Left loses right along with terrorists
Mark McGilvray
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120205.html
December 02, 2005
A Moral War
The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Almost everything that is now written about Iraq rings not quite
right: It was a "blunder"; there should have been far more troops there; the
country must be trisected; we must abide by a timetable and leave regardless
of events on the ground; Iraq will soon devolve into either an Islamic
republic or another dictatorship; the U.S. military is enervated and nearly
ruined; and so on.
In fact, precisely because we have killed thousands of terrorists,
trained an army, and ensured a political process, it is possible to do what
was intended from the very beginning: lessen the footprint of American
troops in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
Save for a few courageous Democrats, like Senator Joe Lieberman, who
look at things empirically rather than ideologically, and some stalwart
Republicans, most politicians and public intellectuals have long bailed on
the enterprise.
This is now what comprises statesmanship: Some renounce their earlier
support for the war. Others, less imaginative, in Clintonian (his and hers)
fashion, take credit for backing the miraculous victory of spring 2003, but
in hindsight, of course, blame the bloody peace on Bush. Or, better yet,
they praise Congressman Murtha to the skies, but under no circumstances go
on record urging the military to follow his advice.
How strange that journalists pontificate post facto about all the
mistakes that they think have been made, nevertheless conceding that here we
are on the verge of a third and final successful election. No mention, of
course, is ever made about the current sorry state of journalistic ethics
and incompetence (cf. Jayson Blair, Judy Miller, Michael Isikoff, Bob
Woodward, Eason Jordan). A group of professionals, after all, who cannot
even be professional in their own sphere, surely have no credibility in
lecturing the U.S. military about what they think went wrong in Iraq.
Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes,
but only one critical lapse - and it is not the Herculean effort to
establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less
than three years after removing Saddam Hussein. The administration's lapse,
rather, has come in its failure to present the entire war effort in its
proper moral context.
We took no oil - the price in fact skyrocketed after we invaded Iraq.
We did not do Israel's bidding; in fact, it left Gaza after we went into
Iraq and elections followed on the West Bank. We did not want perpetual
hegemony - in fact, we got out of Saudi Arabia, used the minimum amount of
troops possible, and will leave Iraq anytime its consensual government so
decrees. And we did not expropriate Arab resources, but, in fact, poured
billions of dollars into Iraq to jumpstart its new consensual government in
the greatest foreign aid infusion of the age.
In short, every day the American people should have been reminded of,
and congratulated on, their country's singular idealism, its tireless effort
to reject the cynical realism of the past, and its near lone effort to make
terrible sacrifices to offer the dispossessed Shia and Kurds something
better than the exploitation and near genocide of the past - and how all
that alone will enhance the long-term security of the United States.
That goal was what the U.S. military ended up so brilliantly fighting
for - and what the American public rarely heard. The moral onus should have
always been on the critics of the war. They should have been forced to
explain why it was wrong to remove a fascist mass murderer, why it was wrong
to stay rather than letting the country sink into Lebanon-like chaos, and
why it was wrong not to abandon brave women, Kurds, and Shia who only wished
for the chance of freedom.
Alas, that message we rarely heard until only recently, and the result
has energized amoral leftists, who now pose as moralists by either
misrepresenting the cause of the war, undermining the effort of soldiers in
the field, or patronizing Iraqis as not yet civilized enough for their own
consensual government.
We can draw down our troops not because of political pressures but
because of events on the ground. First, the Iraqi military is improving -
not eroding or deserting. The canard of only "one battle-ready brigade"
could just as well apply to any of the Coalition forces. After all, what
brigade in the world is the equal of the U.S. military - or could go into
the heart of Fallujah house-to-house? The French? The Russians? The Germans?
In truth, the Iraqi military is proving good enough to hold ground and soon
to take it alongside our own troops.
Despite past calls here to postpone elections, and threats of mass
murder there for those who participated in them, they continue on schedule.
And the third and last vote is the most important, since it will put a human
face on the elected government - and the onus on it to officially sanction
U.S. help and monetary aid or refuse it.
