I missed this excellent Ben Stein article when The American Spectator first published it a week ago. It’s short but dead on, as usual: (h/t Bookworm Room)
[…]It is not just a guess, but a certainty that if the U.S. were to abruptly withdraw from Iraq, as the Democrats are urging us to do, there would be a bloodbath in Iraq far worse than what we have seen so far. There would be outright civil war, large scale massacres of civilian populations beyond what we have seen by an order of magnitude, and a Middle East in chaos as Iran, the Kurds, and the Sunnis fought it out for land and oil and power. The word of the United States would be mud. Is this really what the Democrats want? Can they really contemplate with calm equanimity the mass murders that will follow a sudden U.S. withdrawal?
I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult — especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.
I have a voluminous correspondence with soldiers and Marines in Iraq. To a man and woman, they do not want to walk away and make their comrades’ deaths meaningless. They hate the war. They hate the dying. They grieve. So do their families. But they believe in their mission and they do not want their brothers’ losses to be in vain. Their voices should be listened to.
Insurgencies by highly motivated people are extremely hard to stamp out. This is especially true in Arab countries, where bravery is fanatically motivated by religion and personal unhappiness. But suppressing rebellions has been done in Egypt, Algeria, and Israel. It takes a lot of ugliness to do it. This is war, especially guerrilla war. It is horrible that we are in this kind of war, but we are in it, and it will never be won except by the most severe means. Whatever we do, however, it will be nothing compared with the firebombing of Tokyo, the carpet bombing of every German city, the atom bomb on Hiroshima. That is the awful truth: wars are won by horrific measures. It is deeply tragic, but it’s true. If we are not willing to adopt strict measures, we will not and cannot win.
It’s amazing to me to think that people who enjoy the freedom’s of this country have no difficulty in throwing away the lives of the Iraqi people. Do they think that if we cut and run like the cowards want there would be no consequences to that country? It would be become the country of Al-Qaeda. Imagine the decimation that would happen, but do they care? Nope, all they think about is proving Bush wrong, that is all that matters to these assclowns. Might as well call the Democratic party the party of radical Islam.
Other’s Blogging:
Little Green Footballs
Spilled Candy
QuickRob
The Kellino Zone
Long Time Gone
The Discerning Texan
Discarded Lies
Molten Thought
It’s amazing to me to think that people who enjoy the freedom’s of this country have no difficulty in throwing away the lives of the Iraqi people. Do they think that if we cut and run like the cowards want there would be no consequences to that country?
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