The Shotgun Blog
« Witness to Kazemi Murder Case is Executed | Main | The Curse of the NDP-ino »
Monday, November 13, 2006
Strength in Ottowa, weakness in Washington and London
With each passing day, it appears the Iranian mullahs will succeed in colonizing Iraq (and getting away with underwriting the terrorists who are killing Americans and their allies there).
Meanwhile, as spinelessness is praised in Washington and London, the clear-eyed anti-Communism of Stephen Harper is met with bewilderment and condescending criticism (eighth item). What a world.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on November 13, 2006 in Canadian Politics, International Affairs | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834515b5d69e200d834fa694169e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Strength in Ottowa, weakness in Washington and London:
Comments
Just another day in the great Liberal democracy eh DJ?
Posted by: Duke | 2006-11-13 12:49:17 PM
The best thing we in the west could do is put all our male children in the Boy Scouts, then the Cadets, then a couple of years of military training.
Perhaps the women could use a bit of that too along with some nursing skills.
Then we may be ready to at least fight the losing battle against Islam rather than just fall on our knees and beg for mercy as most Lefties will no doubt do as a last minute strategy.
Posted by: Duke | 2006-11-13 12:51:43 PM
"For them to be delaying confirmation of a meeting between the world's eighth largest economy and one of their most important sources of raw natural resources is an indication Mr. Harper has some work to do."
Funny, I would have thought it would be the Chinese who have some work to do.
Posted by: johndoe124 | 2006-11-13 1:17:19 PM
This is what I wrote to my American friends with Ezra's latist article site attached. One I hope all will read, from the SUN.
I might add. If America does lose the will to fight this war. Than Albertans had better start thinking of making our own nukes. With a quick exit from this Federation that will become over time ever more Islamized, by the year.
In the years a head we will all have to make big decisions on where our hearts belong. In the colum of the appeasers who will submit to barbarism, or those willing to fight & stay the course of civilization. Its inevatable now. The fench just busted. No sitting room now.
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Levant_Ezra/2006/11/13/2338768.html
This is pretty much how some people up here, see a Democratic win. In Alberta we will sit back, watch them self destruct , as we have seen our own loony tune socialists hang themselves by there own tounges.
I predict it won't be too long before the moonbat brigade, reverts to form.
Like children they can't help themselves. I suspect where in for two years of recriminations, subpoenas, perhaps even an impeachment attempt.
They have kept there rage in check ,but how long will that last? Particularly when there cherished fantasizes of 911 & other events turn out to be what they really where. Not the bag of lies leftists, with there jihadist brothers have fashioned from air.
I blame the big Government Republicans in name only, for this debacle. These faux conservatives botched it all, by there own greed. With there whimpering immigration inaction.
I only hope that Classical Liberals (A dying breed) & those with enough brain cells, will stem the damage sure to come.
I have given up myself on this war ending with small casualties. Where headed for a major war now, all because we decided to ignore the realities of the World & choose to live in a private universe of denial. I would not even discount a full American revolution in the future over the events if they deteriate.
I just see more appeasement in the future with these jokers. As Churchill said. Appeasement is like feeding a crocodile while hoping your the last one to be eaten.
If the bonfire of self-determination, that is America goes out, or hides it light. Than a new dark age is inevitable.
By the way? Where is the usual rage about stealing the election by the Dems? Bad machines, innuendo about Governors? Oh they won. What a shock when elections have been fixed for so long according to them. Eh?
Frankly I hope I am wrong in every utterance or word typed. When I wish the Democrats do a good job, you know I am worried. No the word terrified comes to mind.
PS As I wrote this the Democrates are already talking about social medicine & withdrawl from Iraq. There salivating over just how many law suites they will bring. I weep for both Nations. The only hope is this becomes such a nightmare these vultures are shown for what they are.
Welcome America to Liberanoland.
Posted by: Revnant Dream | 2006-11-13 2:05:45 PM
If Israel holds true to its latest statements then the Iranians might want to reconsider their nuclear arms ambitions.
