I have yet to see a single “pro” of this war from anybody, left or right.

I don’t know that this is a new phenomenon. Jingoism (and the corresponding backlash…anti-jingoism?) is a time-honored tradition in the modern nation-state. Was there serious discussion of strategy during Vietnam, or just a bunch of rhetoric and hand-waving? I wasn’t around for that, but I’d place good money on the latter.

I would like to see the debate start here:
(From the 2000 Presidential Debates)
LEHRER: New question.
How would you go about, as president, deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force? Generally.

BUSH: Well, if it’s in our vital national interests. And that means whether or not our territory — our territory is threatened, our people could be harmed, whether or not our alliances — our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force.
Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear, whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be.
Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win, whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped.
And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy.
I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops.
The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation-building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.

Questions for Ms. Rice: Has the President lived up to his own criteria for miltary engagement as outlined above? Are we now nation builders?

Look at Mencken’s quote below. I don’t think it is wrong at all. The American people are among the least-traveled, least-educated of any European or European-derived people. They continually throw their support into these ridiculous wars that serve no purpose and accomplish nothing good. Vietnam is a good example. How could so many millions of people support something that is now universally recognized as an immense mistake? What possible reason could there have been to spend billions of dollars and lose thousands of men fighting to prevent north vietnam from capturing the south? When did the sea change in thinking about the world take place, a change which now holds legitimate the death of American troops for the safety of foreigners and the spread of certain forms of government?

What possible reason can there be now to attack and continue to occupy Iraq, a country that did not threaten the US and had a secular government, one that repressed the religious extremists who now kill American troops regularly? Some people really do never learn.

To act as if the main argument, or even one argument, against Bush’s Iraq policy is that it contradicts what he said during the 2000 campaign is to betray a rather surprising ignorance. As everyone knows who hasn’t been living off the planet for the last four years, 9/11 rather dramatically changed Bush’s view of foreign interventions. Arguments against Bush’s Iraq policy must be based on its innate flaws, not on the fact that it contradicts what he said in 2000.

I don’t agree that the absence of a meaningful pre-war debate was attributable to the ignorance of Americans as compared to the intelligence of Europeans. How much debate did Europeans have in Germany before the invasion of Poland? Or, if you don’t like that example, how much “intelligent” public debate informed the French actions in Algeria and Vietnam? The French abandoned Algeria and Vietnam after they were defeated and it did not take much well-informed public opinion to figure it out at that point. Moreover, the European opposition to the war was largely due to their anti-Americanism and was not the product of a more enlightened world-view. The European left basically sees the world through Chomsky colored glasses, which is why they love socialism and Arabs and hate Christianity.

Before the war, the neo-cons’ ideological rationale was not openly admitted by anyone in the administration, or any of its mouth pieces. The story, as you will recall, was that Saddam posed a threat to the U.S. because of the WMDs, that everyone believed he possessed. After 9/11, there were very few politicians who were willing to aggressively challenge that claim. Those who disputed the official line and pointed the finger at the neo-cons and their Jacobinism were accused of being anti-Semites, pro-left, anti-American, or delusional. A real debate was thus impeded by the war party’s refusal to put their cards on the table and admit that their strategy was predicated on a bunch of utopian fantasies.

It is, of course, the standard view on the anti-war right that those nasty neocons called the anti-war rightists anti-Semites merely for “criticizing” the war policy. It has already been demonstrated by an overabundance of evidence that the anti-war right did not merely criticize the war policy (indeed the country needed intelligent criticism of the war policy), but engaged in an all-out political war to demonize those who supported the war.

If the anti-war right had said, “Look, we have a big problem with Moslem terrorism, and we as a country need to think about what we’re going to do, and we understand the concerns expressed by the president and the neocons, but we think that overthrowing Hussein would be a mistake for reasons x, y, and z,” no one would have called them anti-Semites or haters or leftists or anything. But that’s NOT what the anti-war right did. They treated war supporters as enemies, as a sinister force, and directed most of their fire at attacking and reviling those sinister people, rather than engaging in a good-faith debate over the shared ground of national defense.

People who indulge in the kind of hate politics that the anti-war right engaged in, and then whine about the fact that they’re been called haters, are beyond help.

Mr. Auster,I certainly recognize the impact of 9/11 and that it did indeed change the foreign intervention policy. I would stll ask,in the case of Iraq, if exit strategy and nation building considerations were given their just attention. The use of troops as nation builders is more relevant now than it was in 2000. Mr. Bush stated that he would be careful about using troops as nation builders. Well, has he been careful about that? The horror of 9/11 does not alleviate him, or Dr. Rice, from providing an adequate answer to that query. To respond that 9/11 made him do it strikes me as the type of boilerplate answer that is often decried on the pages of VFR. Perhaps one of the ‘innate flaws’ in the Iraq policy is that his 2000 analysis of nation building may have a better guiding light than his post 9/11 analysis on the subject.

Sorry, last sentence should read: Perhaps one of the ‘innate flaws’ in the Iraq policy is that his 2000 analysis of nation building may have been a better guiding light than his post 9/11 analysis on the subject.

The substantive questions that DS wants to ask of the administration should all be asked. What I’m saying is that these questions should not be in the form of “Why have you contradicted what you said in 2000?” A person who asks that question sounds, frankly, like someone who left planet earth in January 2001 and just returned.

When Bush said he didn’t believe in nation-building, it was in the context of intervening in nations that had some internal problem that we were supposedly fixing, like Haiti or Somalia or Kosovo. It was most decidedly NOT in the context of our invading and conquering a nation because we believe that that nation represented a threat to our national security. Obviously, once we invade and conquer a nation, we become responsible for its immediate future, including the establishing of a new government, WHETHER WE WANT TO BE OR NOT, i.e., we become responsible for “nation-building.” So, obviously, Bush’s general criticism of nation-building in 2000, which was NOT in the context of our having to invade a foreign enemy, but only in the context of a kind of Clintonesque international social-work service, is NOT relevant to the specific problem we faced after 9/11.

Is DS opposed to “nation-building” per se? Ok, DS, what if a foreign nation launched (or hosted terrorists who launched) a WMD attack on us, and we then had to invade that country and topple that regime. Do we then just walk away, out of fear of nation-building, and let that same regime take power again? Or do we try to create something new and better in that country? Does DS oppose Bush’s action in Afghanistan? But what we’ve done in Afghanistan is also “nation-building.”

What is objectionable about most war critics (I’m not including DS in this) is that they stand apart from the entire problem that America has faced post 9/11, acting as though the problem doesn’t even exist. That’s what Patrick Buchanan has done, acting as if Islamist terrorism is something we can ignore. They never take responsibility for the idea that we’re facing an objective problem in the real world and that we have to do something about it. If they took that position, then they could discuss the pros and cons of various approaches. But that’s not what they do. Instead, they just carp at whatever Bush has done.

