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Friday, October 20, 2006
The Opening Of The Ranks
Two of the conservative Commentariat's best, Jonah Goldberg and Diana West, have begun to entertain the notion that Operation Iraqi Freedom was wrongly conceived.
The Iraq war was a mistake.I know, I know. But I've never said it before. And I don't enjoy saying it now. I'm sure that to the antiwar crowd this is too little, too late, and that's fine because I'm not joining their ranks anyway....
But truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq - at least not the way we did. I do think that Congress (including Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller and John Murtha) was right to vote for the war given what was known -- or what was believed to have been known -- in 2003. The claims from some former pro-war Dems that they were lied to strike me as nothing more than cowardly buck-passing.
As an Air Force pilot noted in an e-mail to me, he doesn't recall hearing the president define "victory" for Iraq or Afghanistan. Me neither. Terms like "security" and "stabilization" just aren't substitutes. Guided by the false god of democracy, blind to the zealotry of Islamic culture, we have locked onto a course with no rational endpoint. Even as we pursue "security," "stabilizing" the Shiite-dominated, sharia-guided Iraqi government -- and, thus, creating a natural Iranian (Shiite) ally -- makes zero strategic sense. But, see here, say supporters of the president's Iraq policy: If we don't secure and stabilize the Shiite-dominated, sharia-guided government in Iraq, that same government falls, America suffers defeat in jihadist eyes, and Shiite-Sunni war breaks out in full force.Well, which scenario is better for the US of A? I vote for civil war. It seems obvious when Shiite and Sunni jihadis -- and their Islamic world sponsors -- are busy slaughtering one another, they have much less time to plan their next attack on Americans, in the region or stateside. This isn't to say there's no role for American forces in the Middle East. But that role may be, as a marine captain home from Afghanistan and Iraq put it to me, far from booby-trapped Iraqi cities, perhaps in Kurdistan, where they can keep a lid on Iraq while preparing for the next stage of the war on jihad, against Iran and Syria. Assuming there is a next stage.
If these stalwarts, persons of sound judgment and unchallengeable ethics, are drifting from the fold, can a mass exodus be far away? More to the point, are they correct, and if so, what's to be done about it?
First, let's dispense with the inevitable "there were no WMDs!" canard. Yes, there most certainly were. At this time, more than 700 poison-gas missiles and artillery rounds, the majority of which bore traces of recognizable nerve agents, have already been discovered. More still were probably trucked into Syria or the southwestern republics of the former Soviet Union just before hostilities began. American forces also happened upon over 1200 kilograms of partially enriched uranium, which Saddam Hussein's regime had been forbidden to possess by the terms of the 1991 armistice. But America did not depose the Ba'athists because of an immediate nuclear, biological, or chemical threat; indeed, President Bush said so himself well before the invasion.
Nor did Saddam possess any right to rule Iraq by the standards of civilized nations. His regime was brutal by any standard; his oppressions slaughtered a minimum of 300,000 Iraqis and subjected the rest to privation and unremitting fear. He held mock elections in which only one candidate was allowed -- Saddam Hussein -- in which voting was compulsory, and in which he received every vote cast. He extended hospitality to well known terrorists, including one of the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer. His sons ranged freely around Baghdad, selecting young women each night for sessions in their customized "rape rooms." He maintained a "children's prison" and a variety of torture facilities. A number of his political opponents were killed by being fed into plastic shredders. If such a man can justly claim any degree of political authority, then the Allies were wrong to depose Adolf Hitler.
So it was not unjust -- to anyone -- that America deposed Saddam Hussein. Indeed, it was an act of perfect justice and towering mercy; we ought to have done it long before. If Goldberg and West are correct in adjudging the war a mistake, their reasons must lie elsewhere. They clearly do:
The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives. [Goldberg]
Even as we pursue "security," "stabilizing" the Shiite-dominated, sharia-guided Iraqi government -- and, thus, creating a natural Iranian (Shiite) ally -- makes zero strategic sense. [West]
But Goldberg's contention is a matter of opinion about acceptable costs, which would not be shared by everyone. West's assertion is that post-Ba'athist Iraq, if not riven by civil war, was foredoomed to fall into the anti-American, radical Islamic orbit. Both notions are open to dispute.
Perhaps we failed to foresee that religious and regional strife would bring the gains from Operation Iraqi Freedom to naught...but that proposition was debatable before the invasion and remains open to discussion today. Iraq is the least Islamically insane nation of the Middle East. Though the possibility of religious warfare was there from the beginning -- it's never completely absent when Muslims are around -- it required an influx of agitators from Iran to bring it to a rolling boil. As for the regional tensions, those were largely a product of the provincial origins of Saddam himself, plus the irrational distaste felt toward the Kurds by non-Kurdish Iraqis. It was reasonable to believe that those could be diffused by a popular regime that observes an evenhanded rule of law, once the Ba'athists were gone and Turkish meddling forcibly excluded.