With all that oil below their (Iranian) sand they can produce cheap electricity.
The nuclear issue is clearly a sham.
Basically rubble will occupy the sites that now house Iranian enrichment centrifuges.
But Bibi Netanyahu has to replace Ehud Ohmert first.
Susequently the ME lawn chairs may well get rearranged by Israel and help the US in Iraq at the same time.
Posted by: Joe Molnar | 2006-11-13 2:35:43 PM
DJ,
I read the CP article you link to and don't see a word of criticism there by anyone for Harper's anti-communism. I see people saying the delay in scheduling a meeting means the Chinese are unhappy with him and some saying that promoting lagging business interests is importnat, but no one saying his anti-comunist stance is bad. Can you point to anything in the article I missed, or is the criticism one you just infer (or just assume)?
Posted by: Mark Logan | 2006-11-13 3:32:02 PM
we would not want to upset china, they might cut back on walmart shipments. we have the same old communist tyrants in china, and now the nutbar muslim nations and movements trying to take over the world, and the western nations are more and more sinking there heads into the sand. what do we have in canada the ndp who would turn over canada to the muslim world and the liberals who are embracing the us democratic party and having howard dean tell them how to run things
Posted by: john a. | 2006-11-13 4:01:18 PM
Maybe we should study the year 1935. People were running away from a possible war. Is it not the same? People are they not in denial?
In that period, General Charles the Gaulles even wrote a book to show how the Maginot line was only an illusion the French were hiding behind.
I'm afraid it will have to go worse before it gets better. In my point of view, Democrats had no agenda, no program except to end the Irak war.
And USA did not enter WWII before Japan attacked in Pearl Harbour. So the question might be: what will be the next Pearl Harbour? A nuclear device blowing up New York?
Could Stephen Harper become the new Churchill?
Posted by: Rémi Houle | 2006-11-13 4:28:15 PM
Remi,
"Could Stephen Harper become the new Churchill?"
No.
"And USA did not enter WWII before Japan attacked in Pearl Harbour. So the question might be: what will be the next Pearl Harbour? A nuclear device blowing up New York?"
Sadly, yes.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2006-11-13 4:32:05 PM
I'd never before heard of Ottowa County in Ohio.
clue:
http://www.canajun.com/ottawa/tourism/pictures/intro/index.htm
Posted by: 123 | 2006-11-13 5:22:44 PM
It would seem that Mr Harper is one of the few western leaders to have a say or a stance on a wide range of issues....
How unfortunate for him that there is a fifth column with an unsheathed knife awaiting him at every turn..
How sad, that it is his own countrymen, appeasers and Quislings all, that would rather their anti western, pro Marxist leanings cloud the real issues...
Unfortunately, when that day of atonement comes for those on the left, we will still fight for their ilk because that is who we are..with neither thanks nor gratitude nor a willingness to help.
I see the left and its ideology as a fragile shell, barely containing the rot and disease that so infects their addled minds..no amount of harsh reality will dissuade them, no just cause they can't sabotage
The gotterdamerrung of the left will be an impressive spectacle indeed, full of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but never an apology..
Apology would mean defeat, but this is not what scares the left..it will be the recognition that they have always been wrong, on every level..there will be such a stench from that rotted shell when their ideals are drained as so much pus..unwanted, infectious, and ultimately cleansed...we cannot see it down the drain fast enough.
Posted by: kursk | 2006-11-14 1:20:39 AM
Kursk, your comment was the perfect ending to my day. I've been in a bit of a bad mood, but I laughed so hard at your comment that I feel much better.
You people on here are so ridiculous. Especially Duke and his idea of forceful military service by our children. We're so lucky to be living in a country with a left leaning mentality so we never, ever, have to have someone with his obvious insanity running our country. In fact, I think the majority of you my be in need of some professional psychological help. You all, especially Duke, have a lot of demons in the closet. Maybe its childhood abuse either sexual or physical, or maybe your parents did too much crack when you were in the womb, but for the sake of yourselves, your children, and this country, check yourselves into a clinic. You have a disease, and luckily its not contagious.