Saddam's trial will remind the world of his butchery. Despite all the
ankle-biting by human-rights groups about proper jurisprudence, the Iraqis
will try him and convict him much more quickly than the Europeans will do
the same to Milosevic (not to mention the other killers still loose like
Gen. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic), posing the question: What is the real
morality - trying a mass murderer and having him pay for his crimes, or
engaging in legal niceties for years while the ghosts of his victims cry for
justice?
More importantly, we can also calibrate our progress by examining the
perceived self-interest of the various players, here and abroad.
The Sunnis - no oil, a minority population, increasing disgust with
Zarqawi, a shameful past under Saddam - will participate in the December
elections in large numbers. They now have no choice other than either to be
perpetual renegades and terrorists inside their own country or to gain world
respect by turning to democracy. The election train is leaving in December
and this time they won't be left at the station.
Zarqawi and the radical Islamicists are slowly being squeezed as only
a war at their doorstep could accomplish. Critics of Iraq should ask if we
were not fighting Zarqawi in Iraq, where exactly would we be fighting
Islamic fascists - or would the war against terror be declared over, won,
lost, dormant, or ongoing, with the U.S. simply playing defense?
Instead, what Iraq did is ensure that al Qaeda's Sunni support is
being coopted by democracy. Jordan, the terrorists' old ace in the hole that
could always put a cosmetic face on its stealthy support for radicals, has
essentially turned on Zarqawi and with him al Qaeda. Syria is under virtual
siege and its border sanctuary now a killing zone. Bin Laden can offer very
little solace from his cave. And somehow Islamists have alienated the United
States, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Japan, and increasingly Middle
East democracies like those in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq, and reform
movements in Lebanon and Jordan.
Decision day is coming when Zarqawi's bombers will have to choose
either to die, or, like a Nathan Bedford Forrest ("I'm a goin' home"), quit
to join the reform-seeking majority. That progress was accomplished only by
the war in Iraq, and without it we would be back to playing a waiting game
for another 9/11, while an autocratic Middle East went on quietly helping
terrorists without consequences, either afraid of Saddam or secretly
enjoying his chauvinist defiance.
Kurds and Shiites support us for obvious reasons - no other government
on the planet would risk its sons and daughters to give them the right of
one man/one vote. They may talk the necessary talk about infidels, but they
know we will leave anytime they so vote. After the December election, expect
them - and perhaps the Sunnis as well - quietly to ask us to stay to see
things through.
Europe is quiet now. Madrid, London, Paris, and Amsterdam have taught
Europeans that it is not George Bush but Islamic fascism that threatens
their very existence. Worse still, they rightly fear they have lost the good
will of the United States that so generously subsidized their defense - an
entitlement perhaps to be sneered at during the post-Cold War "end of
history," but not in a new global war against Islamic terrorists keen to
acquire deadly weapons.
Our military realizes that it can trump its brilliant victories in
removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein by birthing democracy in Iraq - or
risk losing that impressive reputation by having a new Lebanon blow up in
its face. China, Japan, India, Russia, Korea, Iran, and other key countries
are all watching Iraq - ready to calibrate American deterrence by the
efficacy of the U.S. military in the Sunni Triangle. Our armed forces have
already accomplished what the British and the Soviets could never do in
Afghanistan; what the Russians failed to accomplish in Chechnya; and what we
came so close to finishing in Vietnam. They won't falter now when they are
so close to winning an almost impossibly difficult war, one that will be
recognized by friends and enemies as beyond the capability of any other
military in the world.
The Left now risks losing its self-proclaimed moral appeal. It had
trashed the efforts in Iraq for months on end, demanded a withdrawal - only
recently to learn from polls that an unhappy public may also be unhappy with
it for advocating fleeing while American soldiers are in harm's way. Another
successful election, polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly wishing us to stay
on, visits by elected Iraqi officials asking continued help, and a
decreasing American footprint will gradually erode the appeal of the antiwar
protests - especially as triangulating public intellectuals and pundits
begin to quiet down, fathoming that the United States may win after all.
The administration realizes that as long as it stays the course and
our military remains confident we can win, we will - despite defections in
the Congress, venom in the press, and cyclical lows in the polls. In
practical political terms, only the administration, not the Congress or the
courts, can choose to cease our efforts in Iraq. Rightly or wrongly, the
Bush administration will be judged on Iraq: If we lose, the president will
be seen as a tragic LBJ-like figure who squandered his initial grassroots
support in a foreign quagmire; if we win, he will be remembered, in spirit,
as something akin to a Harry Truman, and, in deed, an FDR who won a critical
war against impossible odds, and restored the security of the United States.
