Austin Bay says we are winning a very tough war in Iraq and makes several insightful points in the process. Among them:
Better there than here.
As the fall of 2003 approaches, Iraq is two battlefields and one birthplace. On one battlefield, the venomous regime of Saddam Hussein dies a slow, painful and dangerous death. Big vipers die killing because killing is their be-all and -- to the last -- their end-all. With cash stashed in Iraq and corrupt banks throughout the world, with weapons littering Iraq's landscape, the snake still has ready poison. It's why Americans who understand the enemy continue to apply deadly, insistent military and political pressure.The second battlefield is a large "strategic" ambush, and the enemy entering the kill zone still hasn't quite figured it out. From an American perspective that presents an opportunity, an opportunity with risks, but one with huge potential payoffs. In Iraq, America is ambushing Al Qaeda and tag-along jihadis powered by the fantasy ideology of Islamo-fascism.
On 9/11, Al Qaeda chose the battlefields: New York and Washington. American leaders have decided it's better to fight terrorists "over there" than "over here." So our soldiers slug it out in the Sunni Triangle instead of Seattle. U.S. and British soldiers, and increasingly Iraqi police, are engaged in this fight. It's tough. In eight to 10 months, we'll know if it worked.
Democracy is being born, not manufactured, in Iraq -- and it's got the tyrants scared.
Iraq is the birthplace of something every committed human rights advocate should praise -- a free land escaping murderous tyranny. Baathists and Islamo-fascists are both old-time autocrats, the control freaks of the past trying to kill the future in its crib. It's an exhausting and bloody birth, and understandably, given the legacy of murder and theft. Yet Iraq is on a time-line for an elected government.
Understanding the underlying truth is essential.
Defeatist hotheads who natter about "root causes of terror" must understand the taproot of terror is tyranny. Theft and brutality by local dictators are the leading causes of Third World poverty. UC-Berkeley faculty resolutions don't stop gangsters. Cutting the taproot usually requires the explicit presence and sometimes the precious lives of Western soldiers.Posted by Alan at August 29, 2003 12:19 AMvia StrategyPage