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Iraq - The guerilla war since 2003

Since April 2003, the forces of state tyranny and religious oppression have fought a sporadic violent guerilla campaign to try to stop freedom and democracy coming to Iraq. The moral responsibility for all deaths since the war lies with the fascist resistance for resisting the introduction of democracy.

As Bruce Thornton says, Bush and Blair should not feel guilty about trying to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq. If it fails, it will be the fault of the Iraqi resistance and its allies, not of anybody who has good intentions. Thornton (not without sadness) criticises the idea that people are logical and will do what is in their own interest: "every page of history proves that people are much more than machines or clever chimps. Humans have at their heart a mystery that defies predictive science: the freedom to choose even what makes them miserable simply because they can choose. It is our quirky unpredictability, our conflicting passions, our contradictory goods, and our willful desire to choose freely that sends all the experts' schemes to the devil. Just look at Iraq for all the evidence you need. The bloody disorder there is not a consequence of Bush's ineptitude or some better plan that wasn't tried. Ultimately, the mess in Iraq reflects the disordered souls of a critical mass of Iraqis who prefer allegiance to tribal loyalties or a dysfunctional faith to freedom and security."

All is not lost yet. This vicious and disgusting minority need not win. But if they do, blame them, not anyone else. Bush and Blair are, and remain, innocent.

After liberation

• Problems with the western media

• Bad news after Iraq

• The killing of Uday and Qusay, July 2003

• The capture of Saddam, Dec 2003

• Optimism after liberation
  • Mark Steyn a few months on - "The barest minimum victory has already been won: Saddam is gone, his entire leadership is dead or in US custody, his sons have been killed, stuffed, mounted and embalmed .... Even if America handed over to the UN now, Iraq's next dictator would come to power in the shadow of the cautionary tale of his predecessor: catch our eye and you're dead." - Of course, America wants more than that for Iraq, as he then discusses. But something huge has already been achieved.
  • Iraqis challenge "Arabism" by Thomas Friedman - Free Iraqis disgusted with the Arab countries that betrayed them (by opposing the war and supporting Saddam's forces). - ".. there is a dramatic gulf now between Iraqis and a lot of other Arabs. Young people here want to move on. In 10 years, this will be a very different place. If I can be a part of it, it will be like Hong Kong or Korea - but with an Iraqi face."
  • "Bush Good, Saddam Bad!" by John R. Guardiano
    • "we were treated as liberating heroes when we arrived four months ago"
    • "The "Arab Street" I've meet in Iraq loves - that's not too strong of a word - America and is deeply grateful for our presence."
    • "Iraqis routinely ask me to "thank Mr. Bush for freeing us of Saddam""
    • "The Iraqis know who their foes are too. Two Iraqi children once spontaneously shouted to me, "France, Chirac!" while giving the thumbs-down sign and shaking their heads disapprovingly. The children quickly smiled and shouted "Bush!" while punching the sky."
  • The Iraq Effect by Amir Taheri

Refugees

• Sweet Liberty by Amir Taheri, March 19, 2004 - 1 year after liberation, 1.2 million Iraqi refugees have come home.
  • 1.2 million people coming home! The left was wrong again.
  • "It is a pity, not to say a shame, that, for reasons of domestic Western political rivalries, what has been a spectacular success in liberating a martyred nation from one of the worst tyrannies of recent history is portrayed as a failure."

• Afghan refugees go home too.

• UN report The State of the World's Refugees 2006 - The number of refugees in the world has fallen to its lowest level in 25 years.

• In 2003-4, vast numbers of Iraqi refugees went home after liberation. But in 2005-6, everything turned around again. Now vast numbers of refugees are fleeing from the Iraqi "resistance" and the sectarian death squads, who have destroyed the dreams of the returning refugees.
  • Iraqi refugees flee the "resistance" and the sectarian death squads.
  • UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates in 2006 that 1.6 million Iraqis have now fled the country from the "resistance" and the death squads, most apparently in the last year or so.
  • The hunted: Iraq's forgotten refugees, The Sunday Times, January 28, 2007 - Some estimates say 4 million Iraqis have now left the country.

• Again, no one is fleeing the US troops. The moral responsibility for all these refugees lies with the vile Iraqi "resistance" and the sectarian death squads. No one was leaving the country until the Iraqi "resistance" and the sectarian death squads started their violence.

The "anti-war" demos carry on (after the liberation of Iraq)

• Don't you know your left from your right?, Nick Cohen, January 21, 2007 - OK, so the left was against the war, but: "I assumed that once the war was over they would back Iraqis trying to build a democracy, while continuing to pursue Bush and Blair to their graves for what they had done. I waited for a majority of the liberal left to offer qualified support for a new Iraq, and I kept on waiting, because it never happened"

• Peace and non-violence

The "anti-war" demos of Nov 2003

• The "anti-war" demos of late 2003 after the liberation of Iraq
• "This was not so much a demonstration as a wave of human spam"
• Why this protest is deeply shameful by David Frum
  • ".. many thousands of British people intend to converge on central London to protest against the overthrow of one of the most cruel and murderous dictators of the 20th century"
  • ".. though I would not quite endorse the verdict of the taxi driver with the poppy stuck in his dashboard who dropped me off at the demos ("Not many of them traitors out tonight, I see"), he at least saw something that they, with all their apparently abundant education could not"

• An Iraqi blogger on the demos - "These London demonstrations, I know too well, Oh! Youth, and the Pint of Bitter later in the nearest Pub. All you peace lovers and humanitarians of trendy London town, spare a thought or two for the coalition soldier out there in the dark and wilderness guarding our hospitals, primary schools and orphanages from the bombers and assassins"
• Another Iraqi blogger responds (Remember that Iraqi bloggers could not comment on the Feb 2003 marches, since they were living under Saddam's rule. Now at last they are free to speak.) - "I was ashamed and depressed watching those brainwashed and deluded demonstrators in London carrying signs calling for abandoning Iraq and for an end to aggression. ... I'm sure Saddam is proud of you and clapping his hands in glee watching from whatever gutter he is hiding in right now. ... I can only say SHAME on you."

The Stop the War Coalition (UK)

• The tyranny-lovers, the Stop the War Coalition
• The Stop the War Coalition, article by Amir Taheri - "Those who can never win elections, always take to the streets."
• Vice Presidents of the Stop the War Coalition are George Galloway and Tariq Ali, both of whom openly support the fascist Iraq "resistance".
• The chair of the Stop the War Coalition openly supports the genocidal slave-state of North Korea, which has killed 4 million people, and, in the 21st century, keeps hundreds of thousands of men, women and little children in concentration camps. Also here.

• The Socialist Workers' Party, leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, openly supports the killing of US troops and brave Iraqi democrats by the Saddam butchers and Islamofascists. Also here and here and here and here.
• As has been said many times, people like this aren't anti-war. They're pro-the other side. The SWP are not "anti-war". They are pro-Saddam. Why is that so hard to understand?

• The Stop the War Coalition play host to and are allied with the gay-hating, atheist-hating, medieval thug Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers are violent. Again, it must be said, the Stop the War Coalition are not anti-war. They are not anti-violence. Otherwise they would not hang out with violent people.
• Their motivations are not pacifism. Their motivations are control of American power, and the desire to see the West defeated and its enemies triumphant.