This whole discussion about the anti-war right comes down to a very simple point. The main voices of the anti-war right, including Buchanan and McConnell and many of their contributors, said that this war had nothing to do with any concern over national defense, but was fomented by American Jews who saw Hussein as a threat to Israel and who manipulated Bush into convincing the American people to support a war against Hussein that was supposedly for the sake of U.S. national defense but which in reality was only a war for Israel’s national defense, and therefore these Jews didn’t care about the American soldiers being killed because they really only cared about Israel. This charge, a charge of lying and treason on a massive scale, a charge that in substance was identical to the classic blood libel used against Jews over the centuries, was made over and over again. It was the core of the anti-war right’s position.

People on the anti-war right don’t like being reminded of this. They say, “Some of us on the anti-war right made good, substantive arguments, we didn’t just make this anti-Jewish argument.” That may be true. But they never dissociated themselves from that anti-Jewish argument. They never wrote articles or letters to the editor condemning The American Conservative and antiwar.com for pushing that anti-Jewish argument. They formed a solid front with the anti-war rightists who were pushing the anti-Jewish argument.

As our contributor Matt said many times during the VFR debates on the war in 2002 and 2003, if the supposedly “moderate” members of a movement want to prove that that movement is not extreme, they’ve got to dissociate themselves from the movement’s extreme members. But the supposedly “moderate” anti-war rightists never did this. As a result, the anti-war right as a whole stands condemned.

“Arguments against Bush’s Iraq policy must be based on its innate flaws, not on the fact that it contradicts what he said in 2000.”

I think the point is that Bush laid out good criteria and htat he failed to follow through on them. The reason that it is important that his actions contradict his statements in the 2000 campaign is that it shows that he had an understanding of the failures of Clinton’s foreign adventurism and so he can’t claim ignorance of what he was doing.

09/11/01 should not have changed this, in the sense that if mindless and reflexive interventionism of the kind Bush decried was not effective before 9/11 there is no reason to assume that it would be more effective after 9/11.
Or put another way, the question is not only did Bush go to war after suggesting that Clintonian intervention was bad, the question is did he go to war in a Clintonian way, or at least in a way that displayed the same flaws as Clinton showed? (I’m not denying that some people use the more simple formulation of Bush intervenes = flip-flop, but rather pointing out that the charge of flip-flopping is justified on other grounds).

Measuring Bush’s performance vs. his words:
National interest - A lot of this would depend on how much you trust Bush that Iraq either constituted a threat or that he believed it did. Also the question of what you define as legitimate national interests to pursue (e.g. even if one believed we went to Iraq to steal its oil, one could portray doing so as being in the US’s best interests).
The biggest objection I have to Bush on this is that, in my opinion, he concentrated more on messianic democratism than on actually looking at how to deal with Iraq in terms of our interests.
Clarity - Bush had a great deal of clarity about how to remove Saddam, but did not bother to develop clear war aims beyond his ousting, unless as some claim, he has a secret agenda that he isn’t sharing with us.
Prepared to win - in general, it seems a consensus on VFR that the administration isn’t prepared to win.
Exit strategy - We seem to be winging it. There is little concrete planning of how we will actually be able to transfer power to the Iraqis and thus be able to reduce our commitment to Iraq. Rush Limbaugh’s insipid statement that “our exit strategy is victory” is actually a tautology; seeing as victory is defined in this case as being able to hand over the reigns of power to the Iraqis (i.e. exit strategy) what he is in essence saying is that our strategy for winning is to win.

In short, Bush’s interventions display many of the same defects that he criticized in Clinton’s interventions.

Mr. Jose is laying the problem out very clearly. The test is not: did Bush oppose nation-building in 2000 and embrace it later. The test is: has Bush followed his own criteria for intervention when intervention is necessary.

Mr. Jose’s clear thinking—criticizing Bush’s policy, but doing so rationally and without rancor—is the kind of thing that justifies the existence of VFR.

Just as an aside, I note that we still have forces stationed in both Bosnia and Kosovo. If Bush really believed in what he claimed to believe in 2000, why are they still there? I’m sure they would be much needed in Iraq.

Strictly speaking, we’re not engaged in “nation-building” in Kosovo and Bosnia but “peace-keeping.” The Dayton Accord of 1995 pretended to create a new sovereignty, but in fact it’s two or three separate sovereignties who are being forced together into a single country and are only kept from renewed fighting by the presence of the “peace-keepers” between them. Because of Clinton’s commitment to multicultural solutions to ethnic conflict, partition of the country into its respective ethnic subdivisions—which would have been the only way actually to achieve peace—was not permitted. So instead we have the fiction of a “peace” which in fact is only maintained by the “peace-keepers” who are not peacekeepers but soldiers keeping warring groups apart from each other.

The situation is roughly analogous in Kosovo. The only solution was to allow one side or the other to win. We didn’t want to do that, so instead we’re stuck there forever keeping the two sides apart.

John Ring wrote:

“The American people are among the least-traveled, least-educated of any European or European-derived people.”

If your “European or European-derived people” set of peoples excludes most European peoples, your statement might be right. But it is flat wrong if one considers all white peoples in Europe and elsewhere.

Percent of college educated populace in US is higher than in most Europe countries. Travel is unfair comparison, most Euro countries are smaller than average Red state in US, obviously an average West European visited more foreign countries than Joe American.

Since Mr. Ring instincts run toward contempt of his countrymen, he should try to google check his assertions before posting.

Mr. Auster commenting on Bosnia and Kosovo “peacekeeping”:

“The only solution was to allow one side or the other to win. We didn’t want to do that, so instead we’re stuck there forever keeping the two sides apart. “

I have a huge problem with “we” here. Why we, the USA? Unless it can be clearly demonstrated that it is in our national interest to be messing around in that part of Europe, and I don’t believe it was, we should leave by Xmas. Let be perfectly multilateral and
let EU, UN, Russia and Turkey to take care of the situation. Why should we care?

I wasn’t advocating anything, but attempting to describe the situation. In both cases we—the Uhited States—played a key role in creating the, uh, settlement. We orchestrated the Dayton Accord; we used our air power and threats of invasion to drive the Serbian military out of Kosovo. In both cases, “we” created the current situation. How, politically, we simply leave either of those situations, without first altering the situation we created and for which we are responsible, I don’t know.

In my view, we can only leave responsibly after we have altered the ideological/political structure of what we created. In the case of Bosnia, I think (though I’m not up on this issue lately) that the only solution is a partition. Once there are international boundaries between the three entities, the “peace keepers” won’t be needed, or at least that would be the hope. In the case of Kosovo, I haven’t the foggiest.

