Thursday, November 09, 2006

Reality, or Alternate Reality?

In contrast to my Nov. 4 post, Iraq vet Austin Bay states we've pretty much won in Iraq:
I know, the NY Times and John Kerry have told us Iraq is a disaster. No. The US has already gotten about 90 percent of what it needed on September 12, 2001. There’s a democratically elected government in the potentially most powerful (predominantly) Arab Muslim nation, a government trying to learn to crawl under the most trying conditions. It’s a government that is learning by doing — and learning often by failure. However, as long as the US and coalition remain around to coach, train, and respond to crisis, Iraqi failures will be controlled failures.

Yup. Fostering the development of choice in the Middle East — a choice other than tyranny or terror– is a tough process.


As I see it, we can win in two ways.

The quick way, which is obliterating cities or sections of cities where resistance is high -- Yes, carpetbomb them, take out everything, man-woman-and-child, in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. I don't advocate choice number one. We don't need to do this to win, and doing it without it being a dire necessity is mass murder.

Or, number two, the long way. Outlast them, in the same way the British outlasted the IRA. It took 30+ years for the IRA to get tired of fighting and not getting anywhere before they negotiated a real peace. Iraq will work the same way.

The wild card is WMDs -- if the j-team nukes a US city while we're trying to outlast them, what do we do?

[Note: This post was edited for clarity after its initial posting.]

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