Posted on 02/04/2007 9:12:57 AM PST by A_perfect_lady
I have just finished reading a Ben Stein column about the recent SOTU adress. It started out very well, but then took what seemed to me an odd turn: Stein, along with several other conservative pundits, has come to the conclusion that the war in Iraq was just a big, huge mistake. I've been hearing this with increasing frequency, from people I did not expect to hear it from. Bill O'Reilly, Francis Fukuyama... even Charles Krauthammer sounds disenchanted.
Here is my question: When did everyone decide to agree that the war in Iraq was a mistake? I still don't think it was a mistake. Stein credits President Bush with the fact that we have not experienced a follow-up terrorist attack since 9/11. Why does he suppose we have not had another major attack here in the States? Because we took the war to them, just exactly as President Bush said we were going to do. We'll fight them on the streets of Baghdad so that we aren't fighting them HERE. Militants from Syria and Iran are streaming into Iraq and that's a pity, but it's especially a pity for them as they would much rather stream into the United States.
Is it a "mistake" because four years after the fall of the Ba'ath regime, we don't have a peaceful Iraq? Did anyone expect the Islamic world to sit idly by while we create something utterly foreign to their experience in the very heart of their world? It's ironic that I should quote Noam Chomsky in a time and place like this, but stopped clocks being right twice a day as they are, he once said something useful: Oppressors cannot bear the threat of a good example. Neither theocracies, monarchies, or pan-Arab socialists want to see a functioning democratic state in the muslim world. It's like teaching slaves to read: you'll never keep them subservient to Allah, the King, or the Dictator after they've seen the alternative. Did anyone anywhere think we were going to do that in four years? Did anyone think that the various powers that be (or would be) in the Middle East would take it lying down?
I still remember President Bush's address before going into Afghanistan: it will not be easy and it will not be quick. He meant it then and he means it now. We are not in Iraq to avenge ourselves for September 11th, or to find Osama bin Laden, or to save the world from WMD, and we never were. We are there to begin the changing of the Middle East. We are addressing the root causes of extremism, parochialism, fanaticism, state-sponsored hatred, and ignorance. It's a huge task. You might feel it was the wrong approach and we should have either wiped out half the muslim world in one fell swoop (an understandable reaction) or just hunkered down, surrounded ourselves with walls, wished Israel good luck, and watched from a safe distance as Islam spreads slowly but surely into Europe and Africa. I suppose we could have done that with the Communists, too, in the 20th century, and just hoped that we could hold out on our huge island when, at last, they came for us.
If this is your view then yes, invading Iraq was a big mistake. But please consider: we are dealing with a force very much like Communism, one that is intent upon spreading and has a great deal of momentum. We can crush the enemy, run from the enemy, or try to change the enemy. President Bush is trying to change the enemy. It's as valid an approach as the other two alternatives. I urge my fellow Americans not to give up on this approach after such a very short time, because if you think this undertaking is expensive in terms of national treasure and human lives, remember all the times countries have used the other two approaches. Remember the retreat from Cambodia and the killing fields that resulted. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am not pointing to them as examples of American mistakes but as examples of the results of retreat or full-scale destruction, both valid but expensive ways of exiting or ending a war. Do we want to do either of those things again, just to claim peace in our time? All I am saying, is give war a chance.
I hope you send this to Stein et al.
Well written -
I love the "give war a chance" I might have to steal that.
Crushing the enemy with extreme prejudice is rarely a bad thing, IMHO.
The Iraq War was NOT a mistake, but losing the PROPOGANDA WAR was...
Bush tried to take the high road,be Presidential, and allow others to rebut the lies of the left, each more hate filled than the other, they have been coming 24/7-365 and still haven't stopped...
Hindsight is 20/20, but thier was no penalty for lying, no penalty for outright treason, and no penalty for selling out your country for short-term political gain...
A LIE repeated oft enough eventually becomes the accepted "Truth", and the entire Iraq affair proves it conclusively...
Worked reasonably well in Vietnam, except of course for the Vietnames and Cambodians.
But does anybody seriously think that if (when) we run from Iraq the jihadists won't follow us here?