Also, Mik, I would wager that leaving would fall under the category of “letting one side or the other win.”

I think that the problem here is that many of the paleocons got sidetracked by the extremists in the neocon movement (Norman Podhoretz) who advocate World War IV. This tainted their view of all neoconservatives, and ultimately of nearly all pro-warriors, and since then most paleocons have since been unable to conceive of the war in Iraq, or of support for the war, on any terms other than an ambition to conquer the Middle East. This has made them essentially suspicious of all pro-war people.

That’s a non-excuse excuse. Norman Podhoretz is one person, who was pushing the ideas that he believes in, just as any other writer does. He was not identical with the president or with all neocons. Yet the paleocons acted as though Podhoretz’s proposed policy was the president’s actual policy. They used the first to demonize the second, thus avoiding a rational, good-faith discussion about the pros and cons of the president’s policy.

But all this remains secondary to the point I made earlier: the anti-war paleocons could _not_ engage in a good-faith discussion about the war’s pros and cons, because they were already convinced the war was a Jewish plot to advance Israel’s security by sacrificing gentile Americans. The antiwar paleos who didn’t argue that the war was a Jewish plot refused to criticize those who did. So the movement remains irremediably tarred.

I don’t think there’s anything further to say about it.

Mr. Auster:

I understood that you just described the current situation. My question was rhetorical. But politically we could perfectly relieve ourself from the situation as follows:

1. We notify Nato, EU, UN and individual countries that bulk of our troops will leave by June 1, 2005 (Xmas 2004 is a bit too soon).

2. We may notify some of the countries that we may negotiate our withdrawal in exchange for a significant help in other places.

3. Unless a very serious offers come ($Billions and thousands of troops) we up and leave on 6/1/2005.

4. Bush, Rice, Cheney and Rummy do a few speeches and interviews to prepare American public for inevitable bile attack by MSM and our “allies”.

Glaivester,

I’m not sure what you are talking about. If Euros, Turks and Russkies don’t want to be responsible continental citizens, it may come to that. Why do we care? If there is genocide and American people is manipulated by MSM to demand we “do something”, well, that’s where leadership comes into play.

Either Bush&Co and explain that we have priorities elsewhere or we will be jerked around by CNN and NYT.

I am not worried that Mr. Bush may have contradicted himself, Mr. Auster. That was not, and is not, my point of concern (although I can see where you can get that out of what I wrote). Also,I understand Mr. Bush’s 2000 statements were made in regard to fixing up trouble spots around the world,a la Clinton-Gore. And,I am not inherently against nation building,as we are undertaking in Afghanistan, for example.
But if Mr. Bush was smart enough to recognize the costs of such endeavors in relative peace time then he should have recognized that to do nation building, while simultaneously fighting a mobile,fanatical enemy on the same ground, was going to be even more monumental of a task.This is particularly true today in Iraq because the enemy has not yet been thoroughly defeated and humiliated.
Mr. Auster writes about others not believing in the objective enemy, as he does. Look, I believe that that enemy is real and that they must be conclusively defeated.But, again,I think it was also encumbent upon Mr. Bush, once having recognized that enemy,and their nature, to unfold a strategy/plan that would engage them and defeat them — while not draining or tying up our resources in what may now be more of a humanitarian than a military goal.
Also, James Webb, hardly someone who has trouble identifying an enemy, doesn’t seem to believe that exit strategies are the stuff of the pre- 9/11 world. He has posted this entry on his site describing his own position:

A critical question for citizens and journalists to ask the U.S. government right now is this: “Under what circumstances will the United States military withdraw from Iraq?”
That’s according to James Webb, the novelist, decorated Vietnam veteran and Reagan-administration Secretary of the Navy, who spoke Wednesday night at Kansas University. Webb says he’s never heard a good answer from the Bush administration to the question about troop withdrawal.

“What are the conditions?” Webb asked a crowd of more than 300 people in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. “If you can’t answer the question, then you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

He called the ongoing war “a palpable strategic error” and “a strategic mousetrap” that arose from “a breakdown in group ethics.”

Webb cited two main problems with the war. One, he said, was that instead of focusing separately after Sept. 11 on three important issues facing the country — terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict — the Bush administration mingled them in the public mind with the war against Iraq.

Another problem, he said, was that the invasion put the military into a weaker position. Too many U.S. soldiers are either in Iraq, preparing to go there or coming back from there, he said.
“This endangers our posture elsewhere,” he said.
(end)
If our ‘posture elsewhere’, as Webb puts it, is compromised, and elsewhere turns out to be a major flashpoint in this asymmetrical war, our commitment to democracy in Iraq may well be a major impediment to what we hope for—namely, the rapid, utter defeat of Islamofascism.

I agree with most of DS’s points.

However, when he speaks of withdrawing from Iraq so that we can focus on “the rapid, utter defeat of Islamofascism,” as though there were a doable strategy out there waiting for us to pick it up and run with it, I sadly disagree. The whole problem is that we don’t have any strategy, other than Bush’s ennunciated “democratize the Moslem world” strategy which, outside Iraq and Afghanistan, is rhetoric and hope rather than a strategy. Our leaders and the public have simply not engaged in a discussion about what the Islamist problem is and what we need to do about it. We’re barely at the kindergarten level yet. Simply saying “withdraw from Iraq” is not sufficient. Such a withdrawal must, if it is not to be a horrendous defeat for us and a consignment of the Iraqi people to a probable hell, be part of a larger strategy.

There is a pervasive belief among the anti-war posters that Iraq posed no threat to America because it could not invade us.
With all due respect to them, this is horribly near sighted.
Iraq had a long standing history of working with terrorist groups. These ranged from the communist PLF to the Islamist group Ansar Al-Islam.
Terror analyst Lauri Mylroie documented Iraqi intelligence ties to the 1993 World Trade Center attack and to the Oklahoma City bombing.

The Forgotten Clinton Report
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15695
Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15919
The 9/11 Commission Fails to Connect the Terror Dots
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13909

Iraq did have WMD program and lied to the world about it. The exact nature and progress of the program is in doubt, but not its existance.

We had to take out the Ba’athist regime. The only question is when. I believe that we should have liberated Iran first as their WMD program was and is far larger.

I agree with Mr. Auster’s criticism of my last post. I overstated my case. Mr. Auster is correct that many on the anti-war right claimed that the neo-cons were part of a Jewish, pro-Sharon conspiracy which had highjacked Bush in order to advance the cause of Israel. Unfortunately, Buchanan, et al., have a problem with Israel which distorts their perspective on other issues. The neo-con vision of democratic and economic globalism is not Israeli-centric, it has a moral nucleus, but it is horribly out of touch with reality. The neo-cons, however, were dishonest with the public. Before the war, they launched a very effective propaganda campaign which at one point had a majority of Americans believing that Saddam was connected to 9/11. The neo-cons’ duplicity and unwillingness to countenance any challenge to their core beliefs about a democratic revolution in the Middle East eliminated the possibility of an intelligent debate. The paper thin pretenses for the war, which were routinely enunciated by the administration, fueled the President-is-hostage-to-Israel theories.

