Admit it - Saddam Hussein had to go.
"You failed; just admit it!" - this is the sentiment that all too often passes for analysis of America's involvement in Iraq. It is a mindset that nurtures and rewards mindless repetition of talking points which are at best debatable - but few really wish to debate, as a total disregard for the process of evaluation, analysis, and conclusion is the preferred course of action.A publication such as The New York Times can adopt as its mission the total denunciation of the war in Iraq, and can turn its foregone "conclusion" into accepted fact among its self-appointed cognoscenti by publishing articles every day that quote individuals critical of the effort, or "analyses" that quibble with and pick apart everything from the number of humvees deployed to the thickness of troops' body armor.
Peace "Activists", about as capable of rational thought as the one-dimensional bumper stickers that appear on their cars, lecture America that by "beating the drums of war" we have "radicallized" young muslims, "alienated" our allies, and any other unfortunate conclusion you care to hang around the war's neck.
(There are even those who rail against the war on the pretense that the violence and death resulting from war are unacceptable, no matter the cost or purpose - it would be interesting to know how many of these people support a woman's right to an abortion on demand, but that's a different battlefield.)
For most of us, our conclusions about the war are summaries gleaned from a cursory survey of television images, newspaper articles, and the endless stream of supposedly sophisticated mass media commentary that tells us, in a million different ways, that "War is bad".
This is hardly an honest evaluation of a huge conflict that has a zillion factors at its core, but we don't much care for matters of complexity; it's much easier to conclude that George Bush is "Stupid", and that Iraq is a "Debacle" - that last point comes to us courtesy of The Economist, from its most recent issue, despite the succeses in Anbar and elsewhere, thanks to General Petraeus's "Surge" strategy.
The fact that so many people are incapable of seeing any progress in Iraq - or for that matter, any reason to have invaded in the first place - is a sign of our times: once again, analysis and reason have fallen prey to feelings and emotions, which are much easier to process.
So let's take a look, once again, at the reality, and not the sentiment: Saddam Hussein had to be taken out, and the entire world agreed - that is, until it came to time to actually put up its dukes, at which time it hemmed, hawed, and found endless excuses to avoid getting the job done. France and Russia, in particular, displayed a grotesque contempt of civilization by trying desperately to leave Saddam's regime in place, either because of the business deals it wanted to continue, the oil-for-food personal enrichment scheme sponsored by the incestuous U.N., or both.
The U.S., finally having had enough of the U.N.'s dithering, laid out the case for action against Saddam, and all the current nay-sayers, such as John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and an endless parade of other chameleons, signed off on it, only to turn sharply into armchair generals the moment the hard work of rebuilding began.
Let's be clear: Saddam Hussein left behind every conceivable indication that he was developing and stockpiling chemical weapons, pursuing nuclear weapons, while simultaneously engaging in the slaughter of his own people - in addition to such unlucky groups as the Kurds, let's not forget the torture of Olympic athletes who failed to win a sufficient number of gold medals, or the rape rooms operated by his own children.
He also directly paid off the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, a practice that everyone in the world seems to want to avert their gaze from, regardless of their fervent denunciations of the war.
Everyone is free to vote for whomever he or she wants, but if people are planning to base their votes on vague memories of stories from the New York Times, or t.v. news stories that count only civilian deaths, rather than the number of schools reopened or terrorists killed, they do themselves and our country a disservice.
To the "You failed; just admit it!" crowd, then, I pose the question: What would you have preferred?
Would you have preferred a never-ending babbling brook of diplomats, U.N. bureaucrats, "Moderate" muslim "Leaders", pressure groups such as CAIR, the ACLU, and whoever else lives off flowery speeches to endlessly try to "engage" Saddam Hussein, as the crimes against his own people continued, the terrorist training camps persisted without interruption, the payoffs to relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers flowed unabated, the possibility of chemical and/or nuclear weapons growing a little more every day, and the ongoing spectacle of a dictator being allowed to siphon off millions of dollars from his citizenry with the approval and partnership of corrupt oil-for-food adminstrators?
Does the military might of the U.S. so reflexively turn you off that you can never, ever admit the possibility that it may very well be needed, and in fact, might be the only hope of a civilization that has thrown up its hands in capitulation to Middle Eastern dictators and radical Islamic terrorists?
Does pacifism and the notion of "Peace" drain you of all desire to combat evil? Or are you one of those relativists who has cast aside the notion that there is any such thing as "Evil", and congratulated yourself on your more-evolved mindset?
I like to think that most people, even the elites, acknowledge the concept of evil - the disturbing flip side to this coin is that when pressed, they seem capable only of identifying evil in selected places, and in their misguided quest for sympathy with the downtrodden, they will assign victimhood status to whichever group's "Oppression" garb is the most convincing. With this mindset, evil is completely in the eye of the beholder, and the objective becomes the subjective.
So the anti-war crowd, in alliance with the aplogists-for-Saddam camp, continues its foregone conclusion that America has "Lost" the war in Iraq. Irresponsible loudmouths like Harry Reid add fuel to their fire by taking every anti-American position that he can find. Their position seems to be that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because it meant waging war, but again, pressing for details as to how this can be true in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is like pulling teeth with toothpicks. War is bad, so we shouldn't have invaded. George Bush is evil, and he shouldn't have invaded. Rebuilding Iraq has cost zillions of dollars in blood and treasure, so we shouldn't have invaded.
And I still haven't heard a clear and convincing strategy for what America "Should" have done instead.
Bow to the will of France and Germany, whose own unassimilated muslim communities call for the blood of their hosts?
Bow to the will of Russia, whose appetite for subterfuge in pursuit of wealth and influence is a hangover from the Soviet era that has become its new political identity under Putin?
Bow to the will of politically-correct Canada, whose own tranquility and resulting prosperity is largely a result of its unique location right next door to the United States?
Bow to the will of China, whose hatred of American military intervention anywhere in the world betrays a grudge left behind by U.S. backing of the Kuomintang, a conflict which ended half a century ago?
Bow to the will of America's stew of grievance groups, who have turned imaginary oppression into a national industry, and elevated "Offense" to a level of criminality only surpassed by murder itself?
Or, best of all - sat on its hands and waited for another incubator of evil to issue forth a new generation of maniacs desperate to destroy and/or absorb the rest of the world?
No, Iraq has a ways to go, but every day, America is winning. Just admit it.
posted by ET @ 2:35 PM
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