Since the liberation of Iraq from Saddam in April 2003,
the forces of state tyranny and religious oppression
have fought a sporadic violent guerilla campaign
to try to stop freedom, democracy and human rights coming to Iraq.
Refusing to argue their case in the court of public opinion and debate,
and declining to ever try civil disobedience,
or even standing for election,
they have instead turned immediately
and as a first resort
to the torture and
suicide bombing of men, women and children.
This
Iraqi so-called "resistance"
is probably the most
depraved, perverted and evil
armed force operating in the world today.
Their main killing and torturing has been of Muslim civilians.
Ever since 2003, much of the western left, the western media
and the Democratic party have been trying to figure out a way for this
Iraqi "resistance" to win,
and a way for America to suffer a crushing and humiliating
defeat to the global jihad.
Ever since the liberation of Iraq in 2003, the left has a new mantra,
which is that the troops must get out. "END THE OCCUPATION" say all the posters.
It doesn't matter what happens afterwards.
All that apparently matters is that the troops come home.
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 submitted 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".
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.
From liberation in 2003 until 2006 or so, as I argued above,
the majority of Iraqis were on my side.
They didn't support the resistance.
They didn't want the US to leave.
The wonderful election of 2005
showed there was hope for Iraq, that it was a country that had a future.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mar 2009 poll
shows improvement, as the surge works and the "resistance" gives up.
64 percent now support democracy.
19 percent want an Islamic state.
14 percent want a dictator.
42 percent still support the 2003 invasion.
56 percent say it was wrong.
79 percent of Kurds support the 2003 invasion.
Only 18 percent say the US is playing a positive role in Iraq.
64 percent say it is playing a negative role.
59 percent of Kurds say it is playing a positive role.
30 percent think the US military has done a good job in Iraq.
69 percent say it has done a bad job.
62 percent of Kurds say it has done a good job.
Despite the criticism,
only 46 percent say the US should leave before 2011.
Only 23 percent of Kurds say the US should leave before 2011.
24 percent regard the anti-Bush
shoe thrower as a criminal.
62 percent say he is a hero.
51 percent of Kurds regard him as a criminal.
Not sure how this "Iran client state" thing is going:
68 percent think Iran is playing a negative role in Iraq.
93 percent of Sunnis think that.
80 percent of Kurds think that.
But even 49 percent of Shia think that.
And finally, when America finally does leave Iraq in 2010
(or at least, when combat troops leave),
Iraqis are scared, and don't want them to go!
Iraq is not like Vietnam in many ways
(attacks on home soil,
no draft, no nuclear superpowers behind the enemy).
But they are similar in one major respect:
leaving Iraq would be a bloodbath like leaving Vietnam was.
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?"
"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."
"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"
The centrality of the war in Iraq for the global jihad.
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."
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"
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.
He reveals that his family were killed by American bombing in Afghanistan.
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 crackpot
(bereaved mother of a hero, but unfortunately, still a crackpot)
Cindy Sheehan exemplifies the self-destructive left.
Her son Casey Sheehan died for something
- for the chance to bring a better society to Iraq.
She should be proud of him.
But instead she has attacked his mission
and defended his killers.
She campaigned for the US troops to withdraw,
for Iraq to be abandoned
and the fascist insurgency to win.
In short, she wants to ensure that her son died for nothing.
She is entitled to her views.
And one can have sympathy with her grief.
But she has dishonoured her son.
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.
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.
Cindy Sheehan 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, Dec 2005, attends an "anti-war" conference in London which included a spokesperson for Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
In other words, she hangs out 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.
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".
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."
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."
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."
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."
Captain Richard Lund, Marine Corps recruiter, Oct 2007,
responds to
Code Pink 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?"
Code Pink travelled to Pakistan to protest US drone strikes, Oct 2012.
The protest was led by politician
Imran Khan.
However, the Pakistani jihadis (the targets for the drones) responded by
threatening to kill the western protesters.
"Ahsanullah Ahsan, the spokesman for the main Pakistani Taliban faction, issued a statement Friday calling Khan, the ex-cricket star, a "slave of the West" and saying that the militants "don't need any sympathy" from such "a secular and liberal person."
