What We’ve Gained In 3 Years in Iraq
Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn’t have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.
Propaganda is best left to the professionals, because most of the American sheeple (when they can be roused from their stupor, that is) tend to resent being bludgeoned with something that has obviously been crafted to maximize it’s desired political impact. Secretary of War Defense Donald Rumsfeld should probably just stick to figuring out how to kill as many of the “enemy” as possible, because his latest attempt to frame and define the public debate frankly sucks.
I’m insulted and offended that Rumsfeld would in all seriousness compare leaving Iraq to handing Germany back to the Nazis. First of all, Iraq’s insurgents haven’t killed six million Jews and/or terrorized an entire continent. Nazi Germany was an indigenous creation that resulted from the miserable condition Germany found itself in following WWI. The Iraqi insurgency is a collection of terrorists created by the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Apples and oranges? Duh….
The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.
Why is it that Rumsfeld, and indeed virtually everyone in the Bush Administration, seem to define the war in Iraq in terms of “victory” and “defeat”.? And why do these folks persist in assuming that “victory” for America is defined in the same manner for the insurgents?
Rumsfeld insists on defining “victory” in terms of battlefield successes and political gains. Military success and “free” elections mean nothing when you are fighting an enemy you cannot see. What is accomplished by staging a massive propaganda operation like the recent “Operation Potemkin Village Swarmer” when you ultimately end up doing nothing to erode the insurgency’s ability to strike whenever and wherever they choose?
Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly — from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election — in defiance of terrorists’ threats and attacks.
One of the most important developments over the past year has been the increasing participation of Iraq’s Sunni community in the political process. In the volatile Anbar province, where Sunnis are an overwhelming majority, voter turnout grew from 2 percent in January to 86 percent in December. Sunni sheiks and religious leaders who previously had been sympathetic to the insurgency are today meeting with coalition representatives, encouraging Iraqis to join the security forces and waging what violent extremists such as Abu al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda followers recognize as a “large-scale war” against them.
Again, what good are elections when the moral equivalent of civil war is tearing Iraq apart along sectarian lines? What, exactly, is the “government” of Iraq governing? It’s not as if the government can actually project it’s power and authority anywhere. Without the contined American presence, Iraq would be Hell on Earth, with Sunnis killing Shiites and vice-versa…kind of like what’s happening with the American presence, eh?
Don’t get me wrong; democracy is a wonderful thing, but the mere fact of free elections does not a democracy make. Democracy means that the voice of the people is heard and respected. As things stand now, those who speak out are likely to be killed. Where there should be government implementing programs and making things better for their people, there is violence, bloodshed, and terror. That is not a democracy, no matter how much Donald Rumsfeld tries to spin it as such.
Rumsfeld can afford to sit in his comfortable Washington office and think of Iraq in theoretical terms. His children aren’t the ones doing the fighting and dying. Perhaps if they were, this sorry excuse for a war would have ended long ago. When Rumsfeld, Our Glorious Leader, and others in the Administration continue to speak in terms of the necessity of “continued sacrifice”, they’re talking about the “continued sacrifice” of our young men and women for a failed policy that shows no signs of anything but continued failure and “sacrifice”.
Mission Accomplished? Not by a long shot….
