Wednesday, October 11, 2006
In defense of the Iraqi war
Defending civilisation is never easy nor cheap
by Ferdinand III
So the war in Iraq is lost is it, never to be won, a quagmire, a vicious stalemate, a hopeless neo-con, neo-imperialist bush-whacking venture, doomed to failure? Interesting. I would consider a war in which 50.000 enemy dead litter the fields against 2.000 of your own soldiers a rather smashing victory. Sure a low level civil war is in progress in Iraq but so what? Since the first Sunni-Shia clash in 657 AD the Iraqi Muslims have been killing each other for sundry reasons ranging from issues of faith, to power politics to blood feuds. The 680 AD civil war in which the Shia martyr Husayn was killed makes the current round of car bombs and beheadings look like a choir society meeting. The current kill rate is low by historical comparisons of the past century. Yet even amidst this moderate [for Iraq] carnage, the Iraqi economy grows, 14 out of 18 provinces are quiescent and slowly but surely the Iraqi government and army are starting to mature and take over more control from their American benefactors.
Iraq has always been a bloody and violent society – something the mainstream media and Michael Moore won’t tell you. According to the geniuses that run the alphabet soup media and most newspapers, Iraqi’s were flying kites and dancing in gardens tears joyously running down their cherubic cheeks, full of love and sensitivity until March 2003 of course and the nasty infidel invasion. Even more insipid is the idea that a failed fascist Muslim state will be rebuilt over the long weekend just in time for Ivy League admissions season. The Iraqi war – 12 years overdue - has forever changed the Middle East and if we keep our nerve the end is nigh for fascist Islam, irregardless of what the media says in twisting facts on intelligence reports; battles; American mistakes; or the will of the Iraqi government. The negative news cycle on Iraq is an injustice.
To get a sense of how skewed, immoral and hypocritical the reporting is on Iraq can cast your mind back to the 1990s. That was when CNN, the BBC, and the CBC never told you about the 300.000 murdered Iraqi’s, or the nearly $1 billion in Oil-for-palaces money that the UN stole from the $2.8 Billion program – the largest revenue grab in UN history. Nor did they tell you about the $7 billion per annum that the French and Russians gleefully looted out of Iraq in defiance of the same program. For the record the Americans made zilch from the oil-for palaces and chicks program and the Brits and Canadians not much more. But we are constantly reminded of UN and Euro-moral superiority. I wonder if the 5000 babies who died each month in the 1990s [see Unicef] agree with that assessment?
Yes the good old 1990s. That was the era of Clintonian appeasement you remember. According to his military attaché [in the book ‘Dereliction of Duty’], Clinton and his girlfriends were more interested in golf then in dealing with Bin Laden missing 8 occasions to take out the 9-11 mastermind [see pages 330-334 of the 9-11 commission report] – a few because Clinton could not be found in time on the golf course to give the ok to kill him [which he would not have done anyways worried as he was about ‘collateral’ damage]. For Clinton terrorism was an FBI legal case and one that needed court prosecution, not military persecution. The result of this weak-kneed US response to terrorist attacks from 1993 to 2000 was 9-11. Now that some adults run the White House and another 9-11 has not emerged we are to believe that Iraq and Afghanistan are wars of mistakes, ill-planned, ill-led, and going badly and that they have no connection to the prevention of another 9-11 attack.
Perhaps mistakes were and are being made but such is the fog of war. How about this for a counter theory - maybe the reason why another 9-11 has not transpired is precisely that 50.000 and more dead terrorists are fertilizing the soil in the Middle East. Along with financial disruption, cell break ups and a more adult view of the world, the terrorists are having a rough time and fascist Islam, with the West driving 2 stakes through its heart in Iraq and Afghanistan is on the run. Iraqi civil strife is premised upon Iranian funding of Shia militia who are killing Sunni’s funded by the remnants of the oil for palaces and chicks program. The slaughter of 30 per day is terrible but it is no reason to cut and run. US military casualties are minimal at this time. It is the innocent civilian that is getting butchered – by their Islamic ‘brothers’. Read some Iraqi history – they have been killing each other with great gusto for 1400 years. Don’t expect this to change until you take a hard edged approach to destroying both the Sunni and Shia militia – and deal with Iran. These are issues that the Americans have avoided and justly deserve criticism for.
But here is the important lesson. If you study America's efforts at nation-building in the last half-century, ranging from successes [Germany and Japan] to failures [Haiti and Somalia, both of which were hampered by UN control] and to all the uncertain outcomes in-between [Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, all of which have UN involvement], one of the most important things we should have learned is that "while staying long does not guarantee success, leaving early ensures failure." In order for freedom to have a chance of developing in Iraq, or in Afghanistan we must be patient as well as strong. It would be an unmitigated disaster to leave too early. Our Iraqi supporters would be crushed, terrorists and Islamic radicals would have won, and our own struggle and sacrifices would have been for naught.
There is no easy way to win the war on terror. When Pakistan’s President Musharraf visits Canada and criticizes the CBC and the left wing media for crying ad infinitum over the 40 Canadian dead in Afghanistan he raises an important point. Does the current socialist post modern welfare state have the resources, the courage and the intelligence to do what is necessary? Or is it better to stick our heads in the sand or somewhere else and pretend that the UN will take care of it? This is the same debate between the Democrats and the GOP in the US. The left liberals want to cut and run and draw down US pre-emptive power that is the only safeguard and surety against another 9-11. In Canada and Europe the imperative is to let the Americans and Brits do the fighting while focusing on sustaining the socialist welfare state. This willful blindness by the post modern elite is as much a danger as any cell of 17 Muslims attempting to blow up downtown Toronto. Just consider that the 19.000 man Canadian army is dwarfed by the 55.000 man tax office. That sums up pretty well the post modern socialist state of affairs.
The war against fascist Islam is real. Like all wars many will die, mistakes will be made, and adjustments will be forced upon us. The real problem we have is that domestically some 60% of the population in Canada and the US is adamantly anti-war, or anti-American, or anti-Western. From Columbia University to the Toronto Star to George Soros, the enemies of our civilization are uninterested in winning – they are only concerned with the status quo and the maintenance of the post modern world. The fact that such a world is a lie and a farce and unable to protect the very system they operate in means little to the elite. For them power is the cure to their collective ignorance and amnesia.