Beyond Iraq

ping

Hanson's nailed it again. Bookmark this to re-read in 2010.

Should a peace candidate win the American presidency in 2008, prompting the U.S. to pull out of Iraq before the democracy there is stabilized, in the short term we will save lives and money. But as the larger war continues after we withdraw, jihadists will still flock to the Sunni Triangle. Hamas and Hezbollah will still rocket Israel. Syria will still kill Lebanese reformers. Iran will still try to cheat its way to a nuclear bomb. Ayman al- Zawahiri will still broadcast his al-Qaida threats from safety in nuclear Pakistan. The oil-rich, illegitimate Gulf sheikdoms will still make secret concessions and bribe increasingly confident terrorists to leave them alone. And jihadists will still try to sneak into the United States to kill us.

Nah -- we'll just sit around a campfire and sing "Kum Ba Yah".

In my humble opinion Victor Davis Hanson is this nations for refined and articulate
political writer and historian.

I am constantly amazed at this ability to put world issues into historical context.

Any administration would do well to have this man as a policy and political adviser.

Genius.

Didn't he get the DNC Memo?

There WAS no terrorism before Bush...

Get with the program, here...

It is tragic that instead of people with the intellectual caliber of VDH leading our foreign policy ,America has "policy wonks" and "spin-meisters". It is refreshing to read a well reasoned argument on a issue, instead of the mindless drivel spewed by Reid, Pelosi, et al.

All that radicalism had been going on for decades - ...

Centuries

...but it is a direct strategy aimed at an enemy who seeks to terrorize the West and plans on being around well after 2008.

Hooray President Bush, coalition partners and armed forces of The United States of America.

Iraq is only one theater in an ongoing global struggle

Fighting terror, now and in the future

Victor Davis Hanson:

...So Iraq is only one recent theater, albeit a controversial one, in an ongoing global struggle. This larger conflict arose not from the Iraqi invasion of 2003, but from earlier radical Muslim rage at the modern globalized world, the profits and dislocations from Middle East oil, and Islamic terrorism that ranges worldwide from Afghanistan to Thailand.
Should a peace candidate win the American presidency in 2008, prompting the U.S. to pull out of Iraq before the democracy there is stabilized, in the short term we will save lives and money. But as the larger war continues after we withdraw, jihadists will still flock to the Sunni Triangle. Hamas and Hezbollah will still rocket Israel. Syria will still kill Lebanese reformers. Iran will still try to cheat its way to a nuclear bomb. Ayman al- Zawahiri will still broadcast his al Qaeda threats from safety in nuclear Pakistan. The oil-rich, illegitimate Gulf sheikdoms will still make secret concessions and bribe increasingly confident terrorists to leave them alone. And jihadists will still try to sneak into the United States to kill us.
Critics of the present war can make the tactical argument that it is wiser to fight al Qaeda in Pakistan than in Iraq. Or that money spent in the frontline Iraqi offensive theater would be better invested on defense and security at home. Or that the human cost is simply too great and thus we should instead make diplomatic concessions to radical Islamists in lieu of military confrontation.
But, again, those are operational alternatives found in every war — as familiar as the old controversies over the French defensive Maginot Line of the 1930s or the American decision to defeat Germany first, Japan second. In the case of staying on in Iraq, at least, our long-term plan is to go on the offensive to confront radical Islamic terrorists on their own turf, and try to foster a democratic alternative to theocracy or autocracy.
That may be felt by the American public to be too expensive or too naive, but it is a direct strategy aimed at an enemy who seeks to terrorize the West and plans on being around well after 2008.
Depending on how we leave Iraq, this global war against radical Islamic terrorism will either wax or wane. But it will hardly end.

Nailed It!
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The problem is that the West has never been good at either historical memory or long wars.

The further problem is that Islam is very good at both: historical memory and long war.

The first war conducted by Islam was led by Mohammad himself - he led over 27 wars. Can you imagine Christ leading a war?

And its continued ever since. We keep thinking if we win a battle (such as Lepanto or Afghanistan) its "over." It ain't over - ever! They will keep on coming back, and back, and back.

It's their basic ideology. Read Robert Spencer's book: "The Truth About Mohammad." It's all about conquering for Islam - so Islam dominates the world.

For the Chritian a martyr is someone who dies for his/her faith - like the Christians being killed by the lions in Rome.

For Islam a "martyr" is someone who goes out to kill "unbelievers" and dies in the process.

That's a HUGE difference.

When I hear someone give a speech (like I recently did) that the terrorists have been attacking us for the last 20 years....

I want to scream with laughter - but then I scream (internally) with horror....

