[Dark Skies]

I had considerable apprehension about posting this article by Jihadwatch's Hugh Fitzgerald. But against my better judgment (knowing that this article may be unbearably offensive to some), I thought it better that you see this and make up your own minds.

I can't say that I agree with or disagree with this article, but, however provocative it may be, I thought it worth considering. If you disagree with my decision to post it, you may, of course, ask the admin mod to pull it.

[JamesP81]

The problem is that causing instability may work for the short and medium term, but probably not the long-term. Another problem is that if we are going to bludgeon the hell out of Iran, it will be easier if we have bases near us.

This threat of guerilla strikes from Iran is stupid, though. The Iranians, I think, are already running flat out on that strategy. They've been doing it since 2003. Their only real retaliatory option is a conventional attack into Iraq. I don't have to tell you that that would be complete suicide on their part. It's one thing to project power into an enemy country (when we invaded Iraq). It's quite another to defend ground you control. On the defensive, it won't matter if they outnumber us 100:1.

[wvobiwan]

We'll be out soon, everything's on schedule.

[wideawake]

President Bush = naive, clueless, doesn't get it

Hugh Fitzgerald = the most brilliant man who has ever lived and who will ever live

Oh, what a sad twist of fate that denied Hugh Fitzgerald his rightful Presidency, nay, his rightful place as king of the world!

Hugh knows all. He has spent thirty years in Iraq and not only knows everything that goes on there, he also knows whatever will happen there. If only the President had access to people who have actually served in combat in Iraq! Luckily, he has Hugh Fitzgerald to enlighten his darkness.

Thank you, thank you, Thank Hugh!

[Uncle Miltie]

Britain birthed the bastard baby named Iraq. A loose federal structure with substantial local autonomy is the only thing that will keep it together without tyranny.

Let's keep it going folks. We're not defeated or done yet. If and when the time comes, we can leave and let them go back to their historic bloodbath. But we're not done trying yet.

[monkeywrench]

"There they are now hostage to possible Iranian retaliation for any attack on Iran's nuclear project. That retaliation could come from Iran itself, which shares a long and porous border with Iraq, or it could come from Iranian agents already in Iraq working with local..."

This is what's happening right now in iraq. LOL! Our guys are not nor will they ever be held hostage to the retaliatory whims of the islamofacists. What they are is prepared.

This is just more hand wringing.

[dbostan]

Very good and true analysis.
We need to let them fight each other 'till eternity.

[mugs99]

Bush’s naivete is also on display in his laziness about the specific history of Iraq, and of Sunni-Shi'a hostility. It is not merely a product of the last few years or few decades. It goes back more than 1300 years, to the time of the four rightly-guided caliphs.

May be hard to swallow, but that's the cold hard truth.
If you want peace in the mideast, Islam will have to be defeated. Are we willing to go down that road?
.

[Earthdweller]

Why are these people coming out of the woodwork calling for withdrawal when we are supposed to be on schedule for withdrawal soon anyway?

I hate it when people try to make themselves look bright by suggesting something that is already on the books.

The Dems are still trying to pull this one as well.

[humint]

That stony soil for democracy’s growth is the soil of Islam, which teaches that legitimacy comes from Allah and the Shari'a, not from mere mortals casting their ballots.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

DEMOCRACY! God grants liberty, not mortals. The ballot represents a peaceful transition into the future, nothing more - nothing less. The evolution of our intellect demands all mankind will eventually turn to the ballot or some version of it. Think about the social dynamics happening in front of us. Those of us with the right to bear arms will use them to protect and propagate methods that allow us and our children to peacefully transition into the future. We are duty bound to use them against persons who would strip us of our rights; freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and yes, including our right to bear arms.

While life has gotten easier for many in the West and arms have a different meaning to us than they did to the founders of our great nation, there is no guarantee that life will stay easy. In fact, withdrawal, disengagement, separatism, and isolationism are all behaviors that guarantee life will become untenable. There are those among us, and with family members, who have invented arms so powerful that these arms could erase the works of our preceding generations. We cannot let these tools slip into the hands of tyrants and therefore tyrant must go the way of the dinosaur. The Iranian government with its medieval intellect cannot come to possess the tools that could render them capable of destroying Washington. Iraq cannot slip into another brand of dictatorship! There will be no sequel to Saddam!