Posted by: Iggy for PM | 2006-11-14 1:46:31 AM
A failure to spot irony or humour usually indicates a dull mind. Lefty Lucy is conditioned to spot only one kind.
Posted by: Bunker | 2006-11-14 1:58:25 AM
Well,that's the problem with the left..everythings a joke to them..whistling past the graveyard..
The funny thing is,you are all the joke..every chowder head junior Marxist who believes that they have something to say,and anyone cares...
We laugh at you because in your ignorance,you believe that tearing down institutions leads to a utopia where nothing bad ever happens to anyone...
I am sure you are familiar with the phrase useful idiot?
Comments from you mean nothing to me..sorry you had to waste precious motor skills doing this when you could be out protesting some where...
Posted by: kursk | 2006-11-14 3:54:59 AM
One more thing...anyone who would seriously suggest that a man who has been away from Canada 30 years (and is so out of touch with the modern reality that is Canada) would be fit to govern Canada -i believe- is seriously undermedicated..
Perhaps it is you who should be checking into a clinic...the Clarke if you are truly disturbed,or perhaps Betty Ford if you are a common delusional drunk and just have the DT's..
What IS in that Koolaid you fellows drink anyway?
Careful with those other comments my friends,there might be some here who just might be victims of said abuse,of which they no doubt found neither solace nor satisfaction from the Liberal "justice" system...
Posted by: kursk | 2006-11-14 4:07:12 AM
kursk:
Right you are.
What fools are the Liberals out to dupe? Putting a person who's been away for 30 years up as front runner, a "saviour", to lead them and in turn, the Country, should be an insult to every patriotic, self-respecting Canadian of any political stripe.
Add to that a former Ontario NDP Premier who bankrupted the province, probably hoping to haul in a few NDP voters and people with short memories in Ontario.
It's obvious Liberals don't care about anything but power and will choose the best snake oil salesman to deliver that power.
We have in Harper a chance to take back the Country to what she was built on and stood for prior to Trudeau's tinkering and decades of Liberal rule, with 21st century provisos, of course.
We simply can't cave to terrorism as demanded by the likes of Jack Layton, our existence depends on fighting it vigorously wherever it rears it's ugly head. That sort of inbred evil cannot be reasoned with.
Posted by: Liz J | 2006-11-14 6:47:35 AM
Change America for Canada and a few names. Long but well worth reading.
A DISTURBING PIECE OF WRITING!!
BY Raymond S. Kraft
What is Past is Prologue This is history that has been left out of our textbooks. Most of you are not old enough to remember that nearly every family in America was grossly affected by WWII. Most of you don't remember the rationing of meat, shoes, gasoline, and sugar. No tires for our automobiles, and a speed limit of 35 miles an hour on the road. Not to mention, no new automobiles. Read this and think about how we would react to being taken This is an EXCELLENT essay. Well thought out and presented.
Historical Significance Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.
At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following d ay on Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe. America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the East, was already under the Nazi heel.
America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after W.W.I and throughout the depression, so that at the outbreak of WWII, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact). Actually, Belgium surrendered in one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.
Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.
Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.
Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly have won the war.
All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. And that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing........in Iraq.
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things.
(1 We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.
World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again ... a 27 year war.
World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.
This is not 60-minute TV shows, and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.
The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.
The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely an other battle in this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them.
We have four options:
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is)
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.
If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
Remember, perspective is every thing, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.
The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken more than 2,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US too k more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In W.W.II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
But the stakes are at least as high ... A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms .. or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).
It's difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.
"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's safe.
Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most?
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.
Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.
Posted by: Canadian plus | 2006-11-14 8:15:12 AM
Iggy for PM :
I will let you in on a little saying my Granny used to Quote us children.
Make sure you don't put yourself on too high a horse or mountain. It makes your privates more visable.
From my vantage point, your a shrinking wonder (O:}
Now go get some theropy yourself & in 20 years you too like Woody Allen, can cavort off, with an adopted daughter.
