| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Ubiquitous" |
| Date: |
09 Mar 2006 06:18:20 AM |
| Object: |
At War With Ourselves |
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown
apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs
and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But
instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced.
Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and
Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there
appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a
viable coalition government.
But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had
exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for
calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the
mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost--as we heard
the tired metaphors of "final straw" and "camel's back" mindlessly
repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we
were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the
great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now
exhausted we await next week's new prescription of doom--apparently the
hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports. That the Iraqi security forces are
becoming bigger and better, that we have witnessed three successful
elections, and that hundreds of brave American soldiers have died to get
us to the brink of seeing an Iraqi government emerge was forgotten in a
24-hour news cycle.
Few observers suggested that the Samarra bombing of a holy mosque by
radical Muslims might be a sign of the terrorists' desperation--killers
who have not, and cannot, defeat the U.S. military. After the furor over
Danish cartoons, French rioting and Iranian nuclear perfidy, the entire
world is turning on radical Islam and the terrorists feel keenly this
rising tide of opposition on the frontline in Iraq.
True, the Sunni Triangle, unlike southern Iraq and Kurdistan, is often
inhospitable to the forces of reconstruction--but hardly lost to
jihadists and militias as we are told. There is a disturbing sameness to
our acrimony at home, as we recall all the links in this chain of America
hysteria from the brouhaha over George Bush's flight suit to purported
flushed Korans at Guantanamo Bay. Each time we are lectured that the
looting, Abu Ghraib, the embalming of Uday and Qusay, the demeaning oral
exam of Saddam, unarmored Humvees, inadequate body armor or the latest
catastrophe has squandered our victory, the unimpressed U.S. military
simply goes about what it does best--defeating the terrorists and
training the Iraqi military to serve a democratic government. They stay
focused in this long war, while our pundits prepare the next controversy.
The second-guessing of 2003 still daily obsesses us: We should have had
better intelligence; we could have kept the Iraqi military intact; we
would have been better off deploying more troops. Had our forefathers
embraced such a suicidal and reactionary wartime mentality, Americans
would have still torn each other apart over Valley Forge years later on
the eve of Yorktown--or refought Pearl Harbor even as they steamed out to
Okinawa.
There is a more disturbing element to these self-serving, always evolving
pronouncements of the "my perfect war, but your disastrous peace"
syndrome. Conservatives who insisted that we needed more initial troops
are often the same ones who now decry that too much money has been spent
in Iraq. Liberals who chant "no blood for oil" lament that we
unnecessarily ratcheted up the global price of petroleum. Progressives
who charge that we are imperialists also indict us for being naively
idealistic in thinking democracy could take root in post-Baathist Iraq
and providing aid of a magnitude not seen since the Marshall Plan. For
many, Iraq is no longer a war whose prognosis is to be judged
empirically. It has instead transmogrified into a powerful symbol that
apparently must serve deeply held, but preconceived, beliefs--the
deceptions of Mr. Bush, the folly of a neoconservative cabal, the
necessary comeuppance of the American imperium, or the greed of an
oil-hungry U.S.
If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it
hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain
to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic
terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time
for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the
Islamists.
We point fingers at each other; soldiers under fire point to their
achievements: Largely because they fight jihadists over there, there has
not been another 9/11 here. Because Saddam is gone, reform is not just
confined to Iraq, but taking hold in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf. We hear
the military is nearly ruined after conducting two wars and staying on to
birth two democracies; its soldiers feel that they are more experienced
and lethal, and on the verge of pulling off the nearly impossible:
offering a people terrorized from nightmarish oppression something other
than the false choice of dictatorship or theocracy--and making the U.S.
safer for the effort.
The secretary of defense, like officers in Iraq, did not welcome the war,
but felt that it needed to be fought and will be won. Soldiers and
civilian planners express confidence in eventual success, but with
awareness of often having only difficult and more difficult choices after
Sept. 11. Put too many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we earn the
wages of imperialism, or create a costly footprint that is hard to erase,
or engender a dependency among the very ones in whom we wish to ensure
self-reliance. Yet deploy too few troops, and instability arises in Kabul
and Baghdad, as the Islamists lose their fear of American power and turn
on the vulnerable we seek to protect.