Therefore, even if Buchanan and the folks who publish in the American Conservative had presented a more balanced critique of the neo-con war party, a real debate would not have occurred because the neo-cons refused to debate the issue. Look at Gen. Anthony Zinni, for example. He tried to raise valid questions about the proposed invasion. Here is a speech he delivered on Aug. 23, 2002, where he explained why the war would be counterproductive with respect to the war on terrorism and our standing in the region: http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html. The neo-cons refused to take his arguments seriously. They just ignored him as if he were a disgruntled former employee making wild accusations.

Does anyone here believe that Condi Rice is the best choice for Sec. of State? IMHO, we are witnessing the affirmative action principle at work at the cabinet level. This is sad stuff. We’ve got some truly brilliant minds who are being purposely passed over for jobs that demand world-class thinking. We’re not going to get it from Rice.

The best? Who else is there?
Bush wants someone who will impose his policies on the State Department.

Mr. Auster:

I don’t see DS saying that we should “withdraw from Iraq” in order to concentrate on other things. Rather, he said he wanted ot know under what circumstances we would withdraw from Iraq, by which I assume he meant under what circumstances could we declare victory.

Mik, when I (Glaivester is my nom de plume, I don’t usually use it at VFR, but I sometimes forget) said that leaving falls under the “letting one side ro the other win” what I was saying was that that Mr. Auster’s view that the only solution was to let one side or the other win was not inconsistent with your view that we should not be there. I wasn’t condemning or criticizing your views, rather I was saying that I didn’t see you as having a real disagreement with Mr. Auster.

I don’t know that this “debate” you are calling for has ever happened before in the sense that you are calling for it.

I don’t think it happened in the Second World War. If a war is sound AND popular, people rally round and aren’t interested in any debate.

If a war is UNpopular, whether sound or not, those who think it sound try to drown debate in charges of “treason” or some such.

If a war is sound, but a powerful faction is opposing it for partisan purposes, the debate always gets twisted into emotionalism and hectoring and works to defeat the war effort. Witness the reactions of the “world” to the recent incident with the Marine and the wounded prisoner in Fallujah.

I suppose if the war is unreasonable and unwinnable, Bush ought to find some way to get the hell out. If it is difficult but eminently reasonable and winnable; and especially if it would be disastrous to lose it and there is a strong faction that would like nothing better than to do so, Bush out to keep soldiering on refusing absolutely to have discussions that will harm our ability to fight.

None of the questions asked by those who have given up on Iraq or are demanding “leadership” and “explanations” from Bush have any merit, as far as I can see. What are the serious questions that are not being answered? Show us how we can win in the face of this insurgency? How can we hope to implant democracy in the Middle East?

Please. Bush is entirely on target here. You slog away and fight the insurgency. Insurgencies have been beaten before. The Kurds in Turkey were beaten. The Islamists in Algeria were beaten. Turkey and Algeria are relatively peaceful now, as is, amazingly, Afghanistan. No one knew what the particulars of victory would be and no one could “prove” it would happen beforehand. The enemy just got beat.

No, Mr. President, don’t get drawn into an inane “debate” with the media or anyone else. Just keep slogging away til you win, which you will. There are just no subtler answers out there, ultimately. If the insurgency is “unbeatable” then the answers are wrong. But if the war is winnable, no one is going to be able to provide these desired “answers” in ANY case. The broad outlines of the strategy are childishly simple. The subtler answers emerge over time in response to unpredictables on the ground.

Y’all are being whimsical and silly. And ahistorical.

Jeff

I have read the writings of the anti-war Right columnists to some degree (Paul Craig Roberts, Joseph Sobran, Sam Francis, a few others). The thing that stands out to me is that they level every possible charge against Bush and the Iraq war rationale, but then they never retract anything that is proven false. They just drop the subject and move on to some more allegations. It is a style of discourse that is typical of the far Left, but it has infected many of the paleocon right. Throw enough mud and see if some of it sticks. Don’t worry about your batting average on allegations.

A couple of examples that should require some serious reflection by everyone here:

1) Many of the anti-war Right repeated all the leftist cant about the U.N. sanctions “causing” Iraqi civilian deaths, and either stated or implied that they should be lifted. It has been pointed out numerous times that Saddam’s (and the U.N.’s) pilfering of the oil for food moneys was the real reason for civilian deaths. Yet, no retraction is coming from the antiwar columnists. Also, the recent Duelfer report on Saddam’s WMD programs concluded, based on direct documentary statements from Iraqi files, that Saddam was just waiting for the sanctions to end so he could resume production. The research continued (hence Saddam’s nervousness about the inspectors), but there was no stockpiling going on. In other words, if the critics of the sanctions had set policy, he would have long since resumed actual production of WMDs.

2) The Duelfer report also concluded that Saddam’s WMD researchers were developing forms of nerve gas that could be put into small aerosol containers, such as perfume bottles. The obvious application is terrorism. Yet, the anti-war Right repeatedly claimed that Saddam would never give WMDs to terrorists, because it would get him in trouble and get his regime obliterated by retaliatory action, etc. According to the anti-war crowd, all Iraqi WMD development over the years was solely for military weapons, as used against Iran and the Kurds, and Saddam was not so crazy as to develop terrorist WMDs. Yet it has been discovered that non-military WMDs were being researched and developed (but not yet produced or stockpiled). Any retractions from the anti-war columnists? Of course not.

I conclude that the anti-war Right has a personal battle with the neocons, going back at least to the famous M.E. Bradford and William Bennett case, and they are interested in pursuing a vendetta here. They are not interested in an honest discussion of Iraq, and should not be taken seriously by anyone who has any ethical standards until they prove that they can make positive contributions to an important national discussion.

It really helps a rational discussion when ignorant people, who are nonetheless quite clever in their own eyes, come along and tell everyone else that they are being “silly” and “ahistorical” because no one ever has a rational discussion on a national scale about how to prosecute a war.

In fact, there was national debate about how to prosecute the Korean War, and it got Harry Truman booted out of office. There were numerous editorials written in respected newspapers and magazines detailing how the Vietnam War should be fought. I recall reading articles in the likes of Reader’s Digest explaining that we were tying one hand behind our backs by refusing to blockade Haiphong harbor and bomb the two little railroad bridges that connected North Vietnam to China. There was debate at a national level over the wisdom of the Johnson policy of treating Laos as a neutral country, which it was not (according to the Geneva Convention, which states that a country that cannot prevent a combatant from using its territory is no longer considered neutral). And on and on, in strategic and tactical detail.

