Posted on 02/24/2006 7:12:07 PM PST by CometBaby
"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The United States Army is not the Department of Education. We dominate in ways that the Romans couldn't even imagine and yet idiots in this country continue to chant "failure".
If success is turning the Iraqis into Americans, then by all means, lets annex Iraq.
If success is reducing the state sponsorship of terrorism, then we have aced our first test, and need only to school Iran and Syria to get an A+ for the semester.
The fastest way out of Iraq is through Tehran and Damascus.
I think that will be the ultimate result, but currently there are two obstacles: 1) our "ally" Turkey objects strenuously to the idea of a sovereign Kurdistan, as it would likely result in the loss of territory currently controlled by Turkey, and 2) Southern Iraq would be absorbed into a greater Persia, which is currently controlled by a madman.
In point of fact, we are winning. The insurgency led by AQ does not represent a military threat to the Iraqi government. They have been foiled in every attempt to prevent the movement towards the formation of a democratic government. Over 8 million Iraqis voted in the latest election. The violence has been exaggerated and doesn't represent what is going on as a whole in a nation of over 25 million people. The naysayers have been predicting dire consequences before we ever entered Iraq and they have been wrong every time. Buckley is buying the MSM version of events.
There has certainly been progress; I guess the question is more a political one: is there much of a future for a multiparty ruling coalition in Iraq? Or will the Shiites simply dominate the Sunnis? I think that is what WFB is reacting to.
That too.
This was not Al-Qaeda's Tet, it was their Battle of the Bulge. Now they've got nothing left, not even moral credibility among Islamists.
"First you have the winter and then you have Spring"...C. Gardner.
The division between the Sh'ia and Sunni is exaggerated and not as stark as some portray. They intermarry and Sunnis are part of the government. The Kurds are Sunnis.
That is the way I see it, too. And that is a ~dismal~ prospect.
If we do not have the stomach for the long go (and I don't think we do) the wreckage is going to be enormous. The things you said plus the general chaos in the M.E., the emboldening of Islamo facisits everywhere, and, at home, a bloodletting among conservatives and devastation at the polls. I am only hanging in with the war because the pain of a backdown there will be calamitous.
I agree. Under the right conditions, it might work out for the best, but currently, we just can't let it happen, if we can in any way prevent it.
But it might not be up to us.
Amen brother! Only the ignorant claim failure. I have read the successes and failures throughout history. I look around at my fellow countrymen. They don't know what failure is. The final chapter hasn't been written yet in this fight! Everyone knows where the enemy is. Where the beast lays. We haven't confront the real enemy yet. For almost 30 years they have been fighting us. They took over our embassy, killed our Marines in Beirut, attempted to disrupt oil shipments in the Gulf in the 80's and are directly supporting attacks against our troops as we speak. I'm not stupid I know who the enemy is. Maybe this government should come to grips and realize it's under attack and the threat is serious. My entire life I have watched the mullahs in Iran do what they please against our people and never have they been fully confronted. Now is the time. Because if we don't in the end the cost will be greater than what we have suffered so to date! Your right the fastest way of of Iraq is through Tehran....... Why does our government continue to jerk around with these folks?
2) Southern Iraq would be absorbed into a greater Persia, which is currently controlled by a madman.
The Sh'ia Iraqis are Arabs and have a different culture, language, and history from the Persians. Any "absorption" would have to done by force and that won't happen.
Maybe I'm wrong, but sometime about ten years ago a dear friend of WFB got sick and died and somehow it came out that he was "gay" and Buckley bit his lip and eulogized him all the same and somewhere in that slow, staccato, stuttering march of arch and curve that makes up the unmistakable voice of one who speaks for God himself before the world, an epiphany worked its worming way under the depths of an otherwise inpenetrable palisade alongside the man who thought he trod on gilded walk; a crack appeared, and the carefully crafted path gave way.
3 years after the war is JUST A BIT TOO EARLY to be making the "we lost" call, don't ya think Mr. Buckley?
That's true, but the Iranians would surely like to get control of the Shi'ite holy sites in Iraq.
Given a chance, I think they'll try to take them.
My gloomy assessment is that we are close to losing on the home front, just as we lost Viet Nam at home while Gen. Giap was in despair over the military hopenlessness of his situation.
However good the situation is on the ground, American public opinion is at the point where very little alarming news is needed to tip it against the war, IMO.
I would have liked to have seen that!
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