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 guess you measure "stability" not in how many people die, but how they are killed.
My point is, leave a vacuum and it will be filled. Usually by folks you wouldn't nominate for the job.
No ma'am, we're talking about every day conditions not how a dictatorship controls its people.
We didn't invade Argentina because Peron was throwing people from planes over the ocean. Killing people by dictatorial regimes is happening every day and we don't hear about it. Will this constitute instability in all these countries? Hardly.
The biggest mistake was not activating the draft (flame as you will).
Our military was in rough shape coming off of 8 years of the Clinton regime. Mid-level and senior military were being pushed out by downsizing and "scandals" or they were choosing to leave because of Clinton's use of the military for his pet social experiments. Experienced pilots were also leaving because of the hiring boom at the airlines as the Vietnam era pilots were retiring.
Our military is way overtaxed and they are darned tired. Of course they'll keep pressing forward, but we need to be picking up the pace, bringing more into the fold. And if we can't get these numbers voluntarily, then we ought to reinstate the draft to fill some more boots. Our troops barely have time to pee on American soil and they are already ramping up for the next deployment, a third, fourth and fifth time.
I'm sorry, but this is a debate where we seem to have no mutually agreed upon starting point. When dictators are wiping out entire neighborhoods to quell the constant threat of insurrection, the situation is obviously not "stable."
Ben Stein in no conservative. His claim to fame is his reputed high level of intelligence, inherited from his father, the economist. Unfortunately, he keeps trying to demonstrate it, as on this subject, and often falls short IMO. Another example, higher taxes don't bother him a bit. As for Bill O'Reilly, he is in constant danger of straining his back, trying to get out in front of any parade marching through town. Don't get me started...
When this is done, "stability" through fear is established for decades.
Hafez al Assad wiped out a whole city in Northern Syria, Hamah, with artillery and tanks. Since this happened, "stability" reigns in Syria through Assad Jr's reign as president.
This is how the cookie crumbles in these parts of the world, unfortunately.
Nothing all that "Noble" about it, at least not from a grand strategy point of view. We are doing it to cut off the supply of Jihadies at the source. I don't think even we could kill enough of them to cut off the supply by sheer numbers. Except by using Nukes, and maybe not even then, but either way, we aren't about to turn the place into a great big sheet of silica glass. In the end several important patches of it may get that treatment, but not the whole thing. At least this go around. Later, if we aren't successful this time, maybe.
Most likely their room and board (and titty bar bills) were at least as expensive. The flight lessons were somewhat more expensive I would think.
The war was justifiable on many fronts. Bush, and especially some of his military advisors, forgot General Patton's prime directive of war...to inflict the maximum number casualties in the shortest time possible on an enemy and continue until there is nor more enemy or they surrender.
I support President Bush...he has relied upon less than aggressive advice from military experts that were more concerned about political correctness than killing the enemy....let's hope recent changes alter that problem
Double Bingo!
The real commonality between Iraq and Yugoslavia is that both are thrown together countries, that are not really "nations". Yugoslavia and Iraq were both created out of fragments of the losers of WW-I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire respectively. This was much less true of Spain, which while it does have regions which were once independent countries/Kingdoms, is a much more homogeneous society, and the union of those nations was some 400+ years in the past at the time of the Spanish Civil War. Even the American colonies had a common language and common history. The American Civil War and the Spanish Civil War had much in common, in that the differences were more cultural/ideological than ethnic or religious per se. It didn't take a dictator to reunite the American people. It took time, and an external enemy, ironically enough, the dying Spanish Empire.
There is little evidence that we can't fill the boots voluntarily. The fact is that the numbers are capped by Congress, both via the budget and actual numerical caps. The Caps have been waived to some degree for the Army and Marines, and the President is requesting that the caps themselves be somewhat raised. By about 90K, IIRC. However the Air Force and Navy are being reduced, even as many Air Force and Navy personnel are being used for ground missions, such as EOD and Convoy escorts.
A relentless propaganda war has been waged by the leftists and won without so much as a counter offensive by the imbeciles at the WH.
Our troops deserve better.
May the next GOP CIC understand what to do with the enemy within, this one doesn't have a clue.
BTTT! Good piece.
Regards, Ivan
I'm coming to believe that only a strongman can hold Iraq together, preferably someone less psychotic than Saddam.
I guess neither of us are being very PC - but there are times the truth isn’t PC.
Only four of them had flight lessons, though. All 19 had to buy airline tickets, and I believe they took at least one dry run before 9/11, too.
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