• Stop The War Coalition anti-Israel march, Aug 2006
  • This march contained banners openly supporting the mass-murdering terror group Hizbollah and the mass-murdering dictator Ayatollah Khomeini. Both of these are extremely violent people. Again and again, it must be said, the Stop The War Coalition is not "anti-war". Otherwise it would not tolerate banners in support of violent groups like these in its marches.
  • Bizarrely, this "peace" march contains banners with a fist holding an AK-47, and no one seems to think that is strange.

• Stop The War Coalition anti-Blair march, Sept 2006
  • This march contained open support for the violent group Hizbollah and open support for the violent group Hamas. Anti-war, my foot. Hypocrites.
  • More pictures from the loony left site Lenin's Tomb. Again, it must be said, if Hezbollah flag wavers and the extremist Muslim Association of Britain don't like Blair, then he must be doing something right.

  • Iranian Reza Moradi stages counter-protest during loony left-winger Tony Benn's speech. Reza Moradi is stupidly anti-Israel and anti-American, but at least he is anti-Iranian regime and anti-Islamist. He's a man with half a clue. Hopefully he'll get a full clue eventually.
  • Another counter-protester, Shiva Mahbobi, says: "Listen. We are tortured by the Iranian regime, and the flags of Islamic regime of Iran is right there. ... How do you feel if the Hitler's banner is there?" The arguments descend into an open demonstration by young Islamist thugs in support of Iran. What on earth are these people doing in Britain?
  • Shiva Mahbobi says she was tortured by the Iranian regime, and yet the thugs shout "Liar! Liar!"

Steven Vincent

• Baghdad's New Anti-Americans, by Steven Vincent, February 18, 2004 - "Human shield" idiots and other anti-American creeps still hanging round Baghdad whining about America, months after they lost the war.

• Steven Vincent (and search)
  • Steven Vincent was murdered in southern Iraq, apparently by Shiite Islamists, in 2005.
  • His wife replies to Juan Cole on his death.
  • Steven Vincent on Juan Cole: "you might want to review your own site and how well it reflects love and concern for the Iraqi people. After all, on "Informed Comment," pro-liberation Iraqi bloggers are accused of being CIA agents, the elections are practically dismissed as window-dressing and every terrorist - no, I mean guerrilla, as Cole would have it - attack is given marquis billing, as if their psychopathic bloodlust discredits the liberation of 26 million people. ... Well, I thank Cole for revealing his gut-level concern for the Iraqi people ... My question to the Professor is, which Iraqi people - the fascist thugs he calls the "resistance," or the police, National Guardsmen, politicians, everyday people and eight million voters who comprise the true Iraqi "resistance?""
  • his columns
  • his last columns

The "anti-war" demos of Mar 2005

• The "anti-war" marches contain flags of the violent killers of innocents Hamas, and banners calling for "Victory to the Iraqi resistance!" - another violent group of killers of women and children.
• This is why I call them "anti-war" marches, in inverted commas. If they were really anti-war marches, they would not allow these people in.

• Pests in freedom's way (also here) by Amir Taheri, March 15, 2005:
  • "That remnants of the totalitarian Left and various brands of fascism should march to condemn the liberation of Iraq is no surprise. What is surprising is that some mainstream groups, such as the British Liberal-Democrat Party and even some former members of Tony Blair's Labour Government, should join these marches of shame."
  • "The Lib-Dems at their spring conference last week found enough time to reiterate their shameful opposition to the liberation of Iraq at some length. But they had no time to take note of what looks like a historic turning point in favour of democracy in the Middle East."
  • I love it. This really is a low moment in Liberal Democrat history - a period that they will, once they wake up, be ashamed of forever.

• 2 Years - The Iraqi blogger Husayn Uthman replies to the "anti-war" marchers:
  • "So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot. To many outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today, this was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. ... Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I don't care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had."
  • "Before March 20, 2003, we were in a dungeon. We did not see the light. Saddam Hussain was crushing Iraq's spirit slowly, we longed for his end, but knew we could not challenge him, or his diabolical seed who would no doubt follow him and continue his generation of hell on Earth. Since then, we now have hope. Hope is not a tangible thing, but it is something, it is more than being blinded by darkness, by being stuck in a mental pit without any future. Hope has been the greatest product of the last two years. ... We are not going to surrender. For all that the two years have brought, the greatest thing they have given us is a future, and a view of the finish line. Iraqis see the finish line, the finish line of freedom and democracy and a functioning nation. We can smell it, taste it, and like a sprinter, one who has broken his legs, but who has a heart full of passion, we will crawl there no matter what the cost."
  • "We have been brought from darkness to light. And not only has the future been made better for Iraq, but the martyrs of our nation, their blood is watering the roots of democracy across the world. We are watching our neighbors come closer to the light, and this only pushes us more, and makes us stronger in our burning desire to reach the finish line, to realize the dream that our people have had for so long."

• Responses to the 2 Year Anniversary - He gets some abuse from "anti-war" freaks in the West for his post. He nails them down perfectly: "it is in a way a rude awakening to me of the attitudes that some people in the West hold. Perhaps I was a bit naive in the past, I thought these were fringe ideas, but I see that you in the West have people similar to the self-defeating terrorists who infest our nation. If the US or Europe were in a similar situation that Iraq is in, then these people would surely be the ones blowing up innocents so that your nation would be stopped from progress."

The Iraqi "resistance" (separate page)

How to lose in Iraq - "Go home"

The left wants Iraq to be Vietnam.

• Withdrawing the troops early from Vietnam (while the enemy was undefeated) was an utter disaster - for Vietnam. Communist democide raged across Vietnam and Cambodia afterward. Millions of innocents were starved, tortured and killed by the communists. Millions more fled. Vietnam still lives under communist tyranny today.
• The "anti-war" movement destroyed Vietnam, and far from being ashamed of it, they are proud of it, and they want to do the same thing to Iraq. They want to abandon Iraq to the jihadis and the Baathists and civil war. All they care about is that no white people are involved.

• Someone submits the above as a "comment" supposedly from me to an interview with Noam Chomsky, Radio Netherlands, Amsterdam, 18 December 2005. Just to note that I made the comment, but I didn't submit it to the Chomsky interview. I don't mind really. It's just a bit strange.
  • By the way, in his response Chomsky claims that Iraqis want the coalition forces to leave. This is not true. Opinion polls show majority support (e.g. 66 percent in Dec 2005) for the coalition staying a bit longer.
  • Chomsky claims that the coalition, which has just delivered Iraq's first election ever, is "fighting tooth and nail to prevent democracy and sovereignty in Iraq".

