Wasting Time With Alex

On the ISG commission, Iraq, Iran and the GWoT

Lately I have been discussing Iraq and the role it plays in our GWoT with lots of people, and unfortunately I am sensing so many of them are either not grasping what is at stake or involved here and why the only way to win is to escalate and expand the conflict to break the people supporting the chaos in Iraq, or are tired and no lonnger care for the GWoT since there has not been another attack against us. The vaunted ISG has offered nothing new. I didn’t expect anything however from people that want to go back to the days of the Cold War when you acted friendly towards and tollerated & negotiated even with those that wanted to slit your troat. All because the greater goal was to keep the fight against the USSR going. Except the USSR has now been suplanted by radical islam and they are calling we negotiate with the biggest an nastiest of the exporters of that evil: Iran. Oh yeah, and of course we should throw Israel under the bus while we are at because that will please the bloodthirsty barbarians. Plain and simply crazy & stupid.

Anyway, Andrew McCarthy has an absolutely brilliant piece at NRO discussing why we need to fight and expand the conflict:

There is only one good reason for American troops to be in Iraq. It is the reason we sent them there in 2003: To fight and win the “war on terror” — i.e., the war against radical Islam — by deposing rogue regimes helping the terror network wage a long-term, existential jihad against the United States. You can argue that Iraq was the wrong rogue to start with; but destroying radical Islam’s will and its capacity to project power is what the war is about.

Iraq is but a single battlefield in that war. It is not “the war.” Stabilizing or even — mirabile dictu! — democratizing Iraq is not winning the war. It is the overseas equivalent of rebuilding the World Trade Center. The hard reality is that war exacts a terrible toll and its fallout must be addressed. This is why we hate war and resort to it only in the face of greater evils. But cleaning up war’s unavoidable messes is not the same as winning.

Winning the war means taking on the regimes and factions that are waging it. That is what the president promised to do after 9/11. “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

Why in hell would we negotiate with the very top candidate on the axis of evil list? Why would we reward Iran for undermining Iraq and waging a stead 27 year war against us? Why should we do things that would guarantee a nuclear armed Iran which then protected by that nuclear umbrella can do magnitudes worse than what it does today? Anyone really expecting that Iran will somehow become a stabilizing factor needs to explain to me what Iran gains from helping us. And spare me the bull about how Iran wants to play nice but we are the ones making it impossible. The Iranian leadership is fighting a proxy war against us and hell bent on taking us head on eventually, and nothing else will dissuade them from this path. Well nothing short of being dead and unable to continue this policy.

“Death to America” is not just a slogan for our enemies. It’s a deeply held conviction, on which they are feverishly acting. Only when we are ready to take them seriously, when our leaders’ brave words are matched by determined deeds, can we win — in Iraq and, more importantly, in the greater war.

Keep that in mind when weariness lets you think a “negotiated” solution is possible. As I have often pointed out: we might not want this war but the enemy does and hence we will fight it. We have the choice of doing it on our terms and winning or on theirs, and while we might still win pay a horendous price, or even losing. I for one do not want to contemplate the scenario where we lose.