Posted on 12/22/2004 7:05:05 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
There has been so much violence in Iraq that it's become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight, without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you'd see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.
One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on AOL's home page, and I did something I've never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don't often get to see the face of pure evil.
There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.
Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.
As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.
However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.
Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."
What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.
We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked. We may lose because our Arab allies won't lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they'll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.
We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq then lift a finger for free and fair elections there.
As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."
A common tactic of the intellectually dishonest, give a little here so he can actually make his point about something else.
I leave it to your imagination to figure what his real point is all about.
"I leave it to your imagination to figure what his real point is all about"
Not much imagination needed, I realize that Friedman will take any chance he gets to bash the administration on the war in Iraq, and especially President Bush. He is indeed a slimeball. I'm only saying he talks about his utter disgust about what the terrorists did to the election workers, and calls a spade a spade on that one.
I'm afraid you're wrong. I don't think Rumsfeld has done anything wrong here but depend on the military to do its job. And the military has. Where the U.S. has failed is in managing to overcome its past issues in the area, and managing to establish a police force that is solidly able to police a free Iraq. Those are not tasks for which the U.S. military or any American governmental agency are prepared.
I think this is a lot like Cuba will be once Castro dies, only in that situation, the U.S. will absolutely be forced to intervene to stop a bloodbath and potentially radical state 90 miles south of the border. Castro has been pretty much confined to saber-rattling for years. What we don't need is some nutjob who'll start yapping about liberating the Keys or something.
Signed up today didja? Do you really think that there is just one American who runs things in Iraq? Your alternative action/SECDEF is?
Rumsfeld has, for all intents and purposes, dissed our fellow citizens serving in Iraq; this is not acceptable, and he has to go.
Oooh, cats, you're getting dangerously close to gettin' to know a whole mess of 'em.
Welcome to FR, BTW.
Rumsfeld is a great SecDef and I could not disagree with you more.
Get lost ya stinkin Leftist, anti-American piece of sh*t
HA.....YOU need to RESIGN.....your brain is showing.
Still, Welcome! And try to have a thicker skin than I did when I was first dissed on this forum when I made one of my first posts.
Here we are, this reporter-observer and us, face to face with the unimaginable, an enemy within itself where the innocent and the guilty are all of one flesh and mind, dispensable to the whole, a part of nothing larger.
In our horror, we recoil while they meekly oblige and we stand helplessly by unable to fathom the depths of their subservience to their saviors and tormentors alike.
How are we ever to prevail?
The administration is not RUNNING this war and has not been since they arrogantly declared victory. It is in pure REACTION mode and is generally too arrogantly bullheaded to reassess their perilous position.
Rumsfeld, who's only strong suit is cocky retorts to journalists, continues his smugly obnoxious, mindless, undermanned, undersupplied trudge toward tragedy.
Apparently no amount of setbacks is sufficient to embarrass the man or to make the commandeer in chief jettison him.
I hate to use the common phrase but how long have you been here?
You're a newbie. So, you get the benefit of the doubt.
I suspect you've been misled by the mainstream media reports, rather badly so. They have been, shall we say, incomplete? Rather than argue the point, I'll leave you with two links:
Ugly Reporting Harms Rumsfeld (The Fog of Journalism)
Rest of the Story (Unarmored Humvee Story Exposed)
Click through and read the linked articles.
If the complete and unedited story doesn't alter your misconception about Rumsfeld, we can take it up at a later date.
Actually, Friedman was for the war in the beginning.I read some very thoughtful pieces he wrote that were accurate and right on point. I agree that he did slide "left" after a while, and I stopped reading his stuff.
Look, the President trusted this man,(Rumsfeld) and Tenet to know what they were talking about. We went in too thin to sustain the peace. Tenet had the good grace to step down, Rumsfeld should do the same. It makes the President look bad when his secretary of defence makes arrogant and thoughtless comments to our soldiers going into battle...and his comment about the tanks...Puh-leeze!
He has become a political liability to the President, and fuel for the lefties..or haven't you noticed the fuss they're making?
I propose that you also include the poster of reply #33. That poster's thought is that Rumsfield's only strong suit is his replies to reporters. Show him that Rummy's got a whole dang closet full of strong suits.
Hi! I just got here...whew! I'm off to watch "Lost" right now..but, in the words of our famous Governor...
"I'll be b-a-a-a-a-ck!"
This place is FUN!
Take your time.
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