...
The local newspapers carried short items referring to an Interior Ministry warning that several suicide bombers planned to attack the march. Separately, pamphlets signed by a group calling itself the Army of the Caliphate were distributed in Tank, a town just outside South Waziristan. The fliers criticized Khan as an "agent of America, Israel and Jews."
"People are sincerely and emphatically advised to stay away from the public meeting, and anyone suffering any loss of life will himself be responsible in this world and in the world afterward," the documents warned."
It's not just the left.
The left has called for surrender throughout the Iraq war.
But the "realist" (not neo-con) right too has urged American defeat and withdrawal.
And the Bush administration has faltered after 2004.
Ever since Bush's re-election in 2004,
many of his hawkish supporters have been disappointed in him.
We thought he would take the war to Iran and Syria.
We thought he would kill al-Sadr.
But instead for years he fought a half-hearted war,
a holding position.
Cox and Forkum
disappointed with Bush's weak prosecution of the Iraq war.
Bush did not destroy al-Sadr
(as all the neo-cons urged)
when he first emerged in 2003,
but rather let this blood-soaked, hate-filled sectarian thug
enter politics.
The (all-too-predictable) result has been the corruption of the Iraqi government,
and the start of a Sunni-Shia civil war.
If America loses Iraq,
not killing al-Sadr may be the main reason why.
Cartoon from here
and here.
See Cartoon Use Policy.
In 2003, Bush was on a roll.
After conquering Baghdad,
Iran and Syria were afraid they were next.
They are not afraid now.
Instead of toppling Iran and Syria in 2003,
Bush tried to defend the ground he had taken,
while Iran and Syria tried to destabilise it and destroy its infant democracy
from outside.
They may well succeed.
Bush has been weak in other ways.
He has tolerated the existence of the Shia thug al-Sadr.
His reward for tolerating al-Sadr
has been the emergence of
sectarian death squads and
religious civil war in Iraq.
Killing al-Sadr could have stopped all this,
and maybe still could.
Bush has also done nothing about Islamic terror supporting
Saudi Arabia,
which has paid no real price for 9/11.
The religious fascist state of
Saudi Arabia is not an ally, and never will be, until its medieval culture is broken
and transformed.
Bush has been a somewhat half-hearted fighter.
He looks good compared to defeatists and appeasers like Kerry.
But one could imagine a lot better than Bush.
The fact is that
regime change
in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia
is still essential
if there is ever to be victory in this global war against Islamism.
Leaving those regimes in place just kicks the problem down the road,
guaranteeing decades more of Islamist terror.
Time for Democratization 2.0, February 27, 2006
- Since re-election, Bush has done very little.
We've got to go on the offensive again.
But maybe this won't happen until there is another 9/11.
"Victory is only possible through a de-nazification that we have not had the nerve to implement.
Must we wait to be nuked first? Probably."
We've got to launch "the next phase of the war".
"As far as I see it, this counter-Islamism program is not a matter of whether, but of when.
OK, the whether is whether we will still have the capability after the next 9/11."
Five Years On,
Mark Steyn,
August 21, 2006
-
"After the Taliban fell, the region's autocrats and dictators wondered:
Who's next? Now they figure it's a pretty safe bet that nobody is.
What's the difference between September 2001 and now? It's not that anyone "liked" America or
that, as the Democrats like to suggest,
the country had the world's "sympathy".
Pakistani generals and the Kremlin don't cave to your demands because they "sympathize".
They go along because you've succeeded in impressing upon them that they've no choice.
Musharraf and Co. weren't scared by America's power but by the fact that America,
in the rubble of 9/11, had belatedly found the will to use that power.
It is notionally at least as powerful today, but in terms of will we're back to Sept. 10:
Nobody thinks America is prepared to use its power.
And so Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad and wannabe "strong horses" like Baby Assad
cock their snooks with impunity."
Iraq: Quit Or Commit, Rick Moran, 20 Aug 2006.
"Iran and Syria.
