by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt is easy to be against the war now,” boasts Howard Dean, as he goes on to describe Iraq as a hopeless quagmire. We are reminded daily not of the birth of the first consensual government in the history of the Arab world, but only that nine months after the military defeat of the Baathists, there is still resistance to the American reconstruction; and that the number of American soldiers, killed in major combat operations and afterward, has now surpassed 500.<\/p>\n Things in the Middle East are hard precisely because the stakes there are gargantuan. But so are the rewards: The sanctuaries and patrons of murderers, suicide bombers, and terrorists are shrinking with the destruction of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Autocracies like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria are terrified of consensual government in Iraq precisely because they are aware of its implications for their own deprived citizens.<\/p>\n Meanwhile millions \u2014 from Libya and Pakistan to North Korea and Iran \u2014 watch intently. They wonder whether this new United States is about to run out of gas and return to the old appeasement of the last twenty years, when crafting nukes on the sly, blowing up Americans, and terrorizing innocents earned (at the worst) a televised remonstration expressing “concern” and “disappointment.” On the other hand, wonder the world’s opportunists, is this new \u2014 and often unpredictable \u2014 United States going to completely change the rules of engagement, to prevent the conditions that would lead to another September 11?<\/p>\n From our end, if we examine the situation in Iraq rationally, we can see that much is going well for us, and we have a variety of cards yet to play. The enemy die-hards count on killing enough Americans and causing enough disruptions that everyday Iraqis will rejoice upon seeing at least some Arabs defeat the new Crusaders. What they don’t count on is that once the Americans have left, everyday Iraqis don’t want them \u2014 the terrorists \u2014 to take over and recreate the Bekka Valley.<\/p>\n In addition, the Baathists and Islamicists \u2014 a fraction of the Iraq population \u2014 sense that Americans despise ingratitude. They trust that at some point we will shrug and say, “If these people won’t fight to protect the freedom we gave them, then screw them, bring everyone home, and let these tribal folk slaughter each other the way they have always done.”<\/p>\n For the Islamicists’ muddled vision of some theocratic caliphate run on Dark-Age principles to succeed, they must count on killing Americans and frightening Iraqis into inaction while the general quality of life erodes. Given the reputation of American largesse and know-how, our task is not simply to make Iraq no worse than it was under Saddam Hussein, but to greatly improve it, and to do so immediately. This makes things easier for the terrorists: They don’t have to ruin the country, just make it chaotic enough to tarnish the image of an otherwise perfectionistic United States falling through on its promises of a better Iraq.<\/p>\n To this end, they ask impoverished fathers to sacrifice their children to blow up Americans. After all, for a mere life and a cheap RPG, he can do much more than take out a half-million-dollar vehicle with its degreed driver: He can send a message to the U.S., saying that killer-terrorists can be far more evil than America can be good. And while the terrorists snipe, mine, and murder, they seek an international pass as the “invaded,” who merely wish to remove the “occupier” from their “home soil” \u2014 a corny rallying cry to be sure, but hackneyed enough for the cynical Europeans to accept it as a good reason to stay out of Iraq and let the Americans be smeared as imperialists for bringing democracy to the oppressed.<\/p>\n This is classic asymmetrical warfare, and we can handle it with the current strategies employed in such conflict. First, by training Iraqi police and militias and putting them into harm’s way, Iraqis sooner or later are going to turn on those \u2014 often non-Iraqis \u2014 who kill their own. To that end, the more we can change our forces from highly observable armored divisions into lighter counterinsurgency teams, the less visible and vulnerable our own troops will be. These transformations are, at last, underway.<\/p>\n We must put more ostensible political responsibility even more rapidly into the hands of Iraqis \u2014 from letting them conduct their own press conferences to creating entirely autonomous local governments. Only then will the explosion of a refinery or school bus rightly be a blow to the Iraqi, rather than to the American occupational, future. The problem is not “Iraq” \u2014 two-thirds of the country is progressing well \u2014 but a particular area of Sunni and Saddamite Iraq, much of which was never really conquered during the actual shooting war.<\/p>\n No one welcomes the Shiites demonstrating and offering threats. Yet if a method can be found for direct elections, coupled with constitutional protections of minority rights, such populism is not necessarily fatal to our cause. Indeed, part of our predicament in Iraq has been our quest for utopian perfection, or the idea that a few modern-day Jeffersons and Madisons need be present to craft a suitable constitution. Success in Iraq cannot be measured by how much it resembles the Connecticut countryside next month, but instead by whether \u2014 in two or three years \u2014 it is a country that no longer invades others, promotes terrorists, kills its own citizens, and uses petrol dollars to acquire a strategic arsenal to threaten the West.