Tuesday, November 1

Out of Iraq? Not If We Want A Free America

In 1970 the American military was whipping the bejeebers out of North Vietnam. Battle after battle was won by US troops. But that wasn't the way the war was portrayed by the media to the nation. Progressive/socialists led anti-war protests and people like John Kerry falsely accused the troops of horrible war crimes. And then Congress got into the act.

The United States didn't lose the Viet Nam war. They pulled out because Congress refused to fund it.

So here we go again.

The Democrats (Progressives/Socialists) are threatening to vote against funding the Iraq war. Socialists like Jonathan Schell, writing for The Nation, say "The strongest argument for staying in Iraq is that the United States, having taken over the country, owes its people a better future. But acknowledgment of such a responsibility is only the beginning, not the end, of an argument.

"To meet a responsibility to someone, you must have something on offer that they want. Certainly, the people of Iraq want electricity, running water and other material assistance. The United States should supply it. Perhaps--it's hard to find out--they also want democracy. But democracy cannot be shipped to Iraq on a tanker or a C-5A. It is a homegrown construct, which must flow from the will of the people involved. The expression of that will is, in fact, what democracy is.

But today the United States seeks to impose a government on Iraq in the teeth of an increasingly powerful popular opposition." That is one of the most irresponsible statements ever published in American journalism.

Schell is ignoring a rather important fact, and that is that the Iraqi people went to the polls in droves in spite of the threat of death and mayhem to vote for that government. It's hardly accurate, also, to say the government is imposed by the US when it is being fabricated by Iraqi leaders of the various religious factions in the country. The Iraqi people voted in numbers far exceeding the usual turnout in US elections. And when they stood in those lines, they had no idea whether a truck would pull up beside them and explode. Would YOU go to the polls under those circumstances?

One of Schell's big complaints is the usual one about getting into the war in the first place. He (and those who scream loudest about our invading Iraq) has not read the Butler Report -- the review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Schell has also forgotten the history of Hussein's defiance of UN sanctions for the decade leading up to the war. Most of all, he refuses to acknowledge that there were connections firmly established linking Hussein to Al Quaida.

Progressives believe -- and operate on the belief -- that Goebbels was right when he said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. So now we face a growing cacaphony of anti-war protests. From a mother who dishonors the memory of a son who chose to fight and die for his country to Sen. Diane Feinstein, who calls for troops to begin to leave next month, the irresponsible and the feckless are doing all they can to make Iraq as much like Viet Nam as they can.

There's no similarity between the two. The South Vietnamese never had a chance for a free vote. When the Americans left, the North Vietnamese came in and slaughtered them. To this day they know only dictatorship and fear.

My Pentagon sources tell me that Rumsfeld is as poor a Secretary of Defense as we have ever had. He is worse than McNamara. His ego is far too large to allow him to listen to and take the advice he needs. He has done a truly lousy job as Secretary of Defense and should be ousted as fast as possible. When the fog has cleared, history will show him for what he is and has been: The worst possible.

Still our troops are safer in Bagdad than they are on the nation's highways. They are the best trained and, for the most part, the most loyal troops in the nation's history. They believe in their mission -- as my grandson said, "We are not killers. We are nation builders."

America is the only nation in history that rebuilds the nations it defeats in war. Germany, Japan, Italy are all examples of prosperous countries that we helped to rebuild after we had to defeat them. They govern themselves with free elections and without our "help." Socialist/Progressives who sneer at "American Colonialism" simply perpetuate another lie.

The United States was right to invade Iraq. We should be thankful that the Iraqi people are willing to die for their freedom and that we have raised young men and women who are willing to sacrifice so that another nation has a chance at what we have.

Schell writes: "Hachim Hassani, a representative of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni Muslim group represented on the so-called Governing Council, might have been answering him when he commented to the Los Angeles Times, 'The Iraqi people now equate democracy with bloodshed.'

Under these circumstances, staying the course cannot benefit Iraq. On the contrary, each additional day that American troops continue to fight in Iraq can only compound the eventual price of the original mistake--costing more lives, American and Iraqi, disorganizing and pulverizing the society, and reducing, not fostering, any chances for a better future for the country." And he is dead wrong. We must stay not only to benefit the Iraqis but to plant a free society in the midst of Islam. If Iraq reverts to another dictatorship the terrorists regain their training camps and America loses far more than a war.

We must NOT allow Congress to cut the necessary funding to get the job done, and done right.

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