[ArGee]

But we decided to make war on the cheap and are now paying for it.

I think we are paying for the decision to make compassionate war. While I was watching TV during the "Shock and Awe Campaign" I noticed that bombs were falling on one side of the Euphrates while traffic was flowing normally on the other. The Baghdadis did not have to fear us becasue they knew we weren't targeting anyone but Saddam's administration.

They fear the insurgents more and so they support them.

There is no easy solution - there is always a cost for being the good guy.

Shalom.

[JasonC]

There is also a benefit to being the good guy, and the government of Iraq needs to use it. Right now they aren't, not seriously. They aren't on American television thanking people, they aren't calling the left names from their position of unassailable moral authority as the victims of Saddam and of the present bombers, they aren't denouncing the left as racist bigots for being indifferent to their suffering, they aren't demanding apologies and resignations, they aren't declaring leftists persona non grata and expelling them from their country, they aren't filing class action lawsuits against the American media for promoting murder in Iraq and demanding $100 billion in compensation, etc etc.

Nobody is even trying. They instead sit around and hope that the left "gets it" and "sees" that we are all "really" on the same side. We aren't on the same side. The left wants to rule the world and will destroy western civilization to do so. When a million Algerians died they said "Bien, vous sufferiez". When a million Cambodians died they said it was Nixon's fault, when he was the only one who tried to save them. When thousands of Iraqis are killed, they blame those trying to stop it. They are not on our side, stop waiting around expecting them to get it, realize they are implacable and murderous cynical enemies every bit as much as Al Qaeda, and get on the bloody field already.