• I debate this with some lefties at In Fact, Ah (see comments), Dec 2005.
• The In Fact, Ah lefties only seem to care about when the troops leave. Actually winning seems to be of no interest to them. I say:
  • "My position is the same as most Iraqis. I want Zarqawi defeated and democracy established, and Iran and Syria deterred. When precisely the troops leave is not an important question. The other issues are the really important issues. For you, getting troops out now seems to be the only issue. I assume you are motivated mainly by the desire to see Bush humiliated and America fail. I in contrast am motivated by the future of Iraq and the region. You more or less sum up why I cannot take left-wingers seriously on foreign policy."
• They are obsessed with an event (troops leaving) that may not happen for decades. I say:
  • "If you're asking: When a democratically elected government asks the coalition to leave, should they leave? my answer would be: Yes, they should. You could be waiting a while, though. It's easy in an opinion poll to say the coalition should leave in 3 months. When the 3 months are up, though, it's harder to say they should leave now. And it's even harder to actually vote for them to leave now. Germany and South Korea have still, decades after their liberation, not asked America to leave, even though they have been free to demand this for decades. Why not? Because they are not stupid. I suspect that as long as Iran and Syria remain terror states, no Iraqi government will ask the US to leave. And the people may grumble, because it hurts their pride, but will not do anything serious about it - such as voting for a government that will ask the US to leave. Why? Because Iraqis aren't stupid."
• They claim (as Chomsky does) that Iraqis want the coalition to leave. But they (like Chomsky) provide no evidence for this, and simply descend into insult when asked to provide evidence. If you know of any evidence for this, tell me here.

• Got one, I think. There was a poll in Apr 2004 where 57 percent said the allied troops should leave immediately (next few months). Only 3 percent of Kurds agreed, but solid majorities of Shia and Sunni. So two questions arise:
  1. Why does this conflict with other, more recent polls?
  2. Why didn't the Iraqis actually vote for parties demanding immediate withdrawal in the Iraqi election, Jan 2005? They were free to. Why didn't they?

The civil war (2006 onwards) - Can we no longer rely on the Iraqi people?

But then the hate-filled Sunni jihadi fighters managed successfully, after much deliberate bloodletting, to ignite a Sunni-Shia civil war in 2006, and Iraqis' opinions began to harden. Apart from the Kurds, who remain model citizens, the other Iraqis are retreating into tribal bunkers, and more and more of them now have the kind of appalling opinions you associate with the Palestinians or other Arabs. For the first time, a majority of the Iraqi people are beginning to send out a message that the world should give up on them, that they do not deserve a decent society. The tens of thousands of heroes in the Iraqi security forces who are fighting and dying for a free Iraq are now part of a large minority, but for the first time maybe no longer the majority.

• Poll of Iraqis, Mar 2007:
  • 51 per cent support attacks on coalition forces. This contradicts other (but earlier) polls.
  • Bizarrely, only 35 per cent said foreign forces should withdraw from Iraq. 63 per cent wanted the coalition to stay until security was restored. So they support attacks on the coalition, but want the coalition to stay to help them. Can anyone explain this? Is this all the honour-shame culture again?
  • When asked what government they want, 43 per cent support democracy. 34 per cent favour the return of a strongman to wield power. 22 per cent support an Islamic state.

• Poll of Iraqis, Aug 2007 shows that Iraqis' opinions are getting even worse.
  • 47 percent now want the US to leave immediately. Still not a majority, but nearly there. Will they actually vote for a government that demands this? Or is it just a theoretical, pride-honour-shame statement? As I have said, if an elected Iraqi government asks the US to leave, it should leave.
  • But the worst part is this: 93 percent of Sunnis support attacks on the allies.
  • And this: 50 percent of Shia support attacks on the allies.
  • Only 5 percent of Kurds support attacks on the allies (even better than Muslims in the West).
  • That means: 57 percent of all Iraqis support attacks on the allies. Again, this conflicts with the above. 57 percent support attacks, yet only 47 percent want the allies to leave? It certainly sounds like more honour-shame culture again.

• Maybe the moment has passed. Maybe the election was the highlight, and then the brief window closed. Maybe the US will just have to give up on Iraqis (apart from the Kurds, who should now go independent). Maybe the non-Kurdish Iraqis are incapable of building a decent society. The Iraqis have had their chance, and they failed to seize it. It's back to tribal bloodletting and dictators for them.
• The US soldier who said the following in 2004 may turn out to be right: "Long term prospects - I have to admit that after one year here I am largely pessimistic. Iraqi society is sick in many ways. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Saddam was the problem or the symptom. I just don't know how a society so divided along ethnic and tribal lines, with no democratic or liberal traditions and almost zero respect for the rule of law can build any kind of society [except an] autocratic one. I'm not ashamed that the US came here with good intentions and noble sentiments about the universality of our values - democracy, liberty, the rule of law etc., but I think all our efforts might be eventually futile. In essence, we have given the Iraqis an enormous gift, but they don't seem to be seizing the opportunity. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink ..."

• But I'm still not ready to give up on the Iraqis. Read this piece about the liberation of Ramadi, Al Qaeda's so-called capital of the "Islamic State of Iraq", Sept 10, 2007, and you see the hope that is still there. The Sunnis of Ramadi were so stupid and ignorant that they believed Al Qaeda would liberate them rather than oppress them. After actually living under the rule of Al Qaeda, they now know better, and now, in the Anbar Awakening, they have helped the US wipe Al Qaeda from their city.
• This is a battle for the minds of the Iraqi people. The start of the civil war was a great victory for the enemy, and the decent people may now be in the minority. I'm not ready to give up on Iraqis yet. But if they keep with these opinions, they'll eventually convince me.

• Iraq poll, Mar 2008
  • Only 26 percent say they support the presence of US troops in Iraq.
  • 42 percent of Iraqis support attacks on US troops. 57 percent oppose them.
  • Yet only 38 percent want US troops to leave immediately. 62 percent of Iraqis want US troops to stay longer. How can you support attacks on them and want them to stay?
  • And 49 percent say the US was right to invade.
  • And 76 percent want the US to remain engaged in Iraq to help the Iraqi army.
  • 73 percent want the US to remain engaged in Iraq providing financial help (to those who support killing its troops). That's at least 15 percent of Iraqis who support killing US troops and want America to give them money!
  • An incredible 80 percent want the US to remain engaged in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda! And yet these hypocritical creeps support attacking US troops!
  • These answers make no sense. They only make sense if much of the Iraqi population is immersed in a peasant, tribal culture based on emotion and pride rather than logic and reason. The traditional honour-shame culture is truly moronic.

If it is the case that the non-Kurdish Iraqis are incapable of building a decent society, and America has to give up, the left may celebrate, but it is no cause for celebration. It is a tragedy for the Iraqis, and guarantees them decades more misery, more dictators, more genocides. And it does not end the problem for the West. It only postpones it. The West will never be free of threat as long as the Middle East remains dominated by tribalism, Islamism and dictatorship. Giving up on Iraq will not mean "peace", and crisis over. It will mean that this war will go on for decades longer.

Leaving Iraq would be like leaving Vietnam

• Vietnam and Cambodia

• Peter W. Rodman sums up the new view of the fall of Vietnam for those who have only ever heard the left's narrative: "Military historians seem to be converging on a consensus that by the end of 1972, the balance of forces in Vietnam had improved considerably, increasing the prospects for South Vietnam's survival. ... the (Democratic) Congress then proceeded to pull the props out from under that balance of forces over the next 2 ½ years - abandoning all of Indochina to a bloodbath. This is now a widely accepted narrative of the endgame in Vietnam, and it has haunted the Democrats for a generation. Will tomorrow's narrative be that the strategic situation in Iraq was starting to improve in 2007 but the Congress tied the president's hands anyway - tipping events toward an American defeat, dooming Iraq to chaos, emboldening Islamist extremists throughout the Middle East, and demoralizing all our friends in the region who are on the front line against this scourge?"