.. have judged that we will do nothing to stop them from continuing their support for the terrorists
and the insurgency. We interdict what supplies and men that we can but it isn't enough.
And Iran and Syria have apparently decided that since there is no downside to their support
for our enemies in Iraq, that they can bleed us white while engineering a humiliating defeat
for American prestige in the process.
...
And why we have done so little in the past three years to stop them is, to my mind,
one of the biggest mysteries of the war."
Election 2006
- Cox and Forkum, like me, are
disappointed in Bush since his re-election in 2004.
He has done little to win the war since 2003.
He is trying to stay the course, and hold the ground.
But he is not fighting to win.
-
"Two years later, as this week's mid-term Congressional elections approach,
I have lost almost all confidence in Bush's and the Republicans' abilities
to wage the necessary war against Islamists. Bush has certainly had his good moments,
...
But even these have been exposed as mostly words not principles.
... the list of Bush's compromises since 9/11 is appalling:
...
Bush is not waging the kind of war necessary for a lasting victory,
and we are losing as a result. He is willing to fight and, unlike most Democrats,
appears to recognize that the threat from Islamists requires us to fight.
But, hamstrung by an apparent moral uncertainty or confusion, he is not willing to fight to
win."
What should Bush do?
Kill al-Sadr and the other Iraqi militia leaders,
and bring down the regimes of Iran and Syria.
The media said the 2006 election was about the war
(and the anti-war side won),
but the 2004 election was supposedly not about the war.
The media claims this election was all about the war.
And yet when Bush won in 2004,
the media denied it was all about the war,
and claimed it was about religion, or something.
But surely when Bush is running himself,
the election is far more likely to be about the war
than when he is not running at all,
and voters are choosing local representatives
based on a vast range of local issues?
I'm sure the war was part of it, but I suspect the media are exaggerating.
Many people are unhappy with the war.
But I do not think the American people want to withdraw in failure,
as Islamist fundamentalists and left-wingers everywhere in the world hope.
Many conservatives are unhappy with Bush because they want to win,
and Bush has been drifting.
Be that as it may, the effect of electing Democrats
may be to lose the war.
European appeasers and defeatists celebrate.
As Denis Boyles says, American voters might be amazed to see some of the reactions:
"American voters .. may have been impatient but might not have realized
they were voting to legitimize the humiliation of the US military."
Iranian enemy leader Ayatollah Khamenei celebrates:
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America,
but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world.
...
Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation,
this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
Al Qaeda celebrate.
They clearly view the election as a victory for them:
"you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections,
nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen
- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq
- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost"
Al Qaeda in Iraq celebrate
(and here):
"Now the American nation has put their foot on the beginning of the right path
to save them from their crisis, so they voted for something reasonable in the latest elections
... Will the politicians keep their promises by bringing back their boys from Iraq
from the lion's hand
...
They are getting ready to leave,
because they are no longer capable of staying"
Al Qaeda in Iraq celebrate Rumsfeld's sacking,
which the enemy clearly sees as a victory for them.
They hate and fear Bush and Rumsfeld,
and clearly have no fear of Democrats leading the war:
"I tell the lame duck [Bush],
don't rush to escape as your lame and midget defense secretary [Rumsfeld] did,
for we haven't yet had enough of your blood. Stand fast in the battlefield you coward,
for we know the Romans [Westerners] are not ashamed of defeat."
They call Bush "the most stupid president".
Again and again, it must be said, if evil people don't like you,
there must be something right about you.
And likewise, Democrats and left-wing Europeans should consider,
if evil people like you,
there must be something wrong with you.
Aren't the Democrats worried that America's enemies
see their election as a good thing?
America falters
by Melanie Phillips:
"I think something different: that the most likely outcome of these mid-term elections
is another major terror attack on America.
...
America has now signalled a faltering of resolve; and that's the cue for a redoubled Islamist attack."
Mona Charen is bleak:
"America is the world's hyperpower. No other nation or group of nations
can challenge us militarily or economically.
...
But we are about to be defeated in Iraq by a few thousand cutthroats.
...
