From the article:The Ambiguity of Wars End
Eugene, when Democrats give each other furtive looks in hushed discussions about not wanting to look like they are cheering for the failure of our mission in Iraq, all we need to do is trot out this article, and the thread is laid bare.
Of course we won in Iraq. We overthrew the merciless and bloody tyrant who had held his country and the region in terror for decades. We are leaving Iraq in as good a situation as could be hoped for given the religious and racial divides that exist there.
You have to get the images of World War II out of your head. The wars we are fighting now aren’t against nation-states. We didn’t go into Iraq with the intent of defeating it’s people who had waged, as a nation, war against the world around them. And yes Eugene, you paid lip service to this concept, but you grappled with it intellectually and came out the loser simply because you are handicapped by your ideology.
You were clearly disingenuous, bordering on outright dishonesty in your depiction of the situation. You say Iran has gained tremendous influence in the region and is on their way to becoming a nuclear power. You say it as if the Iraq war had something to do with that. How dishonest can you be? As IF Iran had been tracking towards a different destiny. Obama came as the messiah, bearing the peace branch to Iran. Do you see that at all slowing down Iran’s nuclear ambition? Please tell me you have the intellectual capacity to comprehend this. I can understand you peddling a point of view for cash, but there has to be some semblance of competency there.
An estimated 100,000 Iraqi’s died. An agreed tragedy. And estimates were that 10,000 Iraqi’s were being killed a month for Saddam to maintain his power. If it were me, I would much rather be an unintended casualty in a struggle for freedom than the statistic that was beaten and then starved to death in a cell for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. And yes, the cost in dollars was high as well and the cost in American lives is inestimable. But our brave men and women put it on the line and a portion of this country, who truly do stand behind our troops regardless of the political consequence or the shortsightedness of the politicians who put them in harms way, appreciate those individuals who are the finest of us all.
Though there was one nugget of wisdom in your entire article, and though it is obvious, I will give you credit for it anyway. Given where we are in Iraq, what does that mean for Afghanistan? That is a quandary for which there is no ready answer. Afghanistan has defied the concept of central government and stability through it’s entire history as it has been a crossroads for warring factions from far off lands. Is America going to solve that? Highly doubtful. So if we are going to agree anywhere Eugene, it’s under what terms do we leave Afghanistan. I would much rather leave the country standing up even if the government is crumbling around us as men who are not ready to take on the accountability of their own freedom will not maintain it for long.
What we do not want is the image of Americans running for choppers evacuating the country as quickly as possible a’la Vietnam (Thanks Mr. Cronkite).
But where Mr. Robinson and I will diverge is the concept of being ready to back into Afghanistan and stomp the Taliban if they ever come to power again.