• Victor Davis Hanson on what happens if the US withdraws as the "anti-war" movement asks for: "Once we leave, the killing starts in earnest, not 20 or 30 per day, but wholesale slaughter of any Iraqis who taught school, or were clean shaven and wore Western dress, or fought to save Iraq. Millions of refugees flee to the West. Those who stay are killed or "reeducated." Islamism, like Communism, is empowered with the American defeat. We can expect, as in the past, new aggression in peripheral theaters like Afghanistan or Israel. ... Americans abroad will be ripe targets, since, like the Iranian hostage taking of 1979, there will be an unspoken assurance that the United States would not dare risk another Iraq/Vietnam." "Any true moralist who cares for the Iraqi people should pray that this war doesn't devolve into helicopters on the embassy roof - followed by the old predictable liberal silence when the real killing begins."

• Tony Allwright, Jan 2007: The left wants America to lose in Iraq, "Yet it is also baffling that they do not want to think about what the global consequences of an American defeat might be for us lazy, wealthy westerners ... An American defeat in Iraq will be nothing less than a green light for Islamicist extremists everywhere to attack, attack, attack the despised infidels in the pursuit of their depraved Koranic dream (in Sura 9:5) of converting, enslaving or killing the entire world. ... Across the globe, Islamic extremists will be emboldened. 9/11, Madrid, Bali, London will turn out to have been but a foretaste, and a non-nuclear one at that, for the world-wide atrocities that will ensue. And who will stand up to them if even the only superpower has been routed? Belgium? Argentina? Austria? Canada? And what with?"

• The New York Times Surrenders: A monument to defeatism on the editorial page, Victor Davis Hanson, 12 July 2007 - brilliantly fisks the New York Times' call for immediate American withdrawal.
  • "Abruptly leaving Iraq would be a logistical and humanitarian catastrophe. And when scenes of carnage begin appearing on TV screens here about latte time, will the Times then call for "humanitarian" action?" Of course they will.
  • He nails the bad faith of so many leftists in the US (and in Ireland) who complain Iraq was a distraction from Afghanistan: "if the Times sees the war in Afghanistan as so important, why didn't it support an all-out war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, as it apparently does now, when we were solely in Afghanistan?"
  • He mocks their naivety about "talking" to Iran and Syria, and enlisting the "help" of China and Russia. "China and Russia, seeing only oil and petrodollars, will take no responsibility to help. Both will welcome a U.S. retreat. ... Iran and Syria - serial assassins of democrats from Lebanon to Iraq - are hoping for realization of the Times's scenario, and would be willing to talk with us only to facilitate our flight".
  • The bottom line: "Our enemies' worst nightmare is a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, surrounded by consensual rule in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Turkey; ours is a new terror heaven, but with oil, a strategic location, and the zeal born of a humiliating defeat of the United States on a theater scale. The Islamists believe we can't win; so does the New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue."

• Bush speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, August 22, 2007, shows that George W. Bush understands the lesson of Vietnam, where so many people in America do not:
  • "Finally, there's Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans. ... I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end. ... As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. ... The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea. ... Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields.""
  • "There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle ... Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently. ... If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America."

• Another Vietnam?, Max Boot, August 24, 2007, points to further similarities, notably:
  • "The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border". "This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. ... Something similar is happening today in Iraq. Dozens of Sunni jihadists are entering Iraq from Syria every month. While not huge in absolute numbers, they are estimated to account for 80% to 90% of suicide attacks. ... Iran "has been intensifying" its support for Shiite extremists, leading to a dramatic rise in attacks using explosively formed penetrators that can punch through any armor in the American arsenal. ... For all of Mr. Bush's reputed bellicosity, he has backed away from taking the kind of actions that might cause Syria and Iran to mend their ways. He has not, for instance, authorized "hot pursuit" of terrorists by American forces over the Iraqi border."
  • Max Boot sums it up: "there are important lessons to be learned from our Vietnam experience, and as President Bush noted, they are not necessarily the ones drawn by the doves who have made Vietnam "their" war."

• Mark Steyn on the difference between Iraq and Vietnam. Bad as it was to lose Vietnam, losing this would be even worse: "Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow."
• Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq as the anti-Vietnam. Winning in Iraq will keep America's enemies scared of it: "The military isn't broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don't believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s"

Al Qa'ida hopes for a repeat of the left's shameful retreat from Vietnam

• Letter, July 9, 2005, from Al Qa'ida no.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri to Al Qa'ida leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
• Features of the letter:
  1. The centrality of the war in Iraq for the global jihad.
  2. The war does not end with an American departure. "The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate - over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq ... The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel ... My raising this idea .. is only to stress something extremely important. And it is that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal. ... Instead, their ongoing mission is to establish an Islamic state, and defend it, and for every generation to hand over the banner to the one after it until the Hour of Resurrection."
  3. He hopes for a repeat of Vietnam. (Even now, 30 years later, the left's shameful retreat from Vietnam gives hope to fascist killers the world over.) "Things may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam - and how they ran and left their agents - is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them. We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us"
  4. He understands the killing of the Shia population, but thinks it is bad strategy right now: "The collision between any state based on the model of prophecy with the Shia is a matter that will happen sooner or later. This is the judgment of history, and these are the fruits to be expected from the rejectionist Shia sect and their opinion of the Sunnis." He urges postponing the genocide of the Shia until later, after Al Qa'ida have taken power.
  5. He reveals that his family were killed by American bombing in Afghanistan.
  6. This is a battle for the media as much as anything else: "I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media."
• Analysis: "Al-Qaida's ambitions do not stop at Iraq's borders. Establishing the political dominance of Sunni militants in Iraq is only a first step .. in realizing al-Qaida's ambitions of imposing its control over the broader Middle East. In fact, al-Qaida's focus on Iraq has nothing to do with Iraqi nationalism, but is purely instrumental as a beachhead for al-Qaida's broader agenda. Under al-Qaida, Iraq will serve as a terrorist haven and staging ground for attacks against Iraq's neighbors and quite possibly Western nations"

• Enemy leader Hassan Nasrallah understands the lesson of Vietnam, even if the Democrats don't. The lesson is that the left will betray people struggling for democracy and human rights in the third world, and the future belongs instead to the totalitarians. "In our childhood ... When we were young boys ... I cannot forget the sight of the American forces leaving Vietnam in helicopters, which carried their officers and soldiers. Some Vietnamese, who had fought alongside the Americans, tried to climb into these helicopters, but the [Americans] threw them to the ground, abandoned them, and left. This is the sight I anticipate in our region"
• Orson Scott Card, October 29, 2006 - "How do the Islamicist tyrants answer the obvious success and growing appeal of Bush's democracy program? They kill people, of course. But they also tell the story, over and over: "America will never stick it out. We'll keep killing Americans till they give up and go away, and then you will answer to us!" Until they believe that the Islamofascists are never coming into power, many people will remain afraid to commit themselves to democracy. ... But against Bush's promises and the actions of our brave and decent soldiers, the tyrants can set the behavior of Bush's political opponents, ... Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror. Because even more than they fear terrorist bombs, the pro-democracy forces within Iraq and Afghanistan fear American withdrawal. Every speech threatening withdrawal is a bomb going off in Baghdad, killing, not people, but the will to resist the tyrants." He argues that Iran and Syria are going to fall too, if we can only stick it out.