Accomplishing these goals will not be easy but they must be accomplished. I'm glad you posted this because it is a view, although terribly wrong, worth critical analysis.

[livius]

There are innocents in the Muslim world, but we are not in a position now to help them without further imperiling ourselves.

I understand your hesitation. I don't think Bush is naive, or at any rate any more naive than the rest of us; I, personally, have changed my opinions considerably in the last few years, partly because I have read more and partly because I have observed more. I am sure Bush and all his advisors have done likewise, and I really wonder if we knew then what we knew now if our objective wouldn't have been different. In other words, not nation building, but suppression of a threat, starting with Iraq and sweeping on to Iran and Syria. What would we have done then? I don't know, but perhaps it would have been easier if we had destroyed them first, and then rebuilt according to our plans, rather than holding back and then hoping that they would come and reason together.

I honestly don't think there is a way for an Islamic society to build a democracy; Bush keeps saying it won't be like our democracy, and that's not something that bothers me - but the problem is that it will probably end up, very soon, being simply another Islamic state where democracy simply means that people get to vote for one Islamic hothead or another, and the whole country is governed by sharia. Why should we be installing sharia anywhere? Maybe these people voted for it, but it's like voting for a dictator: your last free vote is the one that votes him in. Yet we're still going to support it?

Frankly, I don't know how it should end. I was very hopeful a couple of years ago, but the Muslims are only getting nuttier and revealing their hatred more clearly by the moment. Iran is more of a threat than it was a couple of years ago - and, incidentally, is tied to much of the guerrilla activity in Iraq - and the West is so disunited and demoralized by the left and by the actions of its own Muslim population that I feel we are actually weaker than we were at the beginning of the Iraq war.

I don't want to be as pessimistic as Fitzgerald, but things are certainly not looking positive now - and I am sure that Bush himself (judging by the fact that he actually mentioned Islamic extremism in the SOTU) is also rethinking things. That's all we can do, after all. Everybody has 20-20 hindsight.

[hinckley buzzard]

his laziness about the specific history of Iraq, and of Sunni-Shi'a hostility. It is not merely a product of the last few years or few decades. It goes back more than 1300 years, to the time of the four rightly-guided caliphs.

I think this writer is the lazy one. After substantial reading on the history of Iraq in the last few years, I have found the historians to agree on one thing-- that the Shia-Sunni rivalry was never much of a factor in Iraq, until exacerbated by Saddam, and played upon by the current foreign jihadi's. It has been rather bloody elsewhere, but to say it has been a serious conflict in Iraq for 1300 years is simply an error.

The students of this region, not to say the instant pundits turned out by the dozen lately, consider a sectarian "civil war" to be a fairly remote risk.

[darth]

I don't think the Iraq war critics studied Clausewitz or Napoleon much. War is about GEOGRAPHY. We now surround Iran on 3 sides with substantial military capability in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. When it comes to blows, President Ahmaddeadjihadi will face the full fury of American airpower, seapower, and heavy armor. Yeah, they will get a few of our guys with suicide jockeys, but there won't be much left of their military or government centers.

[hinckley buzzard]

It is also the best thing to do so that attention and resources can be turned to another important matter, the islamization of Western Europe through Da'wa and demographic conquest.

I wonder what resources he thinks we can apply to the problem of western Europe. If they don't want to survive, there is nothing we can do to help them. If they decide to roll back this disease, they have the capacity to do it themselves.

[BlackVeil]

But all this is brushed aside by the messianic impulse of Bush, and by his naivete about the virtues of "democracy" and even the ease with which this "democracy" can be transplanted in the stoniest and most unlikely soil.

AustinWillard and I said that, ages ago, when Iraq idea was first proposed.

I echoed Evelyn Waugh, who said that as a classless society could never be achieved, he was not willing to discuss theories of how to bring this about. As an invasion of Iraq to establish democracy is in the same league as a classless society.