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Fort Campbell
Vice Admiral
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 896
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 Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 1:50 pm Post subject: A Canadian who gets it |
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Avery good op/ed piece here.
Ottawa Citizen Article:
[url]http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=bd9b2308-29a4-4391-8e0c-b08f4b4dbbce"[/url]
| Quote: | U.S. is about to run from Iraq, letting evil prevail
Regardless of its final composition, and regardless of other pressing issues or its mandate, the leading item of business for the new U.S. Congress will be Iraq.
It didn't matter who won -- the fix was already in. Look at the Baker-Hamilton commission, which the outgoing Congress had already appointed to find a way out of Iraq -- a bipartisan commission representing the foreign-policy opponents of President George W. Bush in the Republican and Democratic parties. James Baker, secretary of state under Mr. Bush's father, was the man who in 1989 secured an American exit from Lebanon by effectively surrendering the country to Syria. Lee Hamilton, former Democrat chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, joined him in stacking the commission's study groups with men and women representing the pre-9/11 foreign-policy consensus, which could be summarized in the phrase "stability through disengagement." On the Baker-Hamilton plan, Congress will take the war in Iraq out of Mr. Bush's hands, as Congress took the Vietnam War out of Nixon's. Iraq will then be delivered to Iran's ayatollahs.
We can also expect Nancy Pelosi's Democrats in the new Congress to do everything in their power to recreate the Watergate environment, both for their own electoral prospects in 2008 and to make an example of the lame duck in the White House. The mainstream media will oblige with 24/7 coverage of whatever they allege. In deposing the regime of Saddam Hussein -- now sentenced to hang with the enthusiastic approval of the overwhelming majority of his countrymen, though Iraq itself is first sentenced to endure a ludicrous appeals process -- the United States accomplished something well within its military means. But in trying to build a secular democracy, the Americans tried something they had not the stomach for. From the outset, they imposed on themselves restrictions that made the fight unwinnable.
As Fouad Ajami argues in his new book, The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, not even the functionaries of his regime suffered heavy casualties when Saddam fell. The "Sunni Triangle" -- that patch of the country that had profitably ruled the oil-bearing remainder through Saddam's terror, in which he murdered Shia, Kurd and unco-operative fellow-Sunni by the hundred thousand to maintain his power -- capitulated quickly. How different from the devastation that persuaded Germans, and then Japanese, at the end of the Second World War, to accept U.S.-imposed democracy. For the Sunnis of Iraq, terrorist violence was rewarded by the collapse of American will.
Moreover, Germans and Japanese were utterly alone in their smashed countries. They did not have what the Sunnis of Iraq have had. A huge Sunni Arab world encourages them to resist the Western "crusaders." There were no neighbours such as Iran and Syria, which are destabilizing Iraq by feeding weapons and international jihadis into the country. The American and British refusal to make Iran and Syria pay heavily for their meddling was noted and exploited by the enemy.
To my mind, the Turkish contribution to the disaster, which started with denying the U.S. land access to Iraq from the north, is underestimated. More feet on the ground in Baghdad and to its north in the first weeks of occupation could have made a long-term difference. The Turks further precluded the possibility of dealing separately with the Kurds. It was in the occupiers', as well as the Kurdish interest, to detach self-governable Iraqi Kurdistan; indeed to split Sunni from Shia territories, and govern them differently.
If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of the West is lost. The Americans will have cut and run after enduring less than one-20th of the casualties suffered in Vietnam; and from a battle more consequential, against an enemy that is rising, instead of an enemy in decline.
It was Congress that decided to sink free South Vietnam, by cutting off supplies even of rifle ammunition after the peace treaty signed by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973. It was Congress that ordered the U.S. bombing halted that could have made mincemeat of the regular North Vietnamese army marching along the South's main highways in 1974. The U.S. never lost the war militarily, and could easily have won it without self-imposed restraints. But the will to fight evaporated.
Why? For the same reason then as now. The "alternative America," ruling from its ivory towers in academia, the media and the entertainment industry, could not understand why anyone should die for any cause at all; could not distinguish between freedom and tyranny and instinctively sided with any enemy of what they fancifully imagined to be "American imperialism." Once again, evil is prevailing. |
David Warren's column appears Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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What a devastating indictment of those who turned this congress (small c) over to the defeatists. Simply stunning, and going out to everyone on my mailing list.
The only things standing between us and the spectre of another disgraceful Vietnam debacle...George W. Bush and a MASSIVE mobilization of voices for victory in Iraq. My God I hope he and we are up to the task but the signs are ominous.
Thanks for the post |
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Jerald L. Parsoneault
Lt.Jg.
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Posts: 144
Location: Sacramento
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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Ominus to me is the parallel between what just happened here and what happened in Spain -- trains bombed, voted in doves and pulled out of Iraq.
Nalt |
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Anker-Klanker
Admiral
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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That was an excellent article, but it contains one near-Freudian slip that deserves comment:
| Quote: | | If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of the West is lost. The Americans will have cut and run... |
I know that the author is totally on "our" side, but describing America as the totality of "the West" is very revealing, and unfortunately is largely true. I am as befuddled by the lack of support from Europe, Canada, etc. as I am by the results of the recent election. |
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