Even in World War II, there was public unrest over the inability of FDR to get the U.S. Army into the war, even though months had passed since Pearl Harbor and millions had volunteered for the Army. Of course, there was good reason (not enough transports, naval vessels, etc.), but the public pressure figured into the decision to embark on the North Africa campaign, in order to get the Army into the action. Many of the Army generals had no interest in North Africa, but their plan to build up for an invasion of the European continent was seen by FDR as a huge problem because it would take so long, and the public was asking when the Army was going to get into the fight.

Only someone ignorant of the recent history of our wars could say that there is not generally a lot of public discussion and debate over the strategy of our wars.

I don’t think that just “slogging” away at the insurgents is sufficient to win the peace in Iraq.

In Turkey, Kurdish separatists waged an insurgency for 20 years in a failed effort to win autonomy. Yet, this summer, Turkish authorities were once again clashing with Kurds after about 2,000 rebels crossed into Turkey from hideouts in northern Iraq.

The Turks who live in Turkey are still fighting the Kurds, who want autonomy from Turkey. This is very different from a foreign, Western occupying force trying to put down a nationalist insurgency in an Islamic country. We are strangers in a strange land in Iraq. The French had colonized Algeria in 1830 and by 1848 almost a quarter-million settlers had been settled in the lands along the Algerian coast. The Algerian revolt was an anti-colonial struggle which was sparked 120 years after colonial rule had been established. Algeria, in that respect, was very different from the situation in Iraq today. We have never established adequate control in Iraq and we certainly lack the historical ties that the French had in Algeria. As mere occupiers with insufficient troop numbers to overwhelm the resistance we are sitting ducks for repeated acts of terrorism. And this is precisely what we are seeing. The insurgency has grown in numbers, it has become more organized and the borders with Syria and Iran remain open and ungovernable. So we can expect a constant replenishment of terrorists and crazed jihadists until we finally get tired of all the killing and dying.

I must disagree that a rapid withdrawal from Iraq would be irresponsible or immoral, considering the Iraqi civilians. This was part of the same illogic used by Nixon to keep us in Vietnam from 1968-1973 instead of winning or getting out.

We are responsible to God and ourselves first and foremost. We did not go into Iraq to save the Iraqi people. We did it to save ourselves. What the Iraqi people do now may morally be left up to them entirely. Sure there might be widespread civil war if we left. No one bailed out the North and South in 1861-1865 America, nor did either the North or the South expect anyone to bail them out. Why should they have expected it: because the behavior of other countries had a significant influence on America?

Congress should tell the President to either stop the war or win it and retain a base in the Middle East, now. It has that power, and I intend to tell my representatives so. I have waited too long already.

Mr. Henri makes a very interesting point about the morality of withdrawal. But let me add a realpolitik perspective.

The extraction problem in Iraq is actually far more complicated than it was in Vietnam. The strategic significance of Vietnam had to do with its relationship to the Cold War and U.S. resolve to show the Soviets that we were willing to contest the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia. Vietnam did not have an intrinsic significance to our national security.

Iraq is different. If we depart a’la McGovern, there will be a terrible civil war and the Shiites will probably emerge as the victors. This will mean an expansion of Iran’s influence as well as a new refuge for international terrorists. A theocratic and radicalized Iraq will pose a significant threat to both Israel and the stability of surrounding oil producing countries (like Saudi Arabia). But perhaps most importantly, it will signal a surrender of our dominance in the region. All of this would spell sky rocketing oil prices and economic mayhem. In short, regardless of the misguided idealism that got us into this mess, now we cannot afford to turn our backs on it and go home because leaving and losing may be worse than staying and losing.

Does Mr. Henri mean “a U.S. base”…in Kurdistan?
I’d very much like to know (if only the good Mr. Ken Hechtman was posting here still, a man with real military intel we aren’t privvy to!) if moving our forces North to the Iran-Iraq border (leaving Baghdad and central Iraq to the Iraqi “army”) would be such a good idea. That would leave the Sunni Triangle open to the terrorists and Saddamites, as the British will not take our place in and around Baghdad. The British would lilkely remove their forces from Southern Iraq. I can’t see the logic in keeping our boys in harms way in a less than strategically powerful position. Moving our troops—or even a portion of them—to Kurdistan or Norther Iraq would be no different than leaving Iraq and going home. The “insurgents” would simply take back what we are taking from them, now! Pure insanity.

Manny’s “…now we cannot afford to turn our backs on it and go home, because leaving and losing may be worse than staying and losing.” reminds me of what I remember hearing during Vietnam. What could be worse for our American boys than having to pay with their lives?

I, like Mr. Auster, was for the invasion because of the faulty intel or lies that were told us my the Bush Admin. as reasons for going to war. I knew that Bush 43 wanted to complete what Daddy was advised not to do by General Colin Powell the first Gulf War around—to go into Baghdad and get Saddam. The Invasion, as has been written about at VFR and elsewhere earlier this year, was brilliant. But some very bad planning or non-planning screwed up what could have been a sensational occupation of a foreign country—we took the arms away from Saddam’s army and let others keep theirs. We avoided going into hotbeds of pro-Saddamism and we paid for it later, in Fallujah in April and now, with over 100 Americans dead this month alone. We may very well be “winning the peace” when in fact we never “won” the war, because the insurgency never stops—it only goes “underground” and elsewhere. Taking down the dictator was brilliant, but there is now a void and Manny is right—the Shiites and Iran’s influence are something to be very concerned about. But that is what happens when you remove an authoritarian regime—chaos, infighting, feuding sides going at it for the power to control the country. I ask Manny and others who support the war here this question—is it our obligation to stick around as “peacekeepers” if and when we put down the insurgency to keep warring factions from civil war as we and others are doing in Bosnia? Or was our obligation to bring down a tyrant, do our best to train a makeshift army, rebuild roads and bridges and schools and leave with our heads high? I frankly don’t see anything more morally “proper” than that. If the country then falls into chaos, of course we will be blamed (we’d be blamed anyway). And the next “leader” may be a tyrant as bad or worse than Saddam. I still do not think that, given the feudal and backward nature of those people with their sick fundamentalism leading them, our “obligation” is to stay there for years (we’ve already been there for nearly two years) as nation-builders or occupiers. The American people have stuck with the effort ONLY because Bush and the neo-cons have painted the effort as “fighting terrorism”. But the “terrorists” ONLY came into the country AFTER we invaded and as Saddam and his men and women fled. Therefore, the entire “raison d’etre” for the war by Bush was to “get Saddam”, NOT to “win the war on terror”. The case has never been made that the secular Saddam and fundamentalist al Qaida were joined at the hip. Iran and Pakistan and Syria are where the terrorists are sheltered. It is against those countries terrorist enclaves that our war should be brought. World War IV? I don’t think so. But if Bush was serious about his saying at ground zero something to the effect of “you’re either with us or against us”, he couldn’t have better described Iran, Pakistan or Syria.