Or is often the case join a cult like scientology, or some self activasion nonesense.
Better yet repent!!!
Posted by: Revnant Dream | 2006-11-14 9:17:33 AM
The 'Peace Movement' is and always has been led and paid for by the Communists.
They and their agents in the West believe they can support the Mohammedans, the Mohammedans will weaken us and we will weaken the Mohammedans through war, and then the Communists will pick off and conquer the survivors in both camps.
That is why the Left is supporting Islam, for the moment.
Posted by: Speller | 2006-11-14 10:04:06 AM
Too many people are oblivious to the dangers of Socialism in our World today and are woefully ignorant of it's history.
Most don't even realize Nazism, Communism,Fascism are all socialist movements. We have Lefty bozos calling Conservatives "Fascists" and "Nazis", they obviously have no idea of their meaning or concepts. They know they're bad sounding names to apply without realizing they apply more closely to their own ideologies.
Here we have socialistic movements in our government, NDP and the all things to all people Liberal party has a good bit of the same ideology.
We cannot risk giving the upper hand to Leftoids even in our democracy given the very volatile terrorist threat and the reality of it which we are fighting in places like Afghanistan.
Posted by: Liz J | 2006-11-14 11:40:01 AM
This site has way too many John Birchers.
Don't be afraid to take your meds folks.
Posted by: Kent | 2006-11-14 8:15:32 PM
Thank-you Canadian Plus for that essay. It painted a real picture. People do not realize that history is at a crossroads right now - it is the 'big event' - world slavery is on our doorsteps.
President Bush was right about the axis of evil and the people of USA supported him when he came out with guns a blaze after 911. Canada shamed it's people by siding with the 'people haters' but we had the horrible Cretchen snarling for us back then. PMSH would not have left our best friend (the USA) to fight it out alone. We, with other honorable nations, would have seen the writting on the "Death to Infidals" dispatch delivered by the monsters who believe in the cult of death for the sake of death.
The present Prime Minister of this country, Mr. Stephen Harper is not being heard by most people because our msm has declared war on our freely elected government and our Prime Minister. It is almost unbelievable that this could happen in a soverign nation but the msm shock me every day with their mean, nasty, negative remarks about their own government. It makes me feel sick. I am so grateful to the blogs, the internet for the blogs, the posters on the blogs and the journalists at Western Standard for adressing the adult issues of these dangerous days.
Not one of the msm so called journalists ever ask their audience "What will happen to you and ME/ME/ME if the jhadists win"? Do those airheads think that the madness that enrages the jhadis will stop when they see Janie of the giggle, 'locked at 16' shreeking in gossipy delight when the terrorists bomb the Conservative people in this country? Do these left wing goofies think that a killer from the M.E. or China will check to see which msm people spoke up for them, the evil ones?
Why do we tolerate these stupid, uneducated, lazy 'children'; the msm? Why do we have no Lorne Greens and Nolton Nashes to support us morally and help us understand what is really at stake here? I fear for my beautiful country and for the Free people of the world... . And the msm squawks on about 'Koyta' - Great Balls of Fire - what incredable fools they are! Our world could collapse and the msm would still be squawking (as the death squad were murdering our last solidiers and police officers) about the danger(to your health!)of temperatures going up and down as the seasons change or how one whiff of the smoke from a cigarette will kill a person in 50 years.
Posted by: jema54j | 2006-11-15 1:30:45 AM
We have a choice, fight Evil or let it take us over.
The MSM and the Leftoids appear to be out of the loop in the fight against terrorism.
We don't have the journalistic integrity of people like Nash and Greene, mentioned by jema54, to rely on for unbiased reporting of just the facts.
It's not being grasped by enough people how dangerous a biased, meddling media is to a Country.
Are we ready to become a Banana Republic?
If the CTV Network were seriously concerned for the Country they would not be putting the likes of Jane Taber up as Host of their main Political Shows. It's a serious business requiring at the very least maturity of thought and neutrality.
