This country, led most of the time against the current by President Bush, has gone the proverbial “last mile” in Iraq, taking casualties now trying to keep the peace among people hell-bent not to live in peace – at least as far as their leaders are concerned, which is all that matters in a population of which more than half are functionally illiterate and therefore led around by the nose by the butchers who recognize no sanctity of life. The people voted three times in 2005, often, if not always, at great personal risk to secure a democratic government.
Since the last vote, December 2005, this country has stayed the course, watching elected Iraqi leaders act along multi-partisan lines (though mostly sectarian) to defeat the will of the people and install themselves or their parties/tribes/sects/whatever in positions of advantage, leaving the common people worse off then they were under the supreme butcher, Saddam. Even worse, their surrogates in the streets kill indiscriminately, strapping on bombs and blowing women and children to bits in the marketplace or installing IEDs to kill American GIs.
The crowning insult to the Bush administration is the recent announcement by the Iraqi government that it intends to take two months off soon for vacation, as if it hasn’t seemingly been somewhere off the planet for a year and a half already. In this corner, which has always steadily supported the Iraqi action, this announcement should be taken by President Bush as an invitation by the Iraqis to depart. If Iraqi lawmakers and bureaucrats don’t intend to be serious about their commitment, this country certainly should not carry their water any longer. No American life or limb has been wasted in the effort, since the world is now on notice that this country has both the power and the will to move military resources around the world and overcome any enemy.
Nation-building, however, is possible only among people who are both willing to participate and unwilling to shed each other’s blood in the process. George Bush announced when running in 2000 that nation-building was not this country’s business. He felt it necessary to change that concept in both Afghanistan and Iraq probably because this country did a great deal to completely turn those countries upside-down. Enormous amounts of lives and treasure have been spent in the process in both places, but in neither place does there seem any actual hope that democracy will take hold.
The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28.1%, an unbelievable statistic in this country. Two things are necessary for a republic to exist – integrity, especially among officials, and a reasonably well-educated populace, neither of which obtains in Afghanistan and Iraq. This being the case, it’s time now for serious planning for withdrawal, not because democrats demand it but because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel in either place, not to mention that the U.S. military has been heavily enough burdened. In fact, things might get better – except for women and girls – in both places when the troops leave. Unfortunately, even though this country has virtually freed women and girls in their Islamic hells, American GIs cannot enforce decency upon men who are instinctively indecent and driven to be so by a fanaticism enhanced by fanatic imams, ayatollahs, sheiks, whatever.
The claim that a withdrawal will make this nation appear weak or will allow the terrorists to follow our troops to our shores is without foundation. This would have been true if the nation had not “stayed the course” after engaging the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq 5.5 and four years ago, respectively. There was hope back then that a people would decide to govern themselves secularly but the hope has long since evaporated. It appears that even the man in the street is determined to live by the Koran, which makes jihad incumbent upon him, whether he likes it or not. Now, even the women are getting into the act, blowing themselves, along with other women as well as children, to smithereens in the name of their god – Allah. This country has made its point in spades and has nothing to fear but – as FDR put it in WWII-terms in1941 – fear itself.
Everything is now changed in light of the fact that Iraqi leaders are perfectly willing to take off a couple months while their land is going to hell in a hand-basket, and after having done nothing for some 18 months, at that. Disgusting. The time to start leaving is now. The war was won four years ago and the Iraqi conception of peace is incomprehensible to Americans. Actual peace will never happen…Muslims hate each other too much for that.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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