<\/p>\n To this end, we can remind the Iraqi nation that all three of its constituencies \u2014 the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiite majority \u2014 have responsibilities to prevent one another from resurrecting tyranny. If the Sunnis wish to kill and abet killing, then they can be advised that de facto trisection will be their ultimate dividend, leaving them with little oil, without American peacekeepers, and bereft of reconstruction capital \u2014 and with many terrorists in their midst, and strong opponents to their north and south.<\/p>\n In turn, despite the dubious presence of Iranian clerics inside Iraq, Iran is \u2014 by negative example \u2014 of value to us. The Iraqi Shiites may holler about creating a religious paradise on earth, but we can point to the mullocratic chaos across the border and remind them where their rhetoric leads. The Kurds \u2014 who time and again have proven themselves the most supportive of American efforts \u2014 know that Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan on its borders. All three constituencies, then, have very real limitations on their political options \u2014 unless they desire a civil war, an intervention by Turkey, or the abandonment by and enmity of the United States.<\/p>\n Just because we are spending billions and are tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq does not mean that we must remain complacent with Syria and Iran. Each problem has its own unique solutions. If the two countries continue to aid and abet the insurrectionists, then we, in turn, can promote and fund dissident groups, isolate them diplomatically, and as a last resort contemplate military options that do not involve either invasion or occupation. Indeed, precisely because Syria and Iran see our difficulty in Iraq as being in their own interests, we must find creative ways to remind them that the killing of Americans and the destabilization of Iraq would be, ultimately, their own worst nightmare.<\/p>\n Perhaps both rogue states are beginning to grasp the new reality of the last two years: The United States no longer believes that every instance of the use of force is wrong, but in fact accepts that action is more than justified to end an autocratic regime with a history of frightening arsenals, subsidized terrorism, and a record of harming the interests of the United States. Remember that Musharraf’s sudden investigation of Pakistani nuclear scientists, Libya’s unexpected admission of nuclear proliferation, the removal of troops from Saudi Arabia, the growing Saudi dissident movements, and renewed Iranian unrest did not happen in a vacuum \u2014 and will cease the moment we return to the old way of appeasement and neglect.<\/p>\n Finally, there is a rarely discussed moral question here. Take September 11 away and the United States would never \u2014 despite the conspiracists’ theories of pre-9\/11 mediation \u2014 have gone into either Afghanistan or Iraq. Both reactive military campaigns were waged humanely to minimize civilian casualties, often at risk to American military lives. The defeated were odious; their oppressed deserved to have been freed, and their nations returned from the graveyard to the family of nations.<\/p>\n For all the rhetoric about American corporate profiteering \u2014 the “Afghanistan pipeline,” the Halliburton bonanza, the carving up of the Iraqi petroleum pie \u2014 the ultimate cost of restoring the two countries will be enormous, yet justifiable not in economic advantages, but in both national-security interests and, yes,moral<\/i>\u00a0terms. This is as it should be, since we Americans recently have had a prior relationship with both the Afghan and Iraqi nations. Unlike the British or Russians, we have never attempted to colonize them, but we are nevertheless obligated to set things right since, at critical times when we had the ability to offer aid, we chose isolationism and retreat \u2014 and thousands died as a consequence.<\/p>\n If it was wrong and cynical to have left the Afghans to the mercy of once useful Islamic fundamentalists after the expulsion of the Soviets in the 1980s, it is right and humane now to stay and help after defeating those who further ruined Afghanistan.<\/p>\n If it was calculating and shortsighted not to have helped the Kurds and Shiites after the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991, it is moral and visionary now to rectify that lapse and invest our most precious resources to set the ledger straight with them both.<\/p>\n Arguments against our efforts have already evolved precisely because of the moral nature of our enterprise. Two years ago, American leftists and most Europeans alleged that America was after oil, or sought global hegemony in its plans to take out the havens of terror. Now those same voices \u2014 more strident than ever \u2014 are cynical and coldly rational: We are spending too much money, too many Americans are dying, the mythical “Afghanistan pipeline” and “Iraqi oil” won’t pay for the costs after all, such countries can never adopt democracies, and so on.