The writing is not just on the wall, it's on the floors, ceilings, tables, and chairs - we are about to give up."
Abandoning Iraq,
David Warren, November 8, 2006,
is bleak:
"Congress will take the war in Iraq out of President Bush's hands,
as Congress took the Vietnam War out of President Nixon's.
Iraq will then be delivered into the hands of Iran's ayatollahs."
He notes perhaps Bush's greatest failing:
"[Post-WW2] Germany and Japan had no neighbours like Iran and Syria,
destabilizing Iraq by feeding weapons and jihadis into the country.
The American and British refusal, from the outset, to make Iran and Syria pay,
and pay heavily for their meddling, was noted and thoroughly exploited by the enemy."
And he remembers Vietnam all too well:
"My 21st birthday happened to coincide with the final evacuation of Saigon.
From my modest experience on the ground in that country, I knew what was coming next.
The boat people were no surprise to me.
I think that was the day I fully realized, in adult terms,
that evil often prevails in this world.
...
The fate that will befall all those millions of courageous Iraqis, showing the dye on their fingers after they had voted
- in defiance of all the terror threats
- will not come as a surprise to me, either. They are being sold out, as the Vietnamese were before them."
The modern western voter may not have the staying power for a long war.
America is
"the first superpower with
ADHD".
In response to an immediate attack, the US is not like Spain.
It will fight, but soon it loses interest,
so the end result is the same:
"we are all Spaniards now".
"You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections
- 1986,
1958, 1938, yada yada
- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe,
where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush,
where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense."
"What does it mean when the world's hyperpower,
responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot
withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against
a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment"
or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera,
you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington
will have been lost in translation.
... we're in a very dark place right now."
Also in the dark year of 2006,
it looked as if Bush might abandon neo-conservatism
and turn to the failed "realist" foreign policy
of his father.
Bush is an odd and inconsistent
combination of neo-con and "realist",
and his administration has reflected this odd mix:
It has pursued
"realist" policies towards Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
and yet has pursued destabilising neo-con policies elsewhere.
It has
"realist" figures like
Colin Powell
and
Robert Gates
implementing neo-con policies like
the invasion of Iraq
and the surge.
In 2006, it looked like the balance was swinging towards the "realists".
Bush
turned for advice to
James Baker
and the
Iraq Study Group,
and looked like returning to
the "realist", realpolitik foreign policy of
Bush senior.
It was realists (Nixon, Ford, Kissinger)
who lost Vietnam to the enemy.
And now the realists looked like they might lose Iraq to the enemy too.
Rumsfeld and the Realists
by Michael Rubin
- a scathing attack on the "realists"
James Baker and Robert Gates,
who Bush is foolishly listening to.
"Realism promotes short-term gain, often at the expense of long-term security.
...
Realists deny reality, and embrace
an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere.
While 9/11 showed the consequences of chardonnay diplomacy,
deal-cutting with dictators and a band-aid approach to national security,
realists continue to discount the importance of adversaries' ideologies
and the need for long-term strategies."
Rubin is also (as am I) amazed by the left's support for such cynical realpolitik
over idealistic neo-conservatism.
Victor Davis Hanson, November 13, 2006,
is horrified by the return of the dictator-friendly, Islamist-friendly realists:
"Next will come the Baker group report on Iraq
- no doubt with more calls to reassure regional dictatorships and to ask them to help "stabilize" Iraq,
as if such creepy strongmen would find anything to their advantage
in having a successful democracy next door."
On realism:
"This was a policy that gave us the arming of Osama bin Laden et al.
to stop the Soviets in Afghanistan,
sort of played Iran off against Iran in their murderous war of the 1980s,
abandoned the Kurds, favored the Soviet Gorbachev over the Russian Yeltsin,
stopped outside Baghdad and let the Shiites and Kurds be gunned down after urging them to revolt,
let Milosevic do his murdering unopposed,
and established a revolving door in the Middle East in which former
American officials [are] rewarded with legal, financial, and arms
links to petro-dollar rich dictatorships."
