New Math

During the 30-odd years he was in power, Saddam Hussein murdered at least 300,000 of his own people. These are the ones we are finding in mass graves in Iraq. Another 300,000 – at least – were killed in his war with Iran and his two conflicts with the US. Those are bare-bones, undeniable, non-speculative, minimums.

That darling arithmetic works out to no less than 20,000 people a year killed by that lunatic, or about 1,700 people a month.

Thirteen thousand is about the size of a good basketball game. Perhaps we can convince the Lakers to play a charity game against the Spurs, say. Then we can put 13,000 Iraqi men, women and children into the Staples Center, and make Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, George Clooney, The Dixie Chicks, Janeane Garofalo, and every single person who signed the Not in Our Name petition kill those people in cold blood – electrodes, acid baths or shredders, to get the full effect, although the weak-stomached should be allowed to merely shoot them in the back of the head.

Because that is exactly what would have happened if these people had gotten their way.

For thirty years now, since 1973, we have been consistently teaching the world an object lesson on the nature of the modern American mindset, and that lesson is this:

We are fierce and terrible in battle. But kill a few dozen -- at most, a few hundred – of us, and we will turn tail and run for home. For all our skill in combat, the American people are weak and decadent, bullies and cowards without the guts for a real fight.

We have been teaching our enemies this variable for a long time now: Somalia, Lebanon, Vietnam, and various smaller engagements. And they have adjusted their calculations accordingly. Duck when facing us in battle, then grind us down with guerrilla actions until we throw in the towel and go home.

We have not just been teaching our enemies this theory. We have been training them in its use. And they have adjusted their strategy correspondingly, with very satisfactory results. And if killing a few hundred American Soldiers overseas can accomplish such wonders, should we really be surprised that they salivated at the thought of what killing a few tens of thousands here at home would bring?

One thing we can be sure of, and that is that they most certainly did not expect what the last two years have brought them. Osama reduced to unpleasant-smelling stains on the wall of a Tora Bora cave, and Saddam lord of a basement in some slum in Tikrit or Mosul, his sons, his hereditary line, his legacy laid out like the common thugs and criminals they were, for everyone to see.

The fact of the matter is, folks, this war is going so well that no one would have dared imagine it. Two years without a hiccup on American soil. Two of the most odious regimes in the world eliminated. And, not least of which, remarkable conservative political victories in the US with the promise of more on the horizon.

No wonder the far left is praying for our own kids to be killed in greater numbers. Because that’s what things have come to for those sick, deluded people. That is their only hope for victory. Yes you, Ted Rall, you prize…fellatelist.

They’re not going to get it because every single day of this odd, Sargasso-like stillness, we are re-programming our enemies equations and forcing them to re-think their strategy.

Those men and women who are being killed weekly in Iraq are hard deaths for us to accept. On the surface it looks like a long, painful grind without any victory or consolation.

But something much, much deeper is going on here, and it is this: we are paying off the red ink we have accrued by cutting and running when it was the easy way out. We are paying off a brutal and unforgiving debt that we have incurred by our lack of resolve in decades past. Lincoln once wrote that the only thing worse than paying off a large debt was being forced to pay off a larger one; exactly so.

But remember this, America: Those men and women of ours who are paying with their lives are not just paying down a debt. They are making an investment, too.

Because if we show that we have the will and the resolve to finish the job we started there, then we will succeed, and by succeeding we will immeasurably strengthen our security in the decades to come. We have to teach these savages, these thugs and murderers, that attacks on the United States will bring more men, not fewer, and bring the ends of their lives and the destruction of their regimes, too. Like criminals everywhere, they prey on their own people, and anyone who thinks that the small bands of Ba'athist torturers and assorted lunatic Jihadi’s still on the loose in Iraq is analogous to the widely popular nationalist resistance in Vietnam is either deluded, mentally unbalanced, a journalist, a hippie, or a celebrity.

Remember that, the next time a Blackhawk goes down, or an Iraqi police building is bombed. When they are forced to bomb and kill their own people, they are destroying their own seed corn. They are doomed. They are doomed because we handed them their asses on the battlefields and then every day in their neighborhoods, for there would be no attacks against fellow Iraqis if those fellow Iraqis were not, by and large, helping us rebuild their own country with a view to it joining the rest of the world in the 21st century.

How well are we doing? Well, when Steven Den Beste can dedicate a fair amount of his fearsome intellect to writing about Japanese Anime DVD’s, that means we are winning this war in a very, very big way.

But realize this: There is not going to be a parade when we are done with this battle. Noam Chomsky is not going to stand up and admit he was wrong. Michael Moore is not going to shave, diet and join the Screaming Eagles. The giant puppets will still be there on some new imagined outrage, because people who put “protestor” down as their occupation on their (declined!) mortgage applications are never going to be happy with anything.

This is a difficult, thankless, grinding war. It requires, above all, leadership immune to pressure and criticism. It’s victory is predicated on perseverance and commitment.

Despite many missteps, we seem to have such leadership. And having the balls to fly over SAM’s in a big-ass blue jet marked UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, just to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the kids paying the price…

This is a long read, but well worth it. I'd recommend visiting the site for other long, but worthwhile reads.

Posted with the authors permission

This is a difficult, thankless, grinding war. It requires, above all, leadership immune to pressure and criticism. It’s victory is predicated on perseverance and commitment.

I'm sure that most soldiers understand the fly-paper analogy, and are happy to draw fire away from the heartland. The terrorists are focusing on us in Iraq, and not killing Americans in the US.

/john

I like the Math on the number of people saved because Saddam is no longer in power. Good way to look at it. And it gives you a better perspective on the whole situation. The left wing Dems would love to force us to give up so the enemies of America could win. But it's not going to happen.

Politics is more complicated than the 'Math' . Lessons need to be judged intellectually from historical events.It’s a job of politician and not the entertrainer to delve into wider perspective of their community and the surrounding world. Look at India, once a prosperous country couldn’t secure itself even from the remotest civilization attacking with minor force or using deceitful tactics. it's all because indians at that time lacked visionary Leaders like G.Bush.

"I like the Math on the number of people saved because Saddam is no longer in power. Good way to look at it."

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I hadn't really looked at it that way either. My thanks to this author and this poster for the new ammo to use when talking to those far lefties and third-partiers.

Of course I don't want any of our soldiers killed, or any innocent Iraqis either, but I didn't want those 3000 people killed on 9/11 either. Fire must be fought with FIRE. I've told my wife many times that Jesus and I part company when he says turn the other cheek. I go along with him on a lot of other things, but the line is drawn there. I'm sorry if that offends anybody, but that's just the way I feel about it.

Nice article. Makes WAY too much sense for the liberal mind to understand, though.

I agree with his assesment to just Screw ‘em.
The only thing at this point that will quell the liberals hatred of conservatives is blood in the streets.

I pray it never has to come to that.

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