Posted by: Liz J | 2006-11-15 7:09:00 AM
Baghdad: The New Saigon?
by Patrick J. Buchanan - November 14, 2006
It appears the Beltway bombing halt agreed upon at the Bush-Pelosi summit is over.
The incoming chairmen of the Senate’s armed services and foreign affairs committees, Carl Levin and Joe Biden – and Majority Leader Harry Reid – say a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be their first priority. Troop redeployment, says Reid, “should start within the next few months.”
White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton counters: “I don’t think we’re going to be receptive to the notion there’s a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that would be a true disaster for the Iraqi people.”
John McCain says we need more troops to crush the Mahdi Army and militias, and achieve victory. If we set a deadline for withdrawal, said McCain, we risk a Saigon ending, with Americans being helicoptered off the roof of the U.S. embassy. McCain appears to be adopting the George Wallace stance of 1968 – “Win, or Get Out!”
And so we come to the endgame in a war into which we were plunged by Bush Republicans and those neoconservatives now scurrying back to their think tanks, and the Clinton-Kerry-Edwards-Biden-Reid-Daschle Democrats, who voted Bush a blank check in October 2002 to get the war issue “out of the way” before the elections.
America has been horribly served by both parties. And as the Democrats have now captured Congress, they assume co-responsibility for the retreat from Mesopotamia. Which is as it should be.
While our leaders never thought through the probable result of invading an Arab nation that had not attacked us, we had best think through the probable results of a pullout in 2007.
We are being told that by giving the Iraqis a deadline, after which we start to withdraw, we will stiffen their spines to take up greater responsibility for their own country. But there is as great or greater a likelihood that a U.S. pullout will break their morale and spirit, that the Iraqi government and army, seeing Americans heading for the exit ramp, will collapse before an energized enemy, and Shias, Sunnis and Kurds will scramble for security and survival among their own.
Arabs are not ignorant of history. They know that when we pulled out of South Vietnam, a Democratic Congress cut off aid to the Saigon regime, and every Cambodian and Vietnamese who had cast his lot with us wound up dead, in a “re-education camp” or among the boat people in the South China Sea whose wives and children were routinely assaulted by Thai pirates.
In that first year of “peace” in Southeast Asia, 20 times as many Cambodians perished as all the Americans who died in 10 years of war.
In Iraq, a collapse of the government and army in the face of an American pullout, followed by a civil-sectarian war, the break-up of the country and a strategic debacle for the United States – emboldening our enemies and imperiling our remaining friends in the Arab world – is a real possibility.
Yet what Edmund Burke said remains true: “[N]o war can be long carried on against the will of the people.” And the American people are losing, if they have not lost, the will to continue this war. They are weary of the daily killing and dying, and of the endless talk of “progress” when all they see is death. They believe the war was a mistake, and they want to come home.
Our hawkish elites bemoan the fact that Americans seem ready to give up on Iraq when U.S. casualties are not 10 percent of those we took in the Korean War. That is because they do not understand the nation.
Americans are not driven by some ideological vocation to reform mankind. We do not have the patience or perseverance of great imperial peoples. If an issue is not seen as vital to our own liberty and security, we will not fight long for some abstraction like democracy, self-determination or human rights.
It is a myth that we went to war to save the world from fascism. We went to war in 1941 because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That Hitler had overrun France, booted the British off the continent and invaded Stalin’s empire was not a reason to send American boys across the ocean to die.
In 1990, Americans were not persuaded to throw Iraq out of Kuwait until Bush 1 got to talking about Saddam’s nuclear weapons. Even after 9-11, Americans were skeptical of marching to Baghdad until we were told Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction and probably intended to use them on us. Americans have often had to be lied into war.
Democrats are probably reading the country right. Americans will not send added troops to Iraq, as McCain urges. They want out of this war and are willing to take the consequences.
But those consequences are going to be ugly and enduring. That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.
Posted by: No Spin Zone | 2006-11-15 9:18:41 AM
The historic blunder was to give the Democrats a majority in the House of Congress.
Posted by: Speller | 2006-11-15 9:48:12 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.