Victor Davis Hanson, November 21, 2006,
on the appalling realists' idea of "talking" to
(i.e. surrendering to)
the enemy states Iran and Syria:
"But why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain.
The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq
in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon;
the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq
in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb.
What we would be doing in essence by "dialoguing"
is saying to both the democracies in Lebanon and Israel,
"Sorry, but we have to find a way out of Iraq,
and these fascists will promise to turn away from us if they can turn on you.""
"All this is dressed up with realist "maturity" and "concern" but it would be consistent with
those who brought us Iran-Contra, aid to both Iran and Iraq in their war,
stopping before Baghdad, hugs with the House of Saud that paid money to those who killed Americans,
and on and on. If Syria and Iran can be assured of a truce,
that we won't destabilize them at home or stop their adventurism abroad,
then they might let us save face in Iraq.
That they would ever honor such a deal is absurd,
that we would ever believe they would is worse than absurd."
In many ways, the "realists" are more naive than the most naive leftists.
Read all the neo-con blogs and sites.
The people who stuck by Bush all through Iraq,
the only people who support Bush and the troops and their mission,
the only supporters of the
Bush Doctrine
- they are all horrified that Bush himself may abandon it
for the appeasement of "realism",
that Bush may not be Reagan's heir after all:
Comment:
"If Bush buys this, he is as stupid as his critics say he is."
Comment:
"I don't get why Baker and his ilk are considered realists.
Sure they advocate national interest over morality in foreign policy
but shouldn't part of a realist plan
involve it having a realistic change of success?"
Comment:
"Bush pissed away the mandate he was given in the 2004 election,
to crush Islamofacism, through timidity, indecision and appeasement."
Surrender as "Realism",
Robert Kagan and William Kristol,
Weekly Standard, November 27, 2006:
"'realism' has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests
and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East."
From Lebanon to Iran to Iraq to Israel, it seems that:
"'Realism' is letting dictators get away with terror and murder
- and,
in particular, letting them get away with the murder of our friends."
"So let's add up the "realist" proposals: We must retreat from Iraq,
and thus abandon all those Iraqis .. who have depended on the United States for safety
and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon
.. in order to win Syria's support for our retreat from Iraq.
We must abandon our opposition to Iran's nuclear program
in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq.
And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas
in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.
This is what passes for realism these days.
But of course this is not realism. It is capitulation.
Were the United States to adopt this approach every time we faced a difficult set of problems,
were we to attempt to satisfy our adversaries' every whim in order to win their acquiescence,
we would rapidly cease to play any significant role in the world.
We would be neither feared nor respected
- nor, of course, would we be any better liked. Our retreat would win us no friends
and lose us no adversaries."
On "talks" with the enemy states Iran and Syria:
"When democracies engage with fanatical tyrants, the world becomes not less dangerous but more so.
...
with totalitarian regimes like those in Iran and Syria, the effect of such "conversations" is usually negative. It buys time and legitimacy for the totalitarians, while deepening their conviction that the West has no stomach for a fight."
On the absurd idea that Iran and Syria want a stable and peaceful Iraq:
"No regimes on earth have more to gain from an American defeat in Iraq than the theocracy
in Iran and the Assad dictatorship in Syria.
They have every incentive to aggravate the Iraqi turmoil
that has so many Americans clamoring for withdrawal."
And the brutal truth is that:
"The war against radical Islam ...
cannot be won so long as regimes like those in Tehran and Damascus remain in power."
When will Bush explain this to the American people?
Michael Rubin:
"There is no evidence to support the assumption that Iran and Syria want a stable Iraq."
David Zucker
mocks James Baker and the Iraq Study Group
as hopelessly naive appeasers.
From here.
Iraqi "resistance" loves it, urges implementation.
- "For militants and insurgents in Iraq, the report represents
hope that the Americans will finally leave, and sooner than expected."This report gives them hope,
i.e. encourages them to kill more.
"This report just makes us stronger in our beliefs
and reinforces our view that the best choice to be taken by the United States is to leave Iraq soon",
said an enemy jihadi killer.