TWENTY YEARS?????

It's been since 700 A.D.

"Moreover, the unpopular war in Iraq ......."

-- Sigh --

So even the formidable VDH believes the PropagandaPolls?

I suppose the last "popular" US war of any length was WW II then....

Has he nailed it? Or is he promoting the hundred years war Bush keeps talking about.

No free nation can wage war for 100 years and survive. If the white house was interested in securing this country, we'd be waging real war against the countries who fund and train the islamic soldiers who fight against us. Yes, I said soldiers, because they are fighting a war, but we are weakened into fighting 'terrorists' who have no nation[a lie] so that the phony "free traders" can continue to integrate the US into a homogenous goo with every other country in the world. THEY won't allow a war to protect our sovereignty and our security. THEY create 'working groups' of foreign government officials, corporate patsies and NGOs to find a 'solution' for us.

There is so much corruption, and apparently so little time-- THEY are planning the ruin of this nation for the sake of trading with these warmongering 'terrorist' nations.

A frequent charge is that we are bringing terrorists to Iraq.

According to the left this is supposed to be a damning indictment. Why they believe this is so..I have no idea. Personally I think Iraq is a wonderful place to kill them. But then I am an evil ultra-extremist-radical-rightwing-neo/theo-con.

Depending on how we leave Iraq, this global war against radical Islamic terrorism will either wax or wane. But it will hardly end.

No 'wax or wane' on the part of the jihadist. . .only forward; further emboldened and empowered by a victory over the 'great satan'. . .

Critics of the present war can make the tactical argument that it is wiser to fight al-Qaida in Pakistan than in Iraq.

I have heard this argument myself; I would reply it's proper to fight them wherever they are. But that ignores the downside of destabilizing a country that possesses nuclear weapons, and that in turn highlights the difficulties we are likely to encounter facing radical Islam when it possesses them itself courtesy of the Iranians.

Similarities to the Cold War are striking. We will be a position of facing an aggressive, revolutionary movement with national support, sanctuary, and with a vigorous and growing foothold in the societies of our potential allies. We will be unable or unwilling to conduct an all-out war, and persistent internal critics of the West will happily undermine it in the pursuit of their own political objectives. All of this we see playing out today in Europe and in the United States. A Democratic administration over the next four or even eight (or longer) years will pretend that inaction is peace and leave it for the next generation to solve while systematically making it impossible to do so.

The long-term historical hope is not for the victory of a West that appears not to want one, but a defeat of a cumbersome religious oligarchy that cannot govern, through internal fissures and an inability to face technological progress that it is simultaneously unable to advance on its own. It took considerably more than a generation for that to happen to the Ottomans. A particularly sad but it seems to me likely legacy.

If in addition there is a similarity between Iraq and Vietnam it might be twofold - first, that domestically it will result in the accession to power of a self-absorbed, self-congratulatory Left whose signal political characteristic is fiddling while Rome burns, and second, that the sacrifices therein will serve to buy enough time for the internal contradictions within radical Islam to undo it. A West that will not fight will depend on those slender reeds or on nothing at all.

"...The war in Iraq did not create radical Islamists and their madrassas throughout the Middle East that today brainwash young radicals and pressure the region's monarchies, theocracies and autocracies to provide money for training and weaponry. All that radicalism had been going on for decades - as we saw during the quarter-century of terrorism that led up to 9/11. And rioting, assassination and death threats over artistic expression in Europe have nothing to do with Iraq..."

The enemy is the idea called islam! The only way an enemy has ever been truly defeated, is to bring that enemy face-to-face with extinction!

The civilized world can achieve that end today with a relatively minimal loss of human life. To do it correctly would require:
1)- The conventional bombing of all threats in the oil-producing regions of the Middle-East (Irans Nuclear Facilities, etc.) .
2)- The total destruction of Hizbollah, Hamas, and Fatah by conventional ground forces (Israel can do this one).
3)- Permanent removal of Mecca and Medina with Nuclear Weapons, and make sure that it's filmed and televised!
4)- Use North and South Waziristan as a nuclear-test-area until nobody wants to go there anymore.

We've been in the 'endless' war with islam for about 1400 years. If we, the civilized world, don't use our Military advantage soon, thereby minimizing human losses and suffering, islam will soon gain Nuclear Weapons, and they WILL use them. The losses will be incalcuable.

Right now, time is on our side, but time is growing short ............... FRegards

What the Dems don't realize is: If we aren't fighting the Muslims over there, then we'll be fighting them over HERE.

Americans may think of the Iraq war as too expensive but it will be much more expensive if we bug out.

Revisit comments BUMP!