The "realist" right too urges defeat and surrender

• The "realists" will lose Iraq to the enemy, as they lost Vietnam to the enemy.

• The Iraq Study Group urges surrender.

• If We Fail ... by Victor Davis Hanson, January 19, 2007 - If America leaves Iraq, then you can simply give up on democracy and human rights in the Middle East for another generation.
  • "Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing - and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker ... Now the latter is the model of Republican sobriety. Arab intellectuals and much of the Western Left once decried Bakerism and called for a new muscular idealism that put us on the side of the powerless reformers and not with the entrenched authoritarians."
  • "But if we fail in Iraq, then again, fairly or not, the verdict will be far more sweeping ... the conventional wisdom will arise that an infantile Middle East ipso facto - whether due to Islamism, tribalism, gender apartheid, sectarianism, engrained dictatorship, or corruption - is simply incapable at this time of consensual government. Anyone who seeks such reform, whether in the Gulf, Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, is to be written off not only as naïve, but as reckless as well. A Libyan dissident, a feminist writer in Egypt, or an Iraqi intellectual who decries Western indifference to their plight or American tolerance of regional dictatorships will be told to quit whining and get a life, by a been-there/done-that American public. Both carping hothouse Arab intellectuals and Western liberals should be put on notice of this change to come. However imperfect, however flawed, however improperly explained our efforts in Iraq were, they nevertheless represented a costly American about-face to offer something in the Middle East other than theocracy or dictatorship - something we are not likely to see again in our lifetime. Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush's embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history."

Cindy Sheehan

• Cindy Sheehan
  • Sheehan has said some appalling things, all the usual crackpot Michael Moore rhetoric: "The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush", "Casey was killed in the Global War OF Terrorism waged on the world and its own citizens by the biggest terrorist outfit in the world: George and his destructive Neo-con cabal", and so on. Again and again she says her son died for nothing. She describes the military her son served in as "the homicidal war machine". The Iraq war "is blatant genocide.". "You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine", and so on, like some Indymedia teenager. More here and here.
  • But the worst thing she has said was that the jihadi scum that killed her son are "freedom fighters". They are not. Her son was a freedom fighter, and she should stand with him and not with his fascist killers. The troops must not leave Iraq until the enemy is defeated. To withdraw the troops early would be to show that we never learned the true lesson of Vietnam.
  • Cindy Sheehan again defends the fascist scum that killed her son as he tried to fight for Iraqi freedom: "The people that are being killed in Iraq are not terrorists. They're citizens of Iraq, they're members of the human race. They're our brothers and sisters."
  • Cindy Sheehan hangs out in London with the people that killed her son.
  • Cindy Sheehan, Jan 2006, calling on the US to leave Iraq in defeat and abandon the Iraqi people to the jihadis. She is utterly indifferent to what the Iraqi people want.
  • Cindy Sheehan fantasises about killing Bush, and yet shamefully, Bush won't meet with her. Strange, that.

• Victor Davis Hanson understands the U.S. soldiers, as Cindy Sheehan does not: "years from now the truth will remain that our soldiers did not come to plunder or colonize, but were willing to die for others' freedom when few others would. Neither Michael Moore nor Noam Chomsky can change that, because it is not opinion, but truth".

• Criticism of Cindy Sheehan
  • Cindy Sheehan is treated as if she has moral authority because she is a dead soldier's mother. But of course, like the disloyal John Kerry does not represent most decent Vietnam veterans, so Cindy Sheehan does not represent most soldiers' mothers.
  • As Christopher Hitchens points out: "What do these people imagine that they are demanding? Would they like a referendum to be held, among the relatives of the fallen in Iraq, to determine the future conduct of the war? I think I can promise them that they would heavily lose such a vote."
  • Hold Your Tears, Mark Steyn, The Spectator, 20 August 2005.
  • These bereaved military families: in the "Freedom's Watch" ads, are much more typical than Cindy Sheehan is. "Victory is America's only choice"

• Message to Cindy Sheehan from the heroic Iraqi blog "Iraq the Model". "Ma'am, we asked for your nation's help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation's act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity. ... We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over. We practiced our freedom first by kicking and burning the statues and portraits of the hateful idol who stole 35 years from the life of a nation. For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom. ... Freedom is not an American thing and it's not an Iraqi thing, it's what unites us as human beings. We refuse all kinds of restrictions and that's why we fought and still fighting everyday in spite of the swords in the hands of the cavemen who want us dead or slaves for their evil masters. ... I ask you in the name of God or whatever you believe in; do not waste your son's blood."

• We Need American Troops: Thank you for liberating my country. Please don't leave before the job is done. Article by the first ever democratically elected president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, September 21, 2005. "Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world."

• Syrian government minister praises Cindy Sheehan, June 19, 2007. A startling illustration of how the left encourages the enemy.
  • The very state that helped kill her son - the enemy state of Syria that supports the Iraqi resistance killing young American troops - praises Cindy Sheehan.
  • "she has long been a beacon for all those who defend liberty and justice in the world", said a minister of the vile, murderous unelected dictatorship that snuffs out liberty and justice in Syria. "The news of her retirement [from public life] caused [us] to lose hope ... The path blazed by Cindy Sheehan is a very important one, because it was meant to bring justice, respect for the human spirit ... I do not know whether Cindy Sheehan will rescind her decision. But I hope she will, because the battle is an important and a crucial one. ... Cindy Sheehan took a very noble step, and she is entitled to rest, if that is what she wants. We, on the other hand, must not let her struggle come to nothing."
  • The left encourages the enemy.

• Cindy Sheehan going to Iraq: "Sanchez knows how those crazy wingnuts operate, always with the "consorting with the enemy" stuff when people consort with the enemy. But St. Cindy promises she'll be good and only meet with insurgents who are working towards reconciliation. Which creates the exceedingly remote yet still existent possibility that she'll end up lecturing about how George Bush killed her son in front of the guy who actually killed her son."

• Code Pink
  • Captain Richard Lund, United States Marine Corps recruiter, Oct 2007, responds to the offensive and obnoxious Code Pink for protesting his office. "The fact is this: any independent nation must maintain a military (or be allied with those who do) to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. ... If your counter-recruitment efforts are ultimately successful, who will defend us if we are directly attacked again as we were at Pearl Harbor? Who would respond if a future terrorist attack targets the Golden Gate Bridge, the BART system, or the UC Berkeley clock tower? And, to address the most hypocritical stance that your organization takes on its website, where would the peace keeping force come from that you advocate sending to Darfur?"

How to win in Iraq

As resistance to freedom, democracy and human rights in Iraq goes on for years, with tens of thousands of civilians now killed by the fascist insurgency, something new must be tried. To the left and the "realist" right, that new thing is to surrender, and to ensure that it was all for nothing, and to leave the Iraq problem unsolved and festering for a new generation. To the neo-con right, that new thing is the thing that Bush should have done in summer 2003 when he was on a roll but stopped - confronting Iran and Syria.

I don't know what the answer is. It is unbearably depressing that the Iraqis haven't seized perhaps their only chance for freedom in this lifetime. One is inclined to just give up on the Arabs and say they aren't ready for democracy, and we have to try again in 30 years.