Islamic Jihad celebrates:
"The report proves that this is the era of Islam and of jihad
...
the Americans came to the conclusion that Islam is the new giant of the world
and it would be clever to reduce hostilities with this giant.
In the Koran the principle of the rotation is clear and according to this principle
the end of the Americans and of all non-believers is getting closer"
"Islamic Jihad's Abu Ayman said after the US "defeat" in Iraq is finalized,
insurgents there should move to the West Bank and Gaza to help destroy Israel."
"the terror leader said the report shows insurgent actions are working."
Hamas says it is
a great victory for Islam:
"It is not just a simple victory. It is a great one.
The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen.
...
It is a sign to all those who keep saying that America, Israel and the West in general cannot be defeated
on the ground so let us negotiate with them.
...
the next step would be a total defeat on their (American) land,
not a relative one like they are facing in Iraq"
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades celebrate:
"Just to think that this resistance is led by hundreds of Sunni fighters who defeated
hundreds of thousands of Americans, British and thousands of soldiers who belong to the puppet regime in Baghdad."
"The al-Aqsa leader said his group learned from the "Iraqi resistance" that jihad will ultimately destroy Israel."
And of course America's rare allies in the region are horrified
and betrayed:
Olmert rejects linkage of Israel with Iraq.
He is horrified by the idiotic Baker group suggestion that
solving the Israel conflict will help in solving the Iraq conflict.
In reality, the very destruction of Israel
would not stop the jihad in Iraq.
New York Post:
"The Iraq Study Group report delivered to President Bush yesterday contains
79 separate recommendations -
but not one that explains how American forces can defeat the terrorist insurgents,
only ways to bring the troops home."
Charles Johnson:
"All these recommendations stem from a basis of complete fantasy, in which Israel's Arab neighbors are genuinely interested in peace and all we have to do to get it is ask them the right way."
Michael Rubin:
"even if the president does not accept the report,
its very presence will embolden Iraqi insurgents and militias."
Melanie Phillips:
"the harm done by the mere publication of this report is severe.
Its authors have shamefully heartened and strengthened the enemies of the west
at a time when coalition soldiers are fighting and dying to defend it."
Mark Steyn:
"Why would anyone
- even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the "Read my lips" pledge
- why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq's future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian "right of return"?""The Surrender Gran'pas assert that Iran and Syria have
"an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." This, to put it mildly,
is news to the Iranians and Syrians, who have concluded that what's in their interest is much more chaos in Iraq."
Daniel Pipes:
"one wonders how exactly the Iraqi civil war would be ended by pleasing the Palestinian Arabs.
Or why the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict is any more relevant to Iraq than the unresolved Azeri-Armenian conflict, which is closer to Iraq."
Charles Krauthammer:
"Baker thinks that if only the Israelis would surrender to Arab demands, all would be well in the Middle East.""these 10 establishment
sages have labored mightily to produce a mouse"
"SURRENDER MONKEYS"
- The New York Post,
7 Dec 2006,
sums up the
Iraq Study Group's report,
which calls for surrender to the enemy,
and a "realist" pursuit of the enemy's interests, rather than of ours.
Bush tosses the ISG report
Bush essentially tossed the ISG report in the bin! Good for him!
We underestimated him again.
Robert Kagan & William Kristol:
"President Bush has made clear that he has no intention of following the commission's recommendations.
...
He intends to pursue steadfastly his own course in Iraq. He is determined not to withdraw before it becomes stable and, yes, democratic. He will not be buffeted by conventional wisdom or by Baker and his colleagues
...
right now we can only applaud the president's courage and determination and his willingness to resist the pressures of those who would now sound the retreat."
Instead of adopting the ISG's idea of surrendering,
there are signs that Bush is finally looking at
How to win in Iraq
- i.e. destroy the militias, and start hurting Iran and Syria.
U.S. Troops now authorized to kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq, January 26, 2007.
"For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents,
holding them for three to four days at a time.
The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran
and yet intimidate its emissaries.
...
Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided
that a more confrontational approach was necessary
...
'There were no costs for the Iranians,' said one senior administration official.
'They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.'
...
The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by President Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall"
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."
