Posted on 03/06/2004 8:11:09 AM PST by Lando Lincoln
Nearly a year has now passed since the commencement of the Battle of Iraq. Given the time elapsed it now seems appropriate to assess the success of our venture there, the relative rightness of our pre-war arguments, and the path that we must now take towards a brighter future.
Let us review our successes. Iraq is free and Saddam is in jail. More than that, the spin-offs of the invasion have been astounding. Libya has surrendered her weapons of mass destruction. Two foreign tyrants, thus convinced to US resolve, have willingly gone into exile when, in the past, they would almost certainly have stayed. Any objective look at the Middle East today suggests a single conclusion: the tide in the region is turning towards freedom. Even unsteady allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have begun to take resolute action against terrorism.
As a result of the war, al-Qaeda has been reduced to little more than a gang which murders the very same Moslems it claims to represent. What does this tell us about the state of the organization? It tells us a lot about their desperation. Effective anti-terror action by the United States and its allies has reduced them to committing criminal atrocities against whatever civilians are available.
Two and a half years have now passed since 9-11. In that time al-Qaeda has not managed to stage a single major terror attack on an American target. There has been no second 9-11. There has not even been another USS Cole. While it is entirely true that there may be such an attack tomorrow, that there has not been one for so long is an astounding accomplishment.
In my mind, at least, there is little doubt that the invasion of Iraq has contributed to this. As I said long before the war, invading Iraq forced the terrorists to stretch their resources: to open a new front which is far more costly for them than for us. There is a limited pool of people willing to undertake terror attacks and, in Iraq, that pool is being drained. Each terrorist expended or killed there is one unavailable for duty elsewhere.
This should all be obvious to any fair observer. The attacks which are now taking place in Iraq are not the work of thrown-together gangs or ad hoc groups to oppose the American occupation. They are the work of well-organized and trained fighters. By most accounts: foreign fighters. Were they not in Iraq, the people planning suicide attacks on Mosques and placing bombs by the roadside would be elsewhere and doing other things.
Now, I must admit, all has not gone as I expected. Frankly, I expected to see weapons of mass destruction used during the war. That they were not came as a great shock to me as, I think, it came to everyone else. This, however, ought not be a deal-breaker. Nor should it be ranked as a great failure of our intelligence services.
Iraq’s weapons are a mystery which will probably never be completely solved. So far as we can tell, Iraq’s lack of WMD was a secret which was hidden from even Iraq’s own commanders. Saddam, by all accounts, believed he had such weapons or, in any case, wanted very much for the world to believe that he did. He sought to evade UN inspections and made roundabout threats of the use of WMD. If Saddam didn’t know that he had no such weapons, how could we be expected to know?
But, I’ll admit it, we were probably wrong. Some were also wrong about the ease of the subsequent occupation. I don’t count myself among that number because I always believed that a strong reason for the war was to open up a new front in our battle against the Islamist. But it is clear to me that those who printed a rosy picture of a trouble-free aftermath were mistaken. I’ll concede that as well.
But, in the end, who was more wrong: those who favored the war or the opponents? War opponents told us that thousands (or tens of thousands) of US servicemen would die. That there would be a humanitarian disaster in Iraq, resulting in millions of deaths. That there would be massive terrorist reprisals in the United States. That the resultant outrage would cause the collapse of “moderate” Islamic governments. None of this has come to pass.
The reconstruction of Iraq, while not as successful as some had hoped, is still proceeding with amazing rapidity. Life in Iraq is already better than it was under Saddam. The economy is recovering and oil production has reached pre-war levels. Given the dire pre-war predictions of some, I’d say that the civil situation can be fairly described as stable. The nation is well on the way to a life of prosperity that exceeds anything which could have been dreamed of just a few years ago.
All told, the invasion of Iraq: ‘Bush’s War’, as some have dubbed it, must be regarded as one of the most successful strategic gambits in the history of the United States. George Walker Bush saw the Gordian knot that was the old Middle East, that which each of his recent predecessors has attempted to deal with, shouted, “what does it matter how I untie it!” and finally done something real.
All has not gone perfectly. This is to be expected. Only a fool would have, before the war, assured you of perfection. Yet, the facts remain to be the facts. Any objective assessment shows that the invasion of Iraq was one of the most brilliant successes in the history of warfare and that, with a few hitches, the post-war situation has been skillfully handled. Iraq will suffer, and it will see set-backs, but it will never be like it was before. Not if George W. Bush has anything to say about it.
The more I watch him, the more I am convinced that George Walker Bush is a great man: a man of destiny. He is the right man, in the right time, and at the right place. He is a man of great moral conviction who knows how to win this war.
Our future does not belong to the timid. It belongs to the vigilant, the active: the brave. George W. Bush knows this, feels it viscerally, and it acting upon it. We cannot turn from the course he has charted for us: it is the path to the final victory over this enemy.
Some would have us turn from this path, see us return to older ways. Terrorism, they assure us, isn’t such a big problem: it’s all our imaginations. Well, I remember the World Trade Centre: I visited the place. It was the first thing I ever saw of New York City and, to this very day, the last. I shall never, so long as I live, forget that day, in the Summer of 2001, when I saw it in person for the last time.
We are winning in Iraq. There will be setbacks but, in the end, victory will be ours. George W. Bush is one of those great and mysterious men that arrives on the scene once in a generation. We must have him for another four years to continue this work that we are now in.
Onward from Iraq we must not journey. To fight all that other evil in the world. To defend America. To secure the future. This is our task, our duty, and our destiny.
And Algore screams GW betrayed the country.
Lando
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