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November 23, 2006
On 'Making the Last Mistake in Iraq'
Topics: IraqTony Blankley's piece at Real Clear Politics offers up a very meaningful take home message that every American should hear: Quoting last century's great chess master Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower, he writes, "Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." Retreating from Iraq would be the last mistake."
... If we, the most powerful force on the planet, in a fit of disappointment and anger at our bungling policies to date, decide to shrug off our responsibilities to the future -- we will soon receive, and deserve, the furious contempt of a terrified world. ... In fact, even those Americans who today can't wait to end our involvement in the "hopeless" war in Iraq will -- when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest -- join the chorus of outrage.Read more ...Al Qaeda and other terrorists are already gloating that they have whipped the "cowardly Americans" in Iraq. We will be seen (in fact, we are already beginning to be seen) as a weak reed for moderate Muslims to rely on in their hearts and mind struggle against the radical Islamists. Bin Laden was right in one regard: People fear and follow the strong horse; even more so in Middle Eastern culture, where restraint is seen as weakness and murder is seen as strength.
In the face of such a dreadful likelihood, the emerging Washington consensus is an exercise in self-delusion unworthy of a 5-year-old. The almost consensus Washington argument assumes that if only we would formally talk with them, Iran and Syria would volunteer to pull our chestnuts out of the fire while we start removing troops from Iraq. Such arguments exemplify the witticism that when ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Iran has been our persistent enemy for 27 years -- Syria longer. They may well be glad to give us cover while we retreat, but that would merely be an exercise in slightly delayed gratification, not self-denial, let alone benignity. So long as Iran is ruled by its current radical Shi'a theocracy, she will be vigorously and violently undercutting any potentially positive, peaceful forces in the region -- and is already triggering a prolonged clash with the terrified Sunni nations. Our absence from the region will only make matters far worse.
We need to start undermining by all methods available that dangerous Iranian regime -- as the Iranian people, free to express and implement their own opinions and policies, are our greatest natural allies in the Muslim Middle East.
We have only two choices: Get out and let the ensuing Middle East firestorm enflame the wider world; or, stay and with shrewder policies and growing material strength manage and contain the danger.
... Those who call themselves realists are the least realistic. Their great unreality is that they can't imagine that the passions of the people -- for good or ill -- are to be reckoned with. Thus it was they who for half a century supported and exploited the Middle East dictators who caused the Islamist pathologies that threaten the world today. It is they who will do business with the corrupt dictators to the very minute that they are overthrown by the Islamist mobs. They will keep the cash register humming until it is flooded with blood. The "realists'" unjustified conceit is, today, the most dangerous pathology facing America.
Blue Crab Boulevard writes of Blankley's points:
We are at a crossroads. There is a horrible calculus here: We have lost around 3,000 of our fellow citizens to this war. Our enemies have decided on a tactic of murdering their own people to defeat us. And if we walk away, they will have won a great victory at an astonishingly low cost to us, regardless of how high the butcher's bill is to their own. The Islamists are not Muslims. They seek only temporal power while pretending a religious fealty to Islam. They do not care who they kill to get that power.Hot Air notes of "realism":And they will continue to press the attack if we walk away. They will not stop. They will be emboldened. The "emerging consensus" of the "realists" will cost the entire world a horrible price.
James Baker's influence is waxing, some Iraqis are calling for a new strongman (namely, former PM Iyad Allawi), and the debate among Democrats and some Republicans isn't if we're going to start withdrawing but whether it'll be within the next six months or twelve.Summing all this up, in spite of the likelihood that the U.S. may now, with the Dems in the seat of congressional power - make the last mistake, Ted Koppel was on the mark in his December 2005 comments on Meet The Press.... The stage is thus set, says Tony Blankley, for America's biggest -- and last -- mistake
... Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon's Druze leader and the Middle East's most prominent anti-Syrian politician, told WND yesterday after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel that Assad is "emboldened by the fact that the Americans are searching for an exit strategy from Iraq. This is encouraging all kinds of people to kill and create chaos in the region." The problem for him, for Blankley, and for us, though, is that we don't have much choice left in the matter: Iraqis want us out, not immediately but sooner rather than later. Blankley's point about the last mistake is well taken but the fact is we're only facing the last mistake now because of all the other mistakes before.
"The simple fact of the matter is it is in America's national interest that there be stability in the Persian Gulf, and if we precipitously pull the troops out of that area now, there'll be hell to pay."Unfortunately for Americans and others throughout the West, that hell to pay is likely to happen on the streets here at home when al-Qaeda and Iranian nuclear weapons are set off by radical Islamists, and the entire Middle East is lost to radical Islam. Sure, the Dems will have been exposed for the naive "realists" that they are, but that will be small consolation to the millions of American (and Western) dead here and abroad. If we end up pulling out of Iraq, the election of the Dems may just have doomed the fate of Western civilization, and ushered in the caliphate sought by the radical Islamists.
Posted by Richard at November 23, 2006 8:33 AM
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- On 'Making the Last Mistake in Iraq' - Nov 23, 2006