Perhaps it won't work out. Perhaps all we have to look forward to is a drawn-out civil war, eventual American withdrawal from the country, and a new Islamicized Iraq that will move in Iran's orbit henceforward. Let's imagine it so. Had we perfect knowledge that such a future awaited any attempt to democratize Iraq, the right thing to do would still have been to invade, destroy the Ba'athist regime, drag Saddam away for trial on charges of mass murder, and sail for home before the smell of the cordite faded.
But the Bush Administration had no such knowledge. It had ample reasons to believe that Iraq could be made into a democratic beacon for the whole Middle East. Though the portents of the moment are poor, the effort is not yet definitively defeated.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was not a mistake. Our attempt at building a new Iraqi nation might yet prove to be. But that's far from saying that we ought to have known better than to try, and very far from saying that throwing up our hands and abandoning post-Ba'athist Iraq to the tender mercies of the Islamists and the Iranian and Syrian infiltrators is the best we can do today.
Comments
How thorough is this discussion without once referring to how our fifth columnists have been affecting events? And in the face of that, the serious inadequacy of administration response? These two defects are clearly consequential.
Early on the Left tried to invoke the specter of Vietnam. And then as the rules of engagement became clearer, it was as if the administration was acceding to the Left’s wishes. Morale boost for our adversaries, demoralizer for our men and public.
What’s to be done about this Rummy becomes Rumsfeld Déjà vu I’ve fretted over so many times? Had Sadr been knocked out long ago, the Iranians would not now be so bold.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 10/20/2006 at 08:17 PMThat should read: Rummy becomes McNamara déjà vu.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 10/20/2006 at 08:30 PMI don’t know where the HELL anybody gets off saying that the White House did or did not anticipate the current situation on the ground. I’ve never seen any evidence of that assertion.
And the more dilatory student of history—especially military history—would at least briefly entertain the notion that a situation analogous to that with the Werewolves in Germany post WWII might obtain. Also, the most cursory glance at the behavior of pan-Arabists since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire would lead one to expect a guerilla conflict in the inevitable power vacuum that would follow the fall of a dictator.
Are we saying that nobody in the national command structure had a clue this would happen? You mean to tell me that Andy Sullivan’s “flypaper theory” was a figment of his admittedly fevered imagination? That would seem to me to be PREDICATED on the understanding that there were terrorists in Iraq and that they would fight a bitter-end conflict.
Gib mir einen gebrech.
I have trouble coming to grips with the idea that Jonah in particular could be so dense.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 10/21/2006 at 12:10 AMOur nations first offensive drive in WWII, was a complete failure, remember Northern Africa?
Our first battles at sea in the Pacific, were failures because of poor planning.
Then there was the Tet offensive 1968, Vietnam. That battle which the enemy started ended with complete American victory, yes an overwhelming victory for the American forces in Vietnam, it really was, but the mean spirited media.....aka Walter Cronkite.....showed only the killed and wounded of our side, and neglected to tell the nation, that although it did not come cheaply, we won that battle. For every wonderful warrior our nation lost, 5 or more Viet Cong were killed. The enemy fled the battlefields without their fallen, never again to mount an offensive battle in Vietnam. We let the media get to us, and we left, we were not driven out, we were betrayed by the pointy headed liberals and socialist from Berkeley California, Hollywood and New York City. Most of the media brain washed Americans today think the Tet offensive was a terrible defeat for us. It wasn’t, it was an overwhelming victory, but we never fought again, yes we quit fighting, WE CUT AND RAN
At anytime in the heat of that war, we could have completely destroyed the enemy, if we had of been at war. The same un-American trash is talking today about how we can’t win.....We could rid the world of the oil maggots of the middle east in about one hour, and we may have to. We will live in peace even if we have to rid the world of the scum of islam, who would still be poor camel jockeys if the Western Civilizations had not have discovered oil under their God forsaken lands.
I don’t listen to them, haven’t for many years now.
There will be a winner in the war against radical islam.....
It matters not what the mean spirited media says, they are losing power daily.....as we live and breathe.....most Americans know Ted Turner hates America, and his buddies Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and Dan Rather hate America too. To me, they are not even Americans anymore, and I can’t wait to kick their sorry behinds out of this wonderful nation.
They are thinking they have us pushed into a corner, and they will win.....ah...excuse me coward, you ain’t gonna win while I am still breathing.
I will not live at peace in a Nancy Pelosi America; will not accept gay marriage, or the filth of the educators, moviemakers or DNC.
America is worth fighting for, to keep it America.Let’s concentrate on ridding this wonderful nation of traitors, and other parasites, living large in a land they won’t defend in word or deed….Be gone traitors, there is not space enough for you . Let’s rid this wonderful nation of all un-American.
Sorry, got carried away, but I’m right, and if we don’t get tough on the haters of America, there will be no America for our grandchildren.
What say you, is America worth fighting for?
Posted by webloafer on 10/22/2006 at 12:09 AM
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