents, has led to its being abbreviated as "FELET," for which the pronunciation is the same as the French/Anglo pronunciation of "filet" (which is how the asymmetrical-warfare terrorists view leaders or countries embracing such model for combating terrorism).

Now-former Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar understood, as did (and hopefully still does) Tony Blair, that civilization cannot successfully defeat the medieval barbarism of fanatic Islamic terrorism by tic-tac-toe tactics rather than strategic chess (aka "strategery chess"). Aznar's successor, the socialist José Zapatero, and apparently the Spanish people, favor the FELET position relative to terrorism, to which we had adhered from 1992 through September 10, 2001 to our great sorrow on September 11, 2001.

When I say "we" I include myself-- not just merely the Clinton administration and the first nine months¹ of the Bush administration. Many opponents of Operation Iraqi Freedom don't understand why its supporters view September 11, 2001 as a paradigm-changing event without such change of view having been predicated upon any assumption that Saddam Hussein's henchmen or surrogates were directly or indirectly involved in the plot for the 9-11 attack. For those of us supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 9-11 attack opened our eyes to the patent deficiency of the FELET position relative to terrorism. Even though we have thus far failed to find evidence of "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons or an actively-resumed nuclear program in Iraq:

(a) what we have found according to David Kay, (whom foes of the war love to quote about our not finding "stockpiles") shows that if we were to have allowed inspections to continue, after which the U.N. would have ceased "support" for sanctions, Hussein's regime could have, and would have, resumed WMD production at the earliest opportunity, which makes it clear that by toppling his regime, we acted "too soon" rather than "too late", and given the inability of our intelligence-gathering to know precisely when a threat might become "imminent," the former is better than the latter;

(b) by toppling Hussein's regime, we have virtually guaranteed that Iraq will not become able to pose an "imminent" WMD threat to us or our allies in the region;

(c) by demonstrating our willingness to apply massive military force to rogue states supporting terrorists and working to develop WMD, we provided critical mass to Khadafi's decision² to conclude many-months-long "negotiations" with British/American intelligence services with his agreement to abandon his WMD programs, reveal their scope, and submit to their destruction and reliable verification of their non-resumption thereafter, and, as a result of Khadafi's capitulation, we have learned his program was much closer to the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon than our best intelligence sources indicated.

Notwithstanding claims by Khadafi's son and French op/ed opinion to the contrary, if (in our response to the 9-11 attack) we were to have geographically limited our overt military action to Afghanistan and the Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iranian borders, it's doubtful that "negotiations" with Khadafi would have reached the critical mass inducing him to admit and abandon his WMD programs and allow verification of such abandonment. Indeed, given what we now know, if we were to have allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power and thereby perpetuated the perception that a tyrant with a past history of using WMD and an undisputed desire to reconstitute such programs could-- at the very least-- stall any U.N. efforts to stop such programs for at least a dozen years, then Khadafi would have had a strong incentive to become a back-channel hero to radical Islamic states and fanatical Islamic terrorists by accelerating his WMD program in order to covertly furnish WMD to Islamic terrorists for use against the West in general and the United States in particular. Devotees of the FELET position relative to terrorism may be willing to bet our security on their faith that Khadafi would have nevertheless abandoned his WMD programs solely in response to "sanctions" and "diplomatic pressure," but I'm glad Bush declined to take such leap of faith in the willingness, or capability, of a lunatic such as Khadafi to eschew opportunities to become a back-channel hero to fanatical Islamic terrorists.·

FELET as Filet-- Franco-European Law-Enforcement Tic-Tac-Toe Engagement of Tic-Tac-Terror/Tick-Tock-Terror.·

Though Kerry's been eager to say
world leaders in confidence say
they hope he'll replace
the barbecue plates
of Bush with their Euro-filets.

But penchants of Kerry displayed,
like flip-flops of fish 'til filleted,
admit but deny
the menu he'd try
would tout Franco-Euro FELET.

To readers most likely to say
"filet" I misspelled as "FELET,"
the acronym's for
description of war
on terror the French-Euro way.

You ask what the acronym means.
I coined it from principles gleaned
from Euro deportment
that views law enforcement
as best to fight terrorists' dreams.

"FE" are the letters I chose
for rules Franco-Euros propose
for Laws for Engagement
of Terror's enragement,
but "T" also means "Tic-Tac-Toe."

Such Tic-Tac-Toe tactics are errors
as ways to engage Tic-Tac-Terror.
Enforce-the-law tactics
are linear tactics
that can't stop the sound, "Tick-Tock-Terror."

And those who would choose to display
their place in the school of "FELET"
are asking to learn
that terror discerns
such schools as the best for filets.

In warfare, a tie ain't success,
so linear tactics ain't best.
Success requires more
than ev'ning the score--
not tic-tac-toe tactics, but chess.

That terrorists consistently sought to intensify attacks against us in the wake of Somalia (as an echo of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon) persuaded me that we were right to abandon our pre-Nine-Eleven position in the school of FELET upon finally realizing that the sharks of terror are looking for such schools filet.

¹·I find unpersuasive the naivety of former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill in construing Bush's front-burner consideration of contingency plans early in 2001 for a variety of ways to implement the U.S. policy adopted in 1998 to take steps to support "regime change" in Iraq as though such front-burner consideration of contingency plans for implementing such policy were evidence of a decision at that time for launching an overt, full-scale war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Presumably, O'Neill's experience at Alcoa did not familiarize him with the nature of, and need for, contingency plans for instruments of foreign policy encompassing the complexities of military, diplomatic and economic tools and options for such purposes.

²·I find unpersuasive claims by Khadafi's son and French op/ed opinion that Khadafi would have capitulated on his WMD even if Bush were to have deferred to the U.N. by refraining from launching Operation Iraqi Freedom-- especially since the result of such deference would have been to prove a rogue-state tyrant bent on developing WMD's could count on being able to jerk the U.N. around for at lest twelve years without being subjected to military force.

··

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