On the other hand, maybe it is impossible and unrealistic to expect Iraqi freedom to flower in the shadow of the aggressive, unreformed and emboldened terror states of Iran and Syria. Maybe the job is only half done. Maybe the violence of all-out war on Iran and Syria really is the least worst option. It's not enough to just say withdraw and everything will be ok. As Vietnam showed, that may be the option that leads to the most killing, not the least. It may even be the path that leads to nuclear war (with a Greater Iran). All-out war with Germany in 1933 was, in hindsight, the least worst option. But who could possibly have made that decision at the time?

• The West loses momentum, after 2004

• Why Iraq Is Crumbling by Charles Krauthammer, November 17, 2006 - "We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it."
  • He thinks the US has made errors: "not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004"
  • But ultimately the Iraqis have failed to seize their great gift of freedom: "Nonetheless, the root problem lies with Iraqis and their political culture." He refuses to concede yet that Arabs can't do democracy: "the problem here is Iraq's particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein's totalitarianism. What was left in its wake was a social desert, a dearth of the trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance."
  • He (like all of Iraq's hawkish friends in the West) thinks prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is corrupt and useless, unable to take on the Shia militias, and part of the problem rather than part of the solution in the sectarian civil war.

How to win in Iraq I - "Go long" (stay the course)

It may be that this insurgency is simply a war of attrition - if America does not give up, then the jihad will simply give up, and move on to other battlefields, as they did in Algeria. It may be that the allies simply need to convince the jihadis that they will never give up, and then the jihadis will leave Iraq alone, and abandon the fight.

Only years of western resolve can do this - and the Democrats must support this resolve. If the jihadis think a future Democrat president will abandon Iraq, then this encourages them to keep fighting.

• Iraqi general rallies Fallujah elders to support U.S. Marines (copy here). Talking about the Americans, he says: "We can make them use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice. ... They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole - Saddam - who disgraced us all. Let us tell our children that these men came here to protect us. As President Bush said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting."
• Washington War Wobbles: No Time For Doubt by Amir Taheri - "The nationwide anti-American insurrection promised by media headlines just a week ago has not happened. ... Iraq is not about to disintegrate. Nor is it on the verge of civil war. Despite becoming the focus of anti-American energies in the past year, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where the United States still enjoys goodwill. Notwithstanding the forebodings of doom coming from "experts" who know nothing of Iraq, the newly liberated nation could, as President Bush has promised, become a model of democratization for other Arabs. Iraq will be won or lost not in Baghdad or Najaf or Fallujah, but in Washington."

• Our Reptilian Brains, Victor Davis Hanson, May 28, 2004, on people's inability to stay the course, to be patient, to not panic with every setback. "A majority of Americans, like a majority of mankind, does not embrace a strong particular ideology that keeps them levelheaded and always resolute through either bad or good news. Most simply wish to win, and to be identified with a winner - they are as giddy with success as they are dejected with disappointment ... The truth is that for all our education, nuance, and professed idealism, too many of us think and act with our limbic systems, which are hard-wired to appreciate perceived success and feel comfortable with consensus. ... Our leaders should remember this volatility. In the long run, of course, the present strategy is sound and in a decade will be judged as such by historians. How could it not be sound to remove a mass murderer who posed a threat to the region and our country and then sponsor a consensual government in his place?"

• The Unwinnable War by Jeremy Brown, January 26, 2005 - The insurgency will fail because the Iraqi people don't want it. The "resistance" are doomed, they are dying for nothing, and they should give up now.

• Top 11 Iraqi War Myths

The war in historical context

• Noemie Emery, October 25, 2004, on persisting, on staying the course. Is a thousand American deaths too much in Iraq? Should America give up now?
  • Bush may have made some errors, but "His missteps in Iraq are about par for the course for the start of a big, serious war against vicious opponents, under conditions not quite seen before."
  • She reminds us of the Allied disasters of World War Two (and indeed, any war). "in a training exercise days before D-Day, British and American forces lost nearly as many forces as have already died in Iraq to mistakes and confusion. Churchill and Roosevelt did not apologize, nor did their generals. Nobody stateside complained."

• US soldiers killed per year:
  • World War Two - 100,000 / year
  • Korea - 20,000 / year
  • Vietnam - 5,000 / year
  • Iraq - 750 / year (actually 600 / year (from here) in combat, the rest in accidents etc.)

• The Vietnam War had a draft, and had almost 10 times the kill rate of Iraq (which rather explains why opposition to the Vietnam War was much stronger than opposition to the Iraq War).
• In summary, the Iraq death rate would be an impossible dream to anybody who ever had to fight a major war before (appalling though it is that anyone at all has to die to defeat the jihad).

• As for Afghanistan, far from being the "quagmire" that was predicted, the War on Afghanistan hardly seems to count as a war at all, by historical terms:
• US soldiers killed per year:
  • Afghanistan - 60 / year (actually 30 / year in combat, the rest in accidents etc.)

• Another interesting comparison is with the other "western" power to fight the jihad:
• Russian soldiers killed per year:
  • Afghanistan - 1,500 / year
  • First Chechen War - 3,000 / year
  • Second Chechen War - 3,000 / year

• The jihad is not undefeatable. It can and will lose. The jihad won in Afghanistan against the Russians, but lost in Afghanistan against the US, lost in Chechnya, and the jihad will lose in Iraq - not least because the Iraqi people don't support it. It is tragic that any brave American has to die to stop the Iraq jihad. But it cannot be stopped by any other means.

• Richard Waghorne on the 2,000th US death in Iraq (or via here) and the sneers of the left as they hope to bring the troops home in failure and thus make their sacrifice a waste. "What marks out much criticism of the Iraq War as singularly objectionable is the spirit in which it is offered. The disdain and sneering tone of a shockingly large section of the anti-war lobby ... is directly relevant. If critics believe that Iraq is lost, that counsel should be offered in sorrow, not in triumph. There are no winners if that judgment proves correct, none bar al-Qaeda and their allies. If critics believe that there was not warrant to intervene, that argument should be made with due respect for the nobility of the ideal attempted and the commitment of the fallen. The 2,000 are not a rhetorical device. They are 2,000 volunteers in the service of freedom half-away around the world. The war in Iraq is not lost, but something crucial to the health of free societies is perhaps in large part lost - respect for the valour of those who serve, commitment to those elsewhere striving to create a free society ... and a collective willingness to make the sacrifices freedom entails."

• Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
  • U.S. troops death rate during the brief war to depose Saddam in 2003 - 1500/year.
  • U.S. troops death rate since the war - between 1000/year and (now) 750/year.

  • Brave Iraqi allied troops and police fighting for democracy (the real "freedom fighters" in Iraq) - 3500/year (3500 dead in 2005).
  • For comparison, U.S. troops had 850 dead in 2005. The brave Iraqi democrats are fighting for their country, dying at a rate 4 times the U.S. troops.

• Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?, August 26, 2006.
  • Death rate of military personnel in Iraq, 2003-6: 3.92 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • Death rate of U.S. population as a whole is, amazingly, higher: 8.42 deaths per 1000 people per year. But that includes the elderly, etc.
  • Death rate for U.S. men age 18 to 39 is lower (one should hope so!): 1.53 deaths per 1000 people per year.
  • Death rate for African American men age 20 to 34 in Philadelphia is, unbelievably, higher: 4.37 deaths per 1000 people per year. For a young black man in Philadelphia, it is safer to go to Iraq than to stay at home.
  • For comparison, death rate in Vietnam: 21.95 deaths per 1000 people per year.

How to win in Iraq II - "Go wide" (destroy the militias, hurt Iran and Syria)

As long as these hostile enemies can kill, and fund and arm killers, in Iraq with impunity, the violence will never end.

Destroy the militias

• Muqtada al-Sadr, and the sectarian Shia militias

• Iran, Hezbollah support al-Sadr, April 07, 2004 - Iran understands the threat that a free, democratic Iraq would pose to their tyranny. - "Iran does not want a success in Iraq. A democratic Iraq is a death knell to the mullahs."

• KILL MUQTADA NOW, Ralph Peters, October 26, 2006.
  • Ralph Peters expresses my thoughts exactly. He's telling Bush how to win, but Bush won't listen.
  • Bush did not kill Muqtada al-Sadr when he first emerged in 2003, and now he's got a war of sectarian death squads as a result. It's not too late to kill Muqtada.
  • "Iraq deserves one last chance. But to make that chance even remotely viable, we'll have to take desperate measures. We need to fight. And accept the consequences. The first thing we need to do is to kill Muqtada al-Sadr, who's now a greater threat to our strategic goals than Osama bin Laden. We should've killed him in 2003, when he first embarked upon his murder campaign. But our leaders were afraid of provoking riots. Back then, the tumult might've lasted a week. Now we'll face a serious uprising. So be it. When you put off paying war's price, you pay compound interest in blood."
  • "We must kill - not capture - Muqtada, then kill every gunman who comes out in the streets to avenge him. Our policy of all-carrots-no-sticks has failed miserably. We delivered Iraq to zealots, gangsters and terrorists. Now our only hope is to prove that we mean business - that the era of peace, love and wasting American lives is over. And after we've killed Muqtada and destroyed his Mahdi Army, we need to go after the Sunni insurgents. If we can't leave a democracy behind, we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies. The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: "We can't kill our way out of this situation!" Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven't done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance. ... There's still a chance, if a slight one, that we can achieve a few of our goals in Iraq - if we let our troops make war, not love. But if our own leaders are unwilling to fight, it's time to leave and let Iraqis fight each other. Our president owes Iraq's treacherous prime minister nothing. Get tough, or get out."

• Arabian Nightmares, Ralph Peters, November 15, 2006. - Ignore the Iraqi government. Kill the militias now. "That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them. If you're not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can't win. ... If we want to give Iraq's silent - and terrified - majority a last chance, we would have to accept the world's condemnation for killing the killers. If we are unwilling to do that, Iraq's finished."

Hurt Iran and Syria

Making Iran and Syria pay a price for stoking the violence in Iraq need not mean full-scale war, invasion and regime change. All that needs to be done is to hurt them hard to make them think again about this fight. Put them on the defensive. Bomb cross-border training camps. Sink their ships. Help Israel bomb Iran's nuclear weapons program. Destroy Hezbollah, and support the Lebanon democratic revolution. Put Iran and Syria on the defensive again, as they were in 2003, and press their regimes to the wall.

• Iran and Syria's support for the Iraqi resistance

• Iran and Syria next

• The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran by Robert W. Tracinski (May 20, 2003). - "President Bush called the military victory in Iraq "the turning of the tide" in the War on Terrorism. That may be true, but the tide won't stay with us - or carry us to victory - until we are willing to take the war to Tehran and topple the most important material and ideological supporter of Islamic terrorism."
• The war against terror can be won only if we have the will, by Michael Ledeen, 20 Aug 2003 - The Islamofascists of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are at war with: "anyone who tries to make Iraq a free and successful country. The terror masters know that they would not survive successful democratic revolution on their doorsteps, because their own people would demand their own freedom."
• Wider War by Ralph Peters, 9 Apr 2004 - "Iran and Syria are at war with the United States. In Iraq. Now. Washington refuses to admit it." "Iran, Syria and al Qaeda share one common goal: Preventing the emergence of a free Iraq. They want to stop democracy and social liberty dead in their tracks. And they're willing to throw in all their reserves to do it."

• The Iran We Cannot Avoid, Michael Ledeen, January 2, 2007 - "We cannot 'solve' the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran. ... We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker's game. ... In passing, it follows from this that the entire debate over more or less troops in Iraq, surge or no surge, Baghdad or Anbar Province, all of it begs the central question. As long as Iran and their appendage in Damascus have a free shot at us, all these stratagems are doomed."
• To Win in Baghdad, Strike at Tehran, Robert Tracinski, January 04, 2007 - "An internal Pentagon review of the war, requested by Bush as part of his attempt to sidestep the Iraq Study Group, has considered three options: "go big," "go long," or "go home." ... But there is another, far more effective option: go wide. Going wide means recognizing that Iraq is just one front in a regional war against an Islamist Axis centered in Iran - and we cannot win that war without confronting the enemy directly, outside of Iraq."
• The war against the free world, Melanie Phillips, January 5, 2007 - "In order to win in Iraq, it is essential to defeat Iran. ... I have never understood how anyone could think that you can win a war by refusing to fight the aggressors and instead running around trying vainly to put out the fires they are starting."

Ralph Peters' rules for victory

• Beyond Terror, Ralph Peters, 2003
  • Ch.2: "When Devils Walk the Earth: The Mentality and Roots of Terrorism, and How to Respond",
    • Section 3. Fighting Terror: Do's and Don'ts for a Superpower - 25 Rules for the War.

• The Bush administration would do well to re-read these rules. The clarity and strength they had in 2001-3 needs to be recovered.
• These rules also apply to Israel and its fight for survival.

• Some of the rules:
  • 2. "Identify the type of terrorists you face ... "Apocalyptic" terrorists, no matter their rhetoric, seek your destruction and must be killed to the last man. The apt metaphor is "cancer"; you cannot hope for success if you only cut out part of the tumor."
  • 3. "Do not be afraid to be powerful. ... Our great strengths are wealth and raw power. When we fail to bring those strengths to bear, we contribute to our own defeat. For a superpower to "think small," which has been our habit in the last decade (at least), is self-defeating folly. Our responses to terrorist acts should make the world gasp!"
  • 9. "When in doubt, hit harder than you think necessary. Success will be forgiven. Even the best-intentioned failure will not."
  • 10. "Whenever legal conditions permit, kill terrorists on the spot (do not give them a chance to surrender, if you can help it)."
  • 14. "Do not allow third parties to broker a peace, a truce, or any pause in operations."
  • 17. "Whenever possible, humiliate your enemy in the eyes of his own people. Do not try to use reasonable arguments against him. Shame him publicly, in any way you can. Create doubt where you cannot excite support. Most apocalyptic terrorists, especially, come from cultures of male vanity. Disgrace them at every opportunity."
  • 20. "Never declare victory."
  • 22. "Do everything possible to make terrorists and their active supporters live in terror themselves. ... Do not be distracted by the baggage of the term "assassination." This is a war. The enemy, whether a hijacker or a financier, violates the laws of war by his refusal to wear a uniform and by purposely targeting civilians. He is, by definition, a war criminal. On our soil, he is either a spy or a saboteur, and not entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Those who abet terrorists must grow afraid to turn out the lights and go to sleep."

