Cross-Posted at
Daily Speech
Well, it depends who you ask.
If you are the political patsy for George W. Bush, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman, Peter Pace, you'd say it's going peachy keen:
"I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at, whether it be on the political side where they've had three elections, they've written their own constitution, they're forming their government. You look at the military side where this time last year there were just a handful of battalions in the field, Iraqi battalions in the field. Now there are over 100 battalions in the field. They had no brigades--that's about 3,000 men each. Now they've got about 31 brigades. No matter where you look at their military, their police, their society, things are much better this year than they were last."
Well, isn't that lovely. It's a rotten shame liberal unpatriotic bloggers like me and a few liberal media people keep reporting that pesky bad news in Iraq. Don't we realize our soldiers have been building schools and hospitals in Iraq and passing out candy to the Iraqi kids who adore the Americans? Don't we realize that such pessimistic talk by the reality-based community is
why Al Qaeda is winning. Oops. I mean resisting the pronouncement by our stern Vice President Cheney they are in their last throes?
I mean us nasty nay sayers are why the majority of Americans want our troops to come home. Shame on us. I mean, patriotic Americans know if we only emphasized the good news out of Iraq and continued happy talk like General Pace, flowers would be blooming in Iraq, their water and electric systems would be restored, their "purple-fingered" elected Parliament would be able to conduct business and elect a Speaker and form a government, and Shites and Sunnis would be living together in peace and tranquility. Yep, we shameless reality-based tree hugging peaceniks are ruining our great President Bush's dream of setting up a democracy in the Arab/Islamic Middle East, all by our little selves (I had no idea how much power we had).
Then there are those reality-based Muslim clerics in Iraq (perhaps since they live there, they may have the inside scoop), like the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani who are now worried that their reasoned pleas to avoiding more violence are increasingly falling of deaf ears and that continued sectarian violence could lead soon to a general population getting involved in the violence to defend their families. But, damn it, can't these pesky reality-based people shut up already! Even if it is one of those senior Muslim clerics - what do they know? They just live on the ground.
No folks, we need to just shut up so Bush and Rumsfeld can get the job done so our soldiers can come home to ticker tape parades. Or at least take a break before they head back to fight in our next glorious war in Iran. (Yes, saber rattling is ratcheting up in regards to Iran - if at first you don't succeed - Iraq - try try again - Iran). Oh, don't worry folks - we'll be able to refresh our armed forces for the Iran campaign with a draft (shhhhh, that is a Democratic red herring).
Yes, a nuclear armed Iran is a serious issue and the West should be concerned. Yes, Al Qaeda is a vicious enemy of the West and is out to cause as much hurt as possible. It's just a shame Uncle George W. Bush let his neocon buddies and his need to take revenge on Saddam for the assassination plot on his father talk him into taking his eye off the ball in Afghanistan and ensuring a stable democracy there before deploying 140,000 troops in the "three-week campaign" in Iraq. But then again Afghanistan does not have oil. (Shit, there I go again, with my cynicism - I need to get with the program already!). Then our exhausted troops, many serving under their third stop-loss order (ie, a draft) will be asked to invade Iran - or at least that is the way the White House is sounding in our "War on Terror".
Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to democracy and our Western way of life. Europe is finding that out now with the uproar over a free press in Denmark daring to be critical of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic fundamentalism, by definition, cannot tolerate democracy. Now, that is distinct from Islam itself. Islam is and can be a religion of peace and tolerance and has historically been able to co-exist peaceably with the West. But fundamentalists are the definition of intolerance. This is serious. And Al Qaeda has taken advantage of this whipped up fanaticism. There is nothing more dangerous and deadly then a fanatic. They are willing to die without hesitation for the glory of Allah.
So this liberal blogger takes these threats quite seriously despite my sarcasm in this article. Where I disagree with the White House is where they have placed their priorities in fighting this real war on terror and their level of competence and sense of reality. Just saying things are going swimmingly, like General Pace, over and over again does not make it so.
But, of course, had we left the contained Saddam Hussein in power and forced continued UN inspections of his supposed weapons of mass destruction, we would have fresh troops to fight possible wars in Iran and North Korea (real enemies) and maintain the move to democracy in Afghanistan and we would likely still have world opinion on our side. But this "messiah-complexed" White House had other ideas and now we face the mess we are in.
And yes, it is true, my conservative friends, if the United States is perceived to loose the war in Iraq by the world and Al Qaeda, we will be much worse off then if we had never went in in the first place. Yet, we stuck ourselves in the middle of a "country" that had only been united by a strong armed brutal dictator and that is ferociously sectarian by nature, and there is little prospect this will end as we would like. That is why President Bush's father went against his own generals and ordered the Persian Gulf war over instead of marching on Baghdad. This wise father knew from years of experience and actual war experience of the folly of such an adventure. But then his son, a man who has always felt a need to prove himself, needed to demonstrate he was a man and his father a sissy, a pansy.