Mr. Levine,

Who can be certain what course events might have taken if we were able to think far enough steps into the future to avoid one problem or another. The problem with the region is particularly the culture.

Theirs is a window into the middle ages and no amount of military force can overcome that divide. Any models of likely outcome of an occupation of Iraq certainly failed to take into account the fact that the majority of Iraqis are naturally going to view American occupation as intolerable, an insufferable insult to which rule under Saddam was preferable.

This serious miscalculation fits nicely into President Bush’s “All people are the same” philosophy. I must confess I was using the same argument before the invasion because I could not imagine a people willing to accept such conditions under which to live. Well it seems that the Muslims of entire region would rather die than live under imperial democratic Western imposition.

To your question of obligation, the only obligation we should have is our own national interests which indicate we must stabilize the region as best as possible to prevent another theocracy from gaining control and get out of Dodge. But wait a minute, why not stabilize the region, let a theocracy come into power that would be in opposition to the Iranian regime and let them keep busy fighting themselves? Hmmm. Because then we have defeated the purpose of the invasion, to introduce modernity on the heathens. Well, that is not going to work. It did not work in Lebanon, in the Shah’s Iran or with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat. The only possibility is a semi- pro-US strongman.

That means this experiment will require US involvement for some time to come. That includes a US presence and US bases. Who knows how things will change if Musharraf of Pakistan is assassinated for example or the Iranians finally build their nuclear bomb. Would they supply it to terrorists to use on US troops or simply attack Israel? That possibility would alter the status quo in a heartbeat and the mullahs know it.

The possibilities boggle the mind because no amount of logic seems applicable to the adherents of an ideology hell bent on world conquest, which is at the heart of the issue in the first place.

There are so many variables when dealing with such an unpredictable, unaccountable people that the best thing to do is secure, withdraw, create a cordon sanitaire around the region and begin securing America’s boarder with troops while reforming immigration immediately.

I don’t know where a base (i.e., leased real estate in diplomatic terms) should be located, but it could even be located outside Iraq. (By way, I meant to add that if we do decide to disengage rather than win, we should still keep a base.) Southern Saudi Arabia, where we would have access to the Indian Ocean, is one idea. My base would have a large kill zone (50, 100, 200, etc. miles). Its size would be whatever military people thought sufficient as a defense against all but advanced weaponry such as aircraft, cruise missiles, etc. We know how to deal with a force that would use or supply advanced weaponry against us. But it is unnecessary to lumber over land mines and trade artillery fire, mortar rounds, and machine gun fire with an invisible enemy. The Muslims are going to hate us and war on us whether we stay or leave the area.

I think that Andrew’s “secure, withdraw, create a cordon sanitaire” is the only viable option. Like it or not, we are going to remain involved in this part of the world until the oil runs out.

Mr. Henri,

We just evacuated or base in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to defuse the rhetoric of Bin Laden who used it as a rally cry. I think we should consider that a perfect location to project American power in the Middle East since every Wahabi mosque or Islamic community center built in Europe or America originates there.

Andrew’s comment that, “no amount of logic seems applicable to the adherents of an ideology hell bent on world conquest…” is also applicable to the neo-cons and their theory of global salvation, viz. secular democratization for all via creative destruction.

RonL:

Invade and liberate Iran? Are you completely out of your mind? Why are so many conservatives these days hell-bent on creating many millions of incredibly brassed-off Muslims? Iran is over three times as large as Iraq in addition to possessing a homogenous population of rabidly anti-imperialist Persians.

And since this keeps popping up — when did WMD ever become the issue in any of these discussions about Iraq or terrorism? September 11 had nothing to do with WMD. The USS Cole had nothing to do with WMD. The embassy bombings in Africa had nothing to do with WMD.

The phantom threat of a WMD attack on the United States was something the neoconservatives dreamed up in the aftermath of September 11 to frighten the American people into supporting their ideology of democratization of the Middle East through military force. Who disputes this?

A lot of bashing of Buchanan and the others is going on, but was what they said before the war true or false? I have several of the issues of AmConMag that warned of a repeat of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 — that the United States would win easily in the initial phase of the fighting, but would be unable to accomplish much more after that.

Is it true or false that militant Zionists have an immensely disproportionate influence on Bush and his thinking about the world? Everyone knows the names of these people in the administration. Everyone can see them. It’s no secret. Am I the only one who heard Bush, when extolling the benefits of overthrowing Iraq’s government, mention the safety of Israel as number one on that list? What happened to the interests of the United States, and only those of the United States? Loyalty to a nation that brings harm to one’s own nation is in fact treason.

It’s true that demonization of one’s opponents is not right. However, I don’t agree that the paleos did nothing but demonize. They mixed the demonization in with their good points about the negative, unintended consequences that would result from invading the heart of the Middle East.

This site represents a traditionalist point of view. I’m disappointed to see that this does not extend consistently to the area of foreign affairs. One would search the Constitution in vain for the article that authorizes the United States government to take billions of dollars every year from its citizens and send it to the government of Israel, or any country. One would search American history in vain to find any precedent for such a thing.

Manny,

I hate to be biased, but I agree with you, also my rap version will be available on Amazon for 19.95;-)

Mr. RING are you serious?

I detect a lot of “Zionist” hostility in you post. Perhaps I am reading into it too deeply but doesn’t the US send millions of dollars of American taxpayer dollars to Puerto Rico and Egypt every year? I seem to recall that the amount of money proposed as of recent was 200 million dollars by the Bush administration to go to the Israelis, oops, sorry the PLO to assist them with their post Arafat fumigations. Does this concern you in light of 21st century geopolitical realities as opposed to the principles of the founding fathers?

Again the “Joooos” are subject to “special” consideration. This is really something I cannot offer much insight into. To me, the State of Israel smack dab in the middle of the Middle East represents something America should support. As you well know American culture, our Western civilization, is a direct descendant of the JUDEO-Christian tradition which apparently is under threat everywhere in the world, predominately by Muslims, not Jews.

I agree, the ACLU and the NYT’s are rotten, but why persecute the entire Jewish race for a few bad apples? Don’t forget, Bat Yeo’r describes a strategy in her brilliant essay Eurabia (linked below) which holds much merit, whereby she argues that the Arabs are counting on both America’s and Europe’s abandonment of Israel in a strategy of divide and conquer in their offensive jihad.

Think about how successful at this moment such a plan has been in turning Europe against Israel such that even the most elemental tenants of human decency become obscure as demonstrated by the veneration of Arafat upon his well deserved death.