• Lunch in the White House with George, Irwin Stelzer, The Sunday Times, March 4, 2007. Lists Andrew Roberts' lessons of history for the modern conflict:
  1. Do not set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.
  2. Will trumps wealth.
  3. Don't hesitate to intern your enemies for long periods.
  4. Cling to the alliance of the English-speaking peoples.

• 12 Myths of 21st-Century War, Ralph Peters, November 2007 - "Unaware of the cost of freedom and served by leaders without military expertise, Americans have started to believe whatever's comfortable" His myths include:
  1. Myth: War doesn't change anything. "Our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they won't be deterred by bumper stickers."
  2. Myth: Victory is impossible today. "victory looked a great deal less likely in the early months of 1942 than it does against our enemies today."
  3. Myth: Insurgencies can never be defeated. "Historically, fewer than one in 20 major insurgencies succeeded."
  4. Myth: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems. "It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution. Every other faction - the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria - is convinced it can win."
  5. Myth: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.
  6. Myth: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. "Zarqawi's dead and forgotten by his own movement, whose members never invoke that butcher's memory. And no one is fighting to avenge Saddam. The harsh truth is that when faced with true fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence."
  7. Myth: The United States is more hated today than ever before.
  8. Myth: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own. "The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their own future that there's nothing more we can do. But we're not there yet, and leaving immediately would guarantee not just one massacre but a series of slaughters and the delivery of a massive victory to the forces of terrorism."
  9. Myth: The Saudis are our friends. "Saudi extremism has done far more damage to the Middle East than Israel ever did. The Saudis are our enemies."
  10. Myth: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault. "The collapse of once great Middle Eastern civilizations has been under way for more than five centuries, and the region became a backwater before the United States became a country."

Is victory coming?

• Is victory coming?
  1. The 2007 "troops surge" - the US shows it's not going to give up.
  2. Muqtada al-Sadr goes quiet as he tries to stay alive.
  3. The "Anbar Awakening" - the Sunni slow learners finally realise that Al Qaeda is their enemy.
  4. The liberation of Ramadi
  5. What I see every day in Iraq: locals turning against the insurgents, Michael Totten, December 2nd 2007, on the clearing of the jihadis from Fallujah. "Not one Marine from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment has even been wounded since they rotated into the city two months ago. ... No insurgent can plant an IED without getting turned in by war-weary civilians. ... Fallujah was once the backbone of the insurgency. Today, .. "They avoid Fallujah now like it's the plague. ... They're afraid of the Iraqis." ... Another Iraqi who works as a money changer told me, "They are finished. It will be a shame on all of us if the terrorists ever come back." "
  6. Bin Laden worried about Iraq situation: "In closing, I tell our people in Iraq, the patient ones garrisoned on the first line of the religion and sanctities of the Muslims: the malice has increased and the darkness has become pitch black"
  7. Al Qaeda in Iraq documents, captured November 2007, describe a large number of fighters deserting their cause to join the Sunni tribes. "There are very few tribe members who stood by us". One document "describes an Al Qaeda in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants' presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight". "We lost cities and afterward, villages ... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert."
  8. Sharp drop in suicide bombings in late 2007
  9. Al Qaeda routed out of Baghdad
  10. "Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated" (and here). "the military agrees but is understandably paranoid about declaring victory over AQI prematurely".
  11. Is Iraq getting better?, 11 November 2007. "There is no part of Baghdad in which al-Qaeda has a stronghold any more". On the Mehdi Army: "Many of the leaders have been arrested or killed by the Americans. Others have fled."
  12. Iraqis may finally be getting disillusioned with maniac religious killers. Quotes: "I hate Islam and all the clerics". "The religion men are liars. Young people don't believe them." "People have lost too much. They say to the clerics and the parties: You cost us this." "They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them." "I used to love Osama bin Laden. .. Now I hate Islam." "The sheiks are making a society of nonbelievers."
  13. Foreign fighters have become disillusioned with jihad in Iraq and have begun to exit the theater. "Foreign militants constitute about 10% of al-Qaeda's strength in Iraq, but .. a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said they make up about 90% of the suicide bombers."
  14. Iraqi government finally takes on Al-Sadr's Shia militias.

• These may be the early signs of victory, of a devastating, humiliating defeat for the global jihad. If so, the world should celebrate it. The jihad must be humiliated. We must point out that tens of thousands of jihadi idiots gave their lives for nothing. They killed innocents for nothing. They could have had families and happy lives. But instead they threw away their young lives for an ideology of hatred that was going nowhere. The jihad must be humiliated. It must look like yesterday's revolution, like an old idea. And then young men will think twice before joining a losing cause.
• And if victory comes, if democracy comes to Iraq, then the Iranian revolution will end, and there will be hope at last for the Middle East.

• Operation Phantom Strike: How the U.S. military is demolishing al Qaeda in Iraq, Mario Loyola, 3 Sept 2007, claims that Al Qaeda in Iraq are losing: "Al Qaeda in Iraq had many initial advantages - including a message that, though false, was superficially appealing. But they never achieved national scope. They have never looked to anyone like they could actually govern a country. They never gained the open support of any foreign army. And now, after giving the people of Iraq a taste of their brutal sadism - after executing children for playing with American-donated soccer balls, after chopping the fingers off young men for smoking, after murdering entire families in front of the youngest son, so he would live to tell the tale - Al Qaeda in Iraq is more widely hated than feared. In the words of one soft-spoken coalition planner in Baghdad, "We are demolishing them." After four long years, the coalition has finally grasped the keys to victory. Al Qaeda has begun to lose the staging areas it needs for attacks in Baghdad. Just staying alive and avoiding capture is becoming a full-time occupation for them."

• How we've won the war in Iraq, Bartle Bull, The Sunday Times, September 30, 2007
  • The justice of the cause: "By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The United Nations approved the coalition's role in May 2003 and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Ba'athists, the Nazis of the Middle East; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one."
  • But not only is the cause just. He also argues that the war is being won, and the enemy is failing.

• Victor Davis Hanson, March 14, 2008, on whether the Iraq War has made us safer: "Rarely in American history has a war been so often spun, praised, renounced, disowned, and finally neglected. And the result is that a number of questions remain not just unanswered, but unasked. We have not been hit since 9/11, despite the dire predictions from almost everyone of serial attacks to come. ... What is never discussed is how many Islamists flocked to Iraq, determined to defeat the U.S. military — and never got out alive. Or, more bluntly, how many jihadists did the U.S. Army and Marines kill in Iraq rather than in Manhattan? And what was the effect of that defeat not only on the jihadists, but also on those who were watching carefully to see whether the terrorists should be joined in victory or abandoned in defeat? Who really took his eye off the ball — the United States by going into Iraq, as alleged, or Osama bin Laden and his jihadist lieutenants by diverting thousands there to their deaths, as is never mentioned? ... Again, whereas the conventional wisdom holds that we have radicalized an entire generation of young Muslims, it may turn out instead that we have convinced a generation that it is not wise after 9/11 to wage war against the United States."