In sum, after talking to our soldiers in Iraq and our planners in
Washington, what seems to me most inexplicable is the war over the
war--not the purported absence of a plan, but that the more we are
winning in the field, the more we are losing it at home.
(Mr. Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution, and the author most recently of "A War Like No Other: How
the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War" (Random House,
2005). )
.
|
|
| User: "z" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
10 Mar 2006 03:23:13 PM |
|
|
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it
hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain
to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic
terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time
for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the
Islamists.
That does not constitute a plan, it's a goal. A goal without a plan is
a dream. I might as well have a "plan" that I will make a zillion
dollars without destroying my health or integrity or social/family life
then retire to a life of leisure.
You think I'm exaggerating? Here's Rumsfeld's latest "plan", as
revealed to the Senate:
``The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to
occur, to have the, from a security standpoint, have the Iraqi security
forces deal with it to the extent they're able to,'' Rumsfeld told a
Senate panel today.
Rumsfeld was responding to questions from Senator Robert Byrd, a West
Virginia Democrat, on what the U.S. plan is for dealing with a
full-fledged sectarian war in Iraq. Iraqis also need to quickly form a
unified government, Rumsfeld said.
Yeah. My plan is to prevent idiots like that from running (ruining) the
country. Both plans are about equally likely.
.
|
|
|
| User: "John" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
10 Mar 2006 03:30:44 PM |
|
|
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan,
"Many are determined"? "Lost without a plan"??
Can anyone honestly claim at this point that Bush had (or has) any
kind of exit strategy for Iraq?
You know this spin gets more ludicrous every day. And I'm not
referring to the spin from the "many" referenced above.
.
|
|
|
| User: "z" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
11 Mar 2006 06:43:15 PM |
|
|
John wrote:
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan,
"Many are determined"? "Lost without a plan"??
Can anyone honestly claim at this point that Bush had (or has) any
kind of exit strategy for Iraq?
You know this spin gets more ludicrous every day. And I'm not
referring to the spin from the "many" referenced above.
Well, he has plan-related program activities.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "GW Chimpzillas Eye-Rack Neocon Utopia" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
10 Mar 2006 03:35:39 PM |
|
|
John wrote:
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan,
"Many are determined"? "Lost without a plan"??
Can anyone honestly claim at this point that Bush had (or has) any
kind of exit strategy for Iraq?
AWOL Bush relies more on spin doctors than he does military strategists.
You know this spin gets more ludicrous every day. And I'm not
referring to the spin from the "many" referenced above.
--
There are only two kinds of Republicans: Millionaires and fools.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "GW Chimpzillas Eye-Rack Neocon Utopia" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
09 Mar 2006 12:13:46 PM |
|
|
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown
apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs
and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But
instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced.
Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and
Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there
appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a
viable coalition government.
But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had
exploded.
It was one of those 'wake up and smell the coffee' moments for some. But for me,
it was merely an outcome. Causation happened a long time ago -- when the
looting started in Baghdad.
--
There are only two kinds of Republicans: Millionaires and fools.
.
|
|
|
| User: "z" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
10 Mar 2006 03:24:17 PM |
|
|
GW Chimpzilla's Eye-Rack Neocon Utopia wrote:
Ubiquitous wrote:
At War With Ourselves
We're winning in Iraq. Let's not lose at home.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.
Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown
apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs
and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But
instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced.
Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and
Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there
appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a
viable coalition government.
But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had
exploded.
It was one of those 'wake up and smell the coffee' moments for some. But for me,
it was merely an outcome. Causation happened a long time ago -- when the
looting started in Baghdad.
Hey, there's lots of folks who still believe we're gonna find the WMD
Any Day Now. There must be a way to get them to bet on it.
--
There are only two kinds of Republicans: Millionaires and fools.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "uri" |
|
| Title: Re: At War With Ourselves |
09 Mar 2006 01:04:34 PM |
|
|
There is no threat of "terrorism". We live in a culture of fear and
bigotry, that's the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_fear
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
