The Redhunter

Iraq will produce no Tet, we are on the strategic offensive, and we are winning
http://www.strategypage.com/the_war_in_iraq/enemy/2005412.asp

"More Iraqis are in poverty now than before the war"

Some are and some are not. Arthur Chrenkoff, as always, provides needed perspective with his "good news from Iraq" series, check out his latest, part 25, here, provides needed perspective. Anyone who thinks that what's happening in Iraq is all bad is simply not informed.

But I'm not going to quibble over this or that economic figure. Whether Iraqis are receiving more or less electricity now is important in a sense, but in another it's not.

Most southerners were worse off for years after the Civil War than before it. Japanese and Germans both suffered for years after the war. Indeed, the Germans recall the winters of 1946 and 1947 as among the worst ever, with starvation occuring in a "modern" European nation. In the words of one US Navy medical officer, "From 1945 to the middle of 1948, one saw the probable collapse, disintegration and destruction of a whole nation."

The Marshall Plan, which eventually rescued Germany, was not even announced for a year and a half after the war ended.

And let's not be under the illusion that everyone thought that the occupation of Germany was a success at the time. Newspaper headlines routinely told of a "failed occupation". Oh, and we were told that the Germans all hated us, too. Sound familiar?

Was the Civil War not worth it? World War II? How about our revolution? Although it did not wreck as much devastation as the Civil War, much of or most of the country was worse off after than before.

More to the point, there is the unstated, barely below the surface, insinuation that the Iraqi people would have been better off under Saddam. Those who make this argument need to come clean and answer the question; "do you think the Iraqi people whould have been better off if Saddam was still in power?"

These things take time. Yes it turned out harder than we on the right thought it would. What war hasn't?

"Michael Jackson/Scott Peterson/whomever dominates the news when we should be talking about Iraq"

Well gee, I'm sorry that the people don't share your idea of what is important. And what is your real objection, is it simply that we're not paying enough attention to Iraq, or that we're not paying the "right" kind of attention; ie, the papers are not screaming daily about how "we're losing"?

Sure, I get exasperated with the focus on crime dramas too. And all of the missing persons cases always seem to involve white females.

But I accept this for what it is. I may not always like it but I try and understand it, try and understand why not everyone shares my view of what is important.

Cutting the the heart of the matter, the fact is that people who attack "the people" in this manner are elitist and snobbish. No "the people" are not all "stupid", with you so smart. Me? I take the William F Buckley Jr attitude that I'd rather be governed by the first two hundred people in the phone book than by the faculties of Harvard and Yale combined.

"Our soldiers are dying in Iraq for nothing" or "Iraq is a diversion from the War on Terror"

Oh heavens. No there was not a formal alliance between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that was signed in a big formal ceremony. But anyone who thinks that Saddam was not involved in terrorism doesn't know what they are talking about.

One, there were links between Saddam and terrorism, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and... I've got more that I don't have time to post.

The root cause of the problems in the Middle East is a lack of pluralistic forms of government. Natan Sharansky got it right in his book "The Case for Democracy".

We're not there out of the goodness of our hearts, or perhaps I should say, purely out of the goodness of our hearts. We're there because the United States is most secure when more nations are free and democratic.

"We're Losing"

No we're not. A year or so ago the situation was dicey, yes. We backed off from cleaning out Fallujah and let Mullah Sadr run wild for a bit. We seemed hesitant, and unsure of ourselves. The interim Iraqi governing council was not working out, and the people did not accept it as legitimate.

All that has changed. I'm not going to provide a full analysis here, as I've done that before, see here, here, and here for examples. Or just click "Iraq" at right (however, since I moved to the new blog I haven't classified all of my old posts yet).

The insurgency has not been defeated, and will be with us for awhile. Much fighting continues. It is important to remember, however, that they have not succeeded in their goals. There has been no "Tet Offensive", despite their ardent attempts to create one, and for reasons explained here will likely not occur. Far from creating a civil war, Sunnis, Shi'is, and Kurds are coming together. And their brilliant strategy of attacking the Iraqi people is turning them against the insurgents, however they may feel about us.

"We told you that we'd never win in Iraq"

Well, sort of. What were told was that this time the Iraqi army would fight us tooth and nail every step of the way. And there would certainly be a huge "battle of Baghdad" that would last weeks or months. The Iraqis would dig in, Leningrad-style, and could hold us off for months, forcing us to fight street-to-street for every inch of territory.

As for WMD, well, it was indeed used as a reason why we should not invade, but it was used because many of you thought he had it and would use it against us.

You've also told us some other things that it seems you'd like us to forget.

In 1990/91, in the run-up to the Gulf War, we were told that American forces would surely suffer thousands of casualties if we attacked. It was not uncommon to hear that "5,000 - 10,000 American dead". Oh yes, the "battle hardened" Iraqi army would surely fight us tooth and nail for every square inch.

After no more than, what, one week? in Afghanistan we heard that it was turning into another Vietnam. "It's a quagmire!" "The Northern Alliance can't do it!" "We need more troops!" on and on.

In short, your track record stinks.

"Because of Iraq all the Arabs/Muslims hate us"

Those who were going to hate us already hated us. As Victor Davis Hanson illustrates in the story of a captured Syrian smuggler of Jihadists, "...there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq."

Many of them hate us because we are successful and they are not. They look back at the past glories of the Caliphate and see how far they have fallen. Everything around them was invented or developed in the west, even (or especially) the very weapons they use against us. Their governments are corrupt despotisms, their society disfunctional. Tiny Israel, with no oil, outperforms them, and it's armies defeat them every time. How can it be that the infidels have overtaken us? All of this breeds resentment. They know that they should have taken out Saddam, for they will admit that he was a butcher (and not a real Muslim), but it took the Americans to do it. It's sort of like the French, they're glad that we saved them, but bitter about it also. It wounds their pride.

"By invading Iraq we squandered the World's Sympathy"

The sympathy was appreciated. Yes I was happy, indeed touched, when we received condolences from so much of the world. The story of the German destroyer who pulled alonside the US Navy ship to pay tribute was especially poignant.

"Keeping the world's sympathy" is not a legitimate foreign policy goal. If we think we need to do something, "keeping their sympathy" is not a good reason to keep from doing it. As if winning the War on Terror was a high school student government election.

Yes it would have been nice if we had had a nice big coalition with which to invade Iraq. And maybe we could have done a better sales job. But we didn't and they didn't want to come along. Even John Kerry, when cornered, had to admit that he would not allow the rest of the world to veto US action.

"We Created Saddam"

This claim is vastly overstated, and such a statement is ignorant of history.

In "History Backwards" I wrote that our support of Iraq in the 1980s was due to our legitimate fear of the Iranian revolution spreading throughout the region. Our "leaning" towards Iraq was analogous to our support of Stalin during World War II. Because we helped Stalin fend off the Nazis, were were wrong to oppose him later?

"Bush Lied!"
(exclamation point required)

No he didn't, and you have no evidence that he did. Almost every intelligence agency on the planet thought that Saddam had WMD, and don't pretend otherwise. Bill Clinton thought he had them, as did most Democrats.

Almost a year ago I posted fifteen reasons why invading Iraq was the right thing to do, even knowing the aftermath. They were true then, and they're true now.