George Bush may well go down in history as a less-effective leader
than his father or Bill Clinton; but unlike either, he may also have a real
chance to be remembered in that select class of rare presidents whom history
records as having saved this country at a time of national peril and in the
face of unprecedented criticism. Bush's domestic agenda hinges on Iraq: If
he withdraws now, his proposals on taxes, social security, deficit
reduction, education, and immigration are dead. If he sees the Iraq project
through, these now-iffy initiatives will piggyback on the groundswell of
popular thanks he will receive for reforming the Middle East.
Strangely, I doubt whether very many would agree with much of anything
stated above - at least for now. But if the administration can emphasize the
moral nature of this war, and the military can continue its
underappreciated, but mostly successful efforts to defeat the enemy and give
the Iraqis a few more months of breathing space, who knows what the current
opportunists and pessimists will say by summer.Will they say that they in
fact were always sorta, kinda, really for removing Saddam and even staying
on to see democracy work in Iraq?
©2005 Victor Davis Hanson
Red Sanders
"Mark McGilvray" <mcgi...@surewest.net> wrote in message
news:11p10ab...@corp.supernews.com...
Mark McGilvray
"Red Sanders" <rsan...@sss.com> wrote in message
news:5r%jf.28717$Zv5....@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
Roger
>
> http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120205.html
>
>
>
> December 02, 2005
> A Moral War
> The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.
> by Victor Davis Hanson
From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068684/
Last Fall, the vice president read “An Autumn of War” by Victor Davis
Hanson, a classicist who lives on a farm in California. In his book, a
collection of columns published online by National Review in the weeks after
9-11, Hanson writes that war is the natural state of mankind. Great leaders
understand this, according to Hanson. They are not fooled by utopian visions
about world peace; they face evil and deal with it. Cheney told his aides
that Hanson’s book reflected his philosophy.
Before Christmas, Hanson was invited to dine with Cheney and talk to his
aides, who also read his book. Cheney was his usual taciturn self, says
Hanson, but his questions seemed to indicate that he was interested in
statesmen who became warriors, who realized, reluctantly but surely, that
military force was unavoidable and necessary. He also seemed intrigued by
leaders who were vilified in their own time for being brutal—like General
Sherman on his march through Georgia—but whom historians later vindicated
for acting audaciously, and decisively.
Roger
news:5r%jf.28717$Zv5....@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
And befitting Cheney's "favorite historian."
Mark McGilvray
"Roger" <rog...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9Ngkf.26854$D13....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> "Mark McGilvray" <mcgi...@surewest.net> wrote in message
> news:11p10ab...@corp.supernews.com...
>> Achtung, Moonbats!
>>
>> http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120205.html
>>
>>
>>
>> December 02, 2005
>> A Moral War
>> The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.
>> by Victor Davis Hanson
>
> From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068684/
This is just above an Indymedia link in credibility.
>
> Last Fall, the vice president read "An Autumn of War" by Victor Davis
> Hanson, a classicist who lives on a farm in California. In his book, a
> collection of columns published online by National Review in the weeks
> after 9-11, Hanson writes that war is the natural state of mankind. Great
> leaders understand this, according to Hanson. They are not fooled by
> utopian visions about world peace; they face evil and deal with it. Cheney
> told his aides that Hanson's book reflected his philosophy.
WAR! WAR! I must have WAR! - attributed to Dick Cheney
>
> Before Christmas, Hanson was invited to dine with Cheney and talk to his
> aides, who also read his book. Cheney was his usual taciturn self, says
> Hanson, but his questions seemed to indicate that he was interested in
> statesmen who became warriors, who realized, reluctantly but surely, that
> military force was unavoidable and necessary. He also seemed intrigued by
> leaders who were vilified in their own time for being brutal-like General
> Sherman on his march through Georgia-but whom historians later vindicated
> for acting audaciously, and decisively.
>
The greatest of these in the 20'th century is Winston Churchill. Before I
spend any more time replying to you, Roger, is America at war or not? A
simple yess, or no, please.
>
snipped