Bat Yeo’r, The Euro-Arab Dialogue and the Birth of Eurabia:

http://www.google.de/search?q=cache:W6UATkoMQA4J:www.dhimmitude.org/archive/by_eurabia_122002_eng.doc+euro+arab+dialogue&hl=de&client=firefox-a

Mr. Ring repeats a familiar argumnet found in the Buchanan camp. Indeed, it’s one of the themes of PJB’s latest book.

There are some serious fallacies in that position. First of all, how was toppling Saddam, whose military was left in tatters after Gulf War I, any sort of a benefit to Israel? Israel faces far more serious military threats from Iran, Syria, and Pakistan than from Saddam’s Iraq. If the Iraq war was a Zionist conspiracy, it’s one of singular ineptitude. I’ll grant that neoconservatives have been big boosters of the war, and that Bush apparently shares much of their stupid, neo-Wilsonian ideology. This ideology, that all people are the same - just interchangeable widgets in a utopian machine, is probably the major reason for the complete failure to understand Islamic society mentioned by Andrew as a cause of the bad situation we find ourselves in.

Secondly, why on earth would Bush, who is opposed by the majority of Jews and Jewish organizations here in the US, take such an insane political gamble? I’ll admit that he does have this alarming tendency to pander to all manner of groups who despise him, though.

I do agree that Israel needs to be weaned off the tax dollars of the US. For one thing, it would force the Israelis to abandon their EU-style socialist domestic policies and build up their economy

Andrew, Puerto Rico is US territory. You are correct about Egypt, though. The aid we send them is nearly as much as that we send to Israel. I agree that Bat Yeor is dead on about the overall jihadi strategy.

CARL

Pureto Rico is not a state. Guam and the like fall into that category.

John Ring wrote:
“Invade and liberate Iran? Are you completely out of your mind? Why are so many conservatives these days hell-bent on creating many millions of incredibly brassed-off Muslims? Iran is over three times as large as Iraq in addition to possessing a homogenous population of rabidly anti-imperialist Persians.”

The Islamist regime in Iran is already our enemy. They are trying to undermine us in Afghanistan and are waging a proxy war in Iraq.
Iran has long standing terrorist ties, including those to groups that attacked us.

The Iranian people are not represented by the government. The religious oligarchy is constantly threatened by mass student protests that have been joined by other Iranians and even some clergy. In some cases, the Iranians had to use foreign Hizbullah volunteers to put down the protests.
Liberating Iran can be accomplished by means other than sending the 10th Mountain division into Tehran.

“And since this keeps popping up — when did WMD ever become the issue in any of these discussions about Iraq or terrorism? September 11 had nothing to do with WMD. The USS Cole had nothing to do with WMD. The embassy bombings in Africa had nothing to do with WMD.

The phantom threat of a WMD attack on the United States was something the neoconservatives dreamed up in the aftermath of September 11 to frighten the American people into supporting their ideology of democratization of the Middle East through military force. Who disputes this?”

Al Qaeda tried to acquire WMDs. Heck, a plan to use a radioactive dispersal (dirty) bomb was stopped when we arrested an American conspirator.
Al Qaeda wants to nuke us. They are very open about this.

We cannot allow terrorist regimes to get nuclear weapons. In the case of Iran, they could use these to attack us or to control the region.

“A lot of bashing of Buchanan and the others is going on, but was what they said before the war true or false? I have several of the issues of AmConMag that warned of a repeat of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 — that the United States would win easily in the initial phase of the fighting, but would be unable to accomplish much more after that.”

Actually, people like Robert Fisk, Eric Margolis, and Scott Ritter made it clear that we could not even conquer Iraq.
If 100 vague predictions are made, one will be reasonably close.

“Is it true or false that militant Zionists have an immensely disproportionate influence on Bush and his thinking about the world? Everyone knows the names of these people in the administration. Everyone can see them. It’s no secret. Am I the only one who heard Bush, when extolling the benefits of overthrowing Iraq’s government, mention the safety of Israel as number one on that list? What happened to the interests of the United States, and only those of the United States? Loyalty to a nation that brings harm to one’s own nation is in fact treason.”

Strictly speaking you should look up the actual definition of treason. However, if we are going t ogo around redefining words, then treason also includes putting irrational hatred of another country before love of ones own.

The invasion of Iraq did not neccesarily improve Israel’s security. Iran was and is a larger threat. Bush’s call for a Palestinian state is a larger threat than Iraq posed last March.
President Bush mentioned many regional allies as target of Iraq including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

“It’s true that demonization of one’s opponents is not right. However, I don’t agree that the paleos did nothing but demonize. They mixed the demonization in with their good points about the negative, unintended consequences that would result from invading the heart of the Middle East.”
No one disputes this. The problem is that the demonization undermined their arguments.

“This site represents a traditionalist point of view. I’m disappointed to see that this does not extend consistently to the area of foreign affairs. One would search the Constitution in vain for the article that authorizes the United States government to take billions of dollars every year from its citizens and send it to the government of Israel, or any country. One would search American history in vain to find any precedent for such a thing.”

Straw man argument.
One would also search in vain for support for such unConstitutional funding of Israel, Egypt, Jordan… by posters.

Puerto Rico and Guam are U.S. territories, essentially wards of the federal government that we acquired as a result of the Spanish-American War. If we are truly a federal republic, now that - as Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out in 1893 - we have filled in the country and there is no longer an American frontier, there should no longer be any American territory that is not part of a state. I might except the District of Columbia, although I favor returning it to Maryland, and St. John, U.S.V.I. (which, like Alaska, we bought) because it is such a beautiful playground. As far as I can tell, all federal territories, including D.C., are welfare drains on the states. We should grant Puerto Rico independence unilaterally, invite Guam to rejoin the rest of the Marianas and invite American Samoa to join Western Samoa. There are precedents: we left Cuba and the Philippines, both of which also ended up in U.S. hands after the Spanish-American War. I’m not sure what to do about the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The federal government sends an enormous amount of Americans’ dollars to Israel every year. No doubt the powerful Israeli lobby has a lot to do with that. Our also-immense contributions to Egyptians’ welfare are the payoff to Egypt for the Camp David accords and are intended to balance the aid to Israel in Arabs’ eyes (not that they do). Sadat actively sought the United States as Egypt’s patron and sugar-daddy to replace the Soviet Union after he expelled Soviet advisors in 1972. A similarly huge chunk of Americans’ wealth also gets sent to South Korea. As far as I can tell, the only way the Koreans show their appreciation is by undercutting our manufacturing industries and abusing our immigration laws.

