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.
Why not?
Please see # 207.
Thanks.
bttt
I'm saying: we need to not cave to the Democrats, which is why this whole vanity was posted in the first place. Too many conservatives are caving and this war will be "lost at home" if we do not keep a stiff upper lip.
I'm not for withdrawal before total victory is achieved. I am not for negotiations with Syria and Iran, the opposite is true, bomb Iran yesterday! This will cause Assad to pull a Qadhafi so fast you won't believe it and will simultaneously decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah.
I vote straight GOP and am praying to keep the RATs out.
If all of the above is not a "stiff upper lip" I don't know what is.
One thing, though, we have a lot of spineless Republicans in the Congress which isn't helpful. We have just about two years for this CIC to pull it out.
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Bump to everything you said.
Either issue a call to arms and fight a war, or don't. But this halfass 'we just need 20K more' stuff is crap. And more asinine is any self-styled 'conservative' promising it all for nothing--there is simply no way to have guns and butter.
Me either. I think most of my generation is clueless about world affairs; pretty much the same is true about what is going on next door to them/us. I tend to think we had too much just done for and given to us!!
Ping
I love this.. i am having a debate tommorow in which we are having a mock election and this is one of the topics that i am debating.. this is good stuff.. the best that i have found about the war in Iraq.. finally somebody is telling it how it is.. Americans are becoming so apathetic to the world around us.. If we were to leave iraq now.. everything that we have worked to rebuild would be in vain.. Iraq is too vulnerable for us to leave now.. it would be so easy for another radical dictator to take control over their gov. It reminds me of the french revolution and how Napoleon was able to "take over" France when it was at its weakest point.. we all knew that this was going to be hard.. we can't quit just because it is "hard".. sometimes you have to suffer at times in order to make the future brighter.. we are giving he iraqis a future and a hope...
Not to mention liberals often squeal that we left Afghanistan a vaccuum and thus "created" the void that allowed the Taliban to take over and bin Laden to flourish. Now they want to do the same thing in Iraq. It's bizarre.
Excellent post, narby.
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