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| The Quit-Iraq Time-Travelers |
| 2008-05-29 |
| by Ralph Peters WHENEVER retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003." Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Obama and his supporters on that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters. It's as if, in June 1944, critics had argued from facts frozen in June 1939. ("Why invade Normandy? Hitler's content with Czechoslovakia.") In the course of a war - any war - the situation changes, enemies evolve and goals shift. A war to preserve the Union becomes a war to end slavery; a war to defeat one set of totalitarian systems empowers a new network of tyrannies. It's a rare war whose end can be forecast neatly at its outset. And you don't get any do-overs. To date, not one "mainstream media" journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we "bring the troops home now." There's plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well. So, let's bring those quit-Iraq time-travelers back to mid-2008 and fill them in on what's happened since they were ideologically stranded five years ago: * After our troops reached Baghdad, al Qaeda's leaders made a colossal strategic miscalculation and publicly declared that Iraq was now the central front in their jihad against us. Matter of record, in the enemy's own words. Those are facts. If we nonetheless quit Iraq in 2009, the defeated remnants of al Qaeda will be able to declare victory, after all. The organization will be able to re-launch itself as the great Muslim victor over the Great Satan. We'll have thrown away a potentially decisive triumph and revived the fortunes of the fanatics who brought us 9/11. And the above only detailed the defeat of al Qaeda. Far more is happening in Iraq, all of it good: Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs have suffered a series of lopsided defeats; Muqtada's hiding in Iran, afraid to return; a democratically elected government has finally taken charge in Baghdad - and gained enormously in popularity. Iraqis look forward to the next round of elections (to the dismay of every Persian Gulf autocracy). Crucial legislation has been refined, passed and implemented. Iraq's economy is booming - and its government has begun paying its own way. Want more good news? Iran has failed in its bid to take control of Iraq. And our military leaders are drawing down our troop levels according to a sensible plan, with the prospect of more troop cuts to come. What don't the critics like? Democracy? The defeat of al Qaeda? Muslims turning to the US military for help? Troop cuts? The dramatically improved human-rights situation? What's the problem here? The answer's simple: Admitting that they've been mistaken about Iraq guts the left's argument for political entitlement. If the otherwise deplorable Bush administration somehow got this one right, it means the left got another big one wrong. So be prepared for frequent time-machine trips until November. The encouraging reality of today's Iraq will go ignored in favor of an endless mantra of "Al Qaeda wasn't there in 2003 . . ." The bottom line? Al Qaeda let the war's opponents down. |
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| #4 Plus it glosses over the various terrorists that were known to be living in Iraq during the 1990s and up until the beginning of the war : Abu Nidal is just the most famous of them. So the Left is trying to say the ONLY terrorists that matter are Al-Q, and that we should ignore or even accept other Islamic terrorists like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2008-05-29 20:05 |
| #3 This ignores all the other terrorists - include Saddam's regime itself - who were in Iraq. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2008-05-29 13:01 |
| #2 “It's today's reality that matters.” The non-sequitur rebuttal to this truth continues to be…"But it was the Invasion of Iraq itself that created the terrorists”. The bumper-sticker logic is that had it not been for the liberation of Iraq foreign Jihadists and Iraqi insurgents would have been content to live out their pious lives as simple goat herders. It’s great for sloganeering but as a rationalization for their argument – not so much. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2008-05-29 12:17 |
| #1 "Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in 2003." Neither in 1943 were Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy in French North Africa, under Vichy France with whom we were not at war with nor did we have an authorization to use force or a declaration of war against. Did that deter President Roosevelt from invading? No. Yet it was through that strategic avenue that we were able to confront and expel the Germans and Italians who were in North Africa. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-05-29 12:16 |