Foreign aid, in terms of Americans’ interests, is almost always wasted. HRS

I agree that the Iranian government is an enemy of the United States. But is it wise to get involved once again in the internal affairs of that country? Any actions the US takes to support the protestors or to overthrow the government will take legitimacy away from the protestors and strengthen the clergy. The protestors will be seen as American proxies, and then the clergy will have a popular reason for putting them down. The thing to do is be patient like in the Cold War. These type of governments always collapse on their own.

There is no doubt that the alQaeda people would use a nuclear weapon if they could find it. To me this is an argument for keeping Muslims out of the United States, and of gradually but steadily enforcing the laws we have now in order to put pressure on those already here. Muslims should be no more welcome here than we Christians or Jews would be welcome in Saudia Arabia.

I was very careful to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism. They are two different things. Many critics are not as careful.

Mr. Ring,

I agree with the bulk of your post. I question what you base you statement “These types of governments (Iran) will fall, they always do”.

What examplw of an Islamic Theocracy falling under its own weight can you give me besides the example of Turkey, which had an enlightened strongman Attaturk ram through the semblence of pluralism, which by the way today seems to be narrowing?

Thank you.

The government of Iran, which is rule by the clerics, is unprecendented in Islamic history. For most of Islamic history, military dictators ruled and co-opted the clergy in order to gain legitimacy for themselves, after usurping power. The tradition of military dictatorship has deep roots in the Islamic world and continues today.

I didn’t mean that specifically a clergy-government will collapse, left to its own devices. Any government that is widely disliked, enjoys no legitimacy, and that is unable to establish a productive economy will not last long.

As long as the Mullahs are willing to use Hizbullah to back up the Religious secret police and to order Iranian Turkmen to shoot Iranian Persian protestors (and the reverse), they will stay in power.

We are not dealing with a rational regime like that of the USSR. We cannot allow these people to get nukes, because they will not abide by MAD.

If we cannot aid the student protestors, then we either support the MEK and other exiled forces, or we invade.

Like you, I oppose Muslim immigration to the US. I would love to expell the non-citizens.

Zionism and Judaism are not the same, but they are related.
The nation of Israel, the religion of Israel, and the land of Israel are all connected. Please read a Bible.
It is possible to be an anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. However, I find it to be rare.

Ron made a good point. I would add that a true Jew is always a Zionist.

There are anti-Zionist Jews. Look at this spectacle.

http://www.nkusa.org/

Mr. Ring,
There is one small group of Hasidim who hold that there should be no Jewish state before the Messiah.
This is a matter of timing, not existance.

Unfortunately, Neutrei Karta has become radicalized, marching with the Arabs. For the record, records captured by the Israelis last year indicate the NK got money from the PLO.

A far more interesting case is found with the Satmar Hasidim and a handful of other groups who do not recognize the current Commonwealth of Israel as a Jewish state. For them, it is a gentile state as it is not run according the Torah.

Mr Levin asked “I’d very much like to know (if only the good Mr. Ken Hechtman was posting here still, a man with real military intel we aren’t privvy to) if moving our forces North to the Iran-Iraq border (leaving Baghdad and central Iraq to the Iraqi “army”) would be such a good idea.”

If we pulled back to Kurdistan, we’d have the advantage of a population that likes us and wants us there. They won’t shoot us in the back every time we turn around, so we won’t need to impose curfews and checkpoints and house-to-house searches on them.

Of all the Iraq-related problems we own right now, we would still own 3 and a half, none of which are insoluble, and that’s a lot better than where we are now.

1. Mosul. Over the last week, Mosul has become the new Fallujah. Like Fallujah, we’re seeing very close Ba’athist/jihadi cooperation. Also like Fallujah, it looks like the police chief and most of his force were in on it from the beginning. We would have to re-take Mosul and hold it for some time. This is do-able. It’s one city. If we need to put a tank on every street corner, we can do it.

2. Kirkuk. We didn’t create this problem, Saddam did 20 years ago, but it’s our problem now. Saddam evicted a large number of Kurds and gave their homes to Shia Arabs. Under the protection of the Peshmerga fighters, the Kurds are coming back to reclaim their homes. It’s messy and it has the potential to get worse. This one’s also do-able though. We don’t owe the Shia any favors so we decide this one in favor of the Kurds — but we make sure as many Shia as possible are bought off rather than scared off.

3. Non-liberated Kurdistan. The Kurds haven’t forgotten about Syrian-, Iranian- and Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. We can anticipate terrorist attacks in those places, carried out by our allies and originating from territory under our control. Again, we don’t owe Syria and Iran any favors, but we will have to restrain the Kurds against Turkey.

3.5 The half-a-problem is what the whole rest of Iraq reduces to when we’re not in it. We can stop caring who comes out on top in Arab Iraq, how they got there, how they stay there and how they run the country while they are there. We know it’ll be somebody who doesn’t like us. Iraq is in the Middle East. The Middle East is full of people who don’t like us. We can live with it as long as they can’t do anything about it.

So if we hear about anybody refining uranium, we go back in, shoot them and return to base in Kurdistan. If we hear about pilots being trained to fly 747s but not to land them, we go back in, shoot them, and return to base in Kurdistan. But if they can’t threaten our Homeland, we don’t threaten theirs.

After re-reading my last post, I realized there’s nothing in it that doesn’t come from straight-press sources. Here’s some back-channel stuff:

A Euro-red in Fallujah put this one on the email nets this week: “The US military insisted that at least 100 of those killed were “foreign fighters”. However, the authorities said afterwards that only 14 of the prisoners taken were foreign, and 10 of them were Iranians.”

She’s obviously trying to downplay the foreign fighter angle (most lefties do), but she reminds me of the reporter sent to the society wedding who said there was no story because the bride never showed up. “There were only a few foreign fighters — and most of those were Iranian, so they don’t really count.”

We knew there were Iranian nationals fighting in Najaf and Karbala. It wouldn’t have been all that surprising to find them with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. Finding them in Fallujah alongside the Wahabis is a very big deal. The Shia haven’t done anything like that in 150 years. The Wahabis haven’t allowed it ever.

While I agree with Ken Hechtman that the presence of any Iranians among the forces in Iraq is disturbing, I think the point was that it is incorrect to claim, as many do, that the insurgency is not at all indigenous.
Many on the pro-war side have tried to give the impression that everyone who fights agaisnt us is a foreigner or a Ba’athist holdover, and that it is ridiculous to think that there are Iraqis who just hate the idea of foreign invaders running the country.
I don’t think that most on the anti-war side have denied that there are foreign elements in Iraq, we just think that they are there at the pleasure of a significant percentage of the indigenous population, and that preventing them form getting to Iraq by sealing the borders or by conquering or overthrowing the neighboring countries will not, as many claim, put an end to the insurgency. It might help some, but it is not the magic bullet that Michael Ledeen seems to think it is.