Tuesday. Senator Harry Reid (D. NV), the Democrat Minority Leader in the Senate, was giving
a global sound bite for the television cameras. Creating an image that would be flashed around the world, Leader
Reid, hunched over and blinking as he spoke, said "They have to understand, victory in Iraq is not an option."
In the debates on the Senate floor, Sen. John McCain (R, AZ) countered that defeatist image by saying -
- I urge my colleagues to think long and hard about the message we send to the Iraqi people. Do we wish to
respond to the millions who braved bombs and threats to vote, who have put their faith and trust in America and
the Iraqi government that our number one priority is now bringing our people home? Do we want to tell insurgents
that their violence has successfully ground us down, that their horrific acts will, with enough time, be successful?
No, Mr. President, We must not send these messages. Our exit strategy in Iraq is not the withdrawal of our troops.
It is victory.
The decision by the Republicans to take some 18 months of pummeling in silence allowed the Democrats and the
MSM to build a delusional campaign aimed at convincing the public that Iraq is "just like" Vietnam. It
is in no substantive way anything like Vietnam.
Iraq is not something that America can shake its head at and ignore as the Democratically-controlled Congress did
during Vietnam. The subsequent subjugation and death of millions of Vietnamese who were far away was easily ignored
by the media and the nation. Few consequences were apparent to the everyday American citizen. To the radical Islamists,
however, America was held in contempt for its cowardice. To them, America was hollow at the core.
In the face of daily violence, Iraq has made tangible progress toward democracy over the last months. Theirs is
a life-and-death agenda. They have already experienced American perfidy in the Shia and Kurdish regions. Would
they come to the conclusion that the Americans will abandon them to a civil war because of the ignoble politics
being played at home?
Without U.S. forces to keep order, various tribal leaders will assume that they can retain their power through
force. Is there any doubt that the Sunni would be supplied with arms and material through Syria and Saudi Arabia?
Who could not conceive of the threat to Jordan of a civil war on its border? Will Turkey fail to caste its eye
on the Kurdish oil resources? Finally, would not Iran be eager for the southern oil territories controlled by the
Shia faction? Do the Americans care about any of it? Would they be able to stay out of it or be forced to back
one faction or another? Would a unified Iran and southern Iraq
be tolerated? None of these questions were being asked or answered by the administration's critics who wanted turmoil
and doubt in the month before Iraqi elections but no responsibilioty for the result of their actions.
The major reasons Iraq is so important to America - its oil and water and central location as a place to project
power against radical Islam - is also the very reason its neighbors want to devour it. The underlying conflict
is within Islam between its radicals and its moderates. The oil-producing Arab authoritarian states are considered
apostate by the radicals. Their primary goal is to replace the apostates with a pan-Islamic Caliphate governed
by an extreme Salafist-Wahabbi interpretation of Islamic law. The Taliban is a recent illustration of what such
governance would mean in practice.
The first result of implementing a cut-and-run strategy would be to defeat the notion that Islam, democracy and
capitalism are compatible in the modern world. The second result, of course, would be to confirm the opinion of
the Arab Street that America can't be trusted over the long haul because they lack the courage to hold on until
victory. No Middle Eastern government will take the risk to help the United States. They will have again proven
themselves unreliable when the chips are down. In other parts of the world as well, leaders will wonder if they,
too, will be abandoned if they support the United States. Threats will become more important. The world will become
more like Spain.
Many of the "realist" war opponents believe that the Iraqi people are not worthy of our sacrifice in
money and lives. There are those who hold that Arabs are not able to develop and maintain a free and democratic
republic on their own. They would be "better off" the elitists say, if they lived under an Islamic theocracy.
It is a shameful offense to the Iraqi people to say that they are not worthy of our sacrifice. Even worse, is the
suggestion to our soldiers that they fight and die in vain for an unworthy cause.
The blunt truth is that if this nation loses heart and gives up, the odds that our cities will experience attack
from an Arab nuke dramatically increases. General reform throughout the Middle East that creates hope for a better
tomorrow is the alternative to the worship of death. The status quo ante won't cut it.
Appeasement is a death sentence. The left's political uproar right before the Iraqi elections is not just cynical,
it is not just shameful. It is dangerous. Americans will not accept a program of gradual surrender that enslaves
their grandchildren.
11/18/05