There are about 35 to 40 'republicans' that are not conservative. They are Log Cabin Republicans.
Log Cabin Republicans have a same funding source as the Democrats. The Rainbow Network and LBGT fund the Victory Funds, Log Cabin and MoveOn.
These funding sources also fund the anti war propaganda.
It was not a mistake going to war. It has become a mistake, because we have allowed the media to run the war. We must now fight it in a politically correct manner, which is why we will eventually lose the war!
Wars must be fought with courage and as many dead enemy bodies as humanly possible. Thats how the Shites and Sunnis are fighting this war. Saddam understood this to mantain control. We need to kill both sides in the thousands to send the message to the rest that are thinking of turning 'radical'. Its sad to say, but ultra death and violence is the only thing that an Islamic mind understands. Crush thier spirit and thier will and they become lapdogs. Let them loose and they become pitbulls.
What is it that we are watching Im seeing a police action
with our soldiers being handicapped by rules of engagement.
If we do have the most advanced military we should have finished off Iraq three years ago.
Sorry but war should be fought to win not molify critics.
So maybe you should want to give extended police actions a
chance.
Yep. I agree. The "war" was fought and was over within months. We are losing the peacekeeping and nation building effort. Why? Because the WH constrained the military, were indept in the propaganda campaign by the media and the dems and the Republicans in Congress did absolutely nothing to help in this regard.
I agree. I must admit that I was amazed last spring to read Willim F. Buckley complaining that at this time inWWII were are already taking backing the Phillipines, etc. Good grief! Didn't he and his fellow wearers of the ermine at Davos remember that in 1943 China --and ally of ours --has been engaged in war with Japan for 12 years already and was still losing, despite all our caterwauling about Chang's refusal to fight the Japanese--he was for some strane resason more worried about Mao and the Communists--still taking more casualties that we were in the Pacific War. Not until we got to Okinawa
did we see what the Chinese had been up against all those years.
The mistake was going into this with a Resolution of Force instead of a Declaration of War.
The "war" was fought and was over within months.....but now we are wasting blood and treasure on a pack of 8th century savages
Too bad one can't have a political litmus test in order to run for office as a member of a political party. /s
I have heard this before too, that at least under Saddam there was "stability" and he kept them "under control."
But did he? Did we get a weekly body count from a free Iraqi press under Saddam? Did we hear about it every time a few dozen Shi'ites were killed? If it was so stable under Saddam, where are all these mass graves coming from? It doesn't sound to me that it was much more stable under Saddam than it is now. He didn't control the internecine warfare. He controlled the media that reports it.
Of all the various pundits out there. O'Reilly is the least credible, most annoying with his patronizing "looking out for the folks" crap.
Now, as to the war in Iraq. We haven't had another successful attack on our soil since 9/11. That closes that part of the case in my opinion.
We are killing bad guys and at least delaying the day when one of these islamic countries get real nuclear capability. If and when that happens, we may regret not having simply annihilated the region. The effort to bring a different way of life to these people is a noble one and I hope it's successful. I honor those willing to make the sacrifice necessary toward the effort because the only real alternative is that we are forced by craven politicians to withdraw which will mean having to go back later and neutralize the enemy with devastating force.
People getting chemo often wonder if it is worth it.
Islamo facism is cancer on humanity, it is a threat to civilization and can kill it. Iraq is an important front in the war on terror. But there is a more important front.
The HOME front.
And the battle there is where we can lose the fight. Our troops can do what they are sent to do. Our own peoples and politicians are the only way the war on terror can be lost.
There was a platform to qualify for. RNC was infiltrated with Log Cabin RINOs.
The reason it's a mistake is because we have failed to create something utterly foreign to them. We have instead escalated the long-simmering civil war between islamic factions, a situation over which we have no influence and we are caught between. Crush them? Fine. Leave? Fine. But we will not change them. Moreover, we have eliminated any chance of major military action - boots on the ground - to defeat and rebuild a larger creator of terror, iran. The iraq war and aftermath needed to be successful at home before it could be the template to follow elsewhere. It failed at home.
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