WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN IRAQ?
As US troops move into Samarrah in what is hoped is the long anticipated offensive against sunni insurgents and terrorists, several well repected and knowledgable columnists have written conflicting analyses of what’s going on in Iraq as well as offering strikingly dissimilar remedies on what can be done to improve both the tactical and strategic position of coalition forces.
Who do we believe?
Take Arnoud de Borchgrave, one of the more informed and knowledgable sources on terrorism writing today. De Borchgrave made his bones by uncovering the Bulgarian connection to the assasination attempt on the Pope and has written and traveled extensively in the mid-east. This column, so relentlessly pessimistic about the outcome in Iraq, should make even the most partisan amongst us (myself included) begin to think.
Then there’s Reul Marc Gerecht, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who’s gloomy predictions about the radicalization of Sunni moslems-with the help of our erstwhile ally, the Saudi’s-point to a very bleak future indeed for a secular Iraq.
And Thomas Friedman whose informative books on the arab-israeli conflict are a must read for anyone who wishes to understand that troubled region, takes apart the Bush administration’s Iraq policy piece by piece until all that’s left is his conclusion that conservative politics were more at play than national security.
These are not the rantings of the paranoid left. These are three thoughtful men whose judgements we should respect and whose politics have been more often than not right or right of center.
But is it really all gloom and doom?
Check this column out by Ollie North. North, who’s shown in the past that he can be critical of the Bush Administration when it comes to mis-using his beloved Corp or mismanaging Fallujah, is much more optimistic. North has reported extensively from the front…the REAL front in Iraq, not the Green Zone in Bagdhad where most western reporters seem to have concluded that Iraq is in total chaos.
And what about the Iraqi’s themselves? Mohammed, Ali and Omar whose Iraq The Model has been an extremely reliable source of information regarding Iraqi hopes and dreams as well as local political developments which point to several key developments in Fallujah.
Does any of this really matter? I think it will only matter if the American people lose heart and succumb to the siren song of defeatism being sung by John Kerry and his strange coalition of “the wild-eyed and the petrified.”
Read this from Wesley Pruden or Chris Hitchens, one of the few leftists who’ve taken a principled position on the war on terror (in the process costing him longtime friends). And then, most poignantly, the 150 9/11 widows whose courage inspires us to not despair.
Thirty days to go before the election and we’re all going to have to decide. That’s what elections are about…that and the future.
UPDATE:, Here’s some feel-good news about Afghanistan.
As bad as things may be in Iraq, will elections on October 9 in Afghanistan give Bush the momentum again? (Superhawk shrugs his shoulders as if to say…”Time will tell…”