<\/p>\n Only the ossified Left is shameless enough to have screamed for one year that we were after the petroleum of Iraq, and then harangue that we are breaking our treasury through foreign reconstruction, hoodwinked into thinking Arab natural resources might instead have shouldered the costs of mammoth aid.<\/p>\n Only the ossified Left objects to American foreign aid if it involves first taking out fascists and mass murderers in the bargain.<\/p>\n Only the ossified Left for a year condemned Afghanistan as either hopeless or immoral, but now claims that, in comparison to Iraq, it was a necessary and understandable multilateral response all along.<\/p>\n And only the ossified Left could decry poor intelligence for prompting us to go into Iraq, and then suggest we should have acted earlier on poorer intelligence prior to 9\/11, as they now suggest with regard to North Korea.<\/p>\n We are winning a difficult peace. It is not surprising that we have made scores of mistakes, since nation rebuilding in the Middle East has no recent pedigree \u2014 not targeting and storming into the Sunni Triangle from the very beginning, distrusting and defaming competent and patriotic Iraqi exiles, allowing thousands to stream in from Iran, dismantling the Iraqi army and police, restraining Americans in war from harming vital infrastructure only to allow Iraqis to ruin it in peace, lax security on captured weapons caches, keeping Iraqis in the shadows while we spoke about their reform, and trying to create a political utopia when the avoidance of tyranny was our real chore. Surely someone in the administration should have been explaining to the American people daily the historical nature of our victory, the critical issues now in play worldwide, and the humane nature of our sacrifice \u2014 if only to offer some counterweight to the monotonous negativism of National Public Radio,Nightline<\/i>, the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>, and the Democratic contenders. Instead we have had mostly silence \u2014 reticence seen not as Olympian magnanimity, but rather as a sign of weakness that only emboldened critics and fueled the hysteria.<\/p>\n Yet throughout this tumultuous year, what amazes is not that we made errors, or major blunders even \u2014 but how quickly we reacted, adjusted, and learned from our mistakes. So we press on, learning as we go, combining power with justice, determined to leave behind something better than we found. We are comforted by knowing that for all the current yelling from Democratic candidates, our own intelligentsia, and the European mainstream, this has not been a war of conquest or exploitation, but something altogether different \u2014 a needed effort that, if we see it through, will end up doing a great deal of good for everyone involved.<\/p>\n Our efforts in Iraq to remove a genocidal murderer and inaugurate democracy are not a “quagmire,” but one of the brightest moments in recent American history \u2014 and we need not be ashamed to say that, again and again and again.<\/p>\n \u00a92004 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorting out all the agendas in Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online \u201cIt is easy to be against the war now,” boasts Howard Dean, as he goes on to describe Iraq as a hopeless quagmire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[806],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1fg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1348,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-surges\/","url_meta":{"origin":4790,"position":0},"title":"A Tale of Two Surges","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services From 2007 to 2009, a surge of 20,000 troops under the generalship of David Petraeus saved a mostly lost war in Iraq. Petraeus\u2019s counterinsurgency doctrine helped win over the population, as the surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq\u2019s government and military.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2319,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/war-what-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":4790,"position":1},"title":"War–What War?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed to Martha's Vineyard this week, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC's Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Texas.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1320,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-christmas-gift-to-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":4790,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Christmas Gift to Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine As the last American troops roll south to Kuwait, the end of the war in Iraq invites unsettling comparisons to another war America declared over before losing its nerve and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Then as now, Democrats have taken the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1695,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/so-what-happened-to-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4790,"position":3},"title":"So What Happened to Iraq?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States. Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6897,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fruit-of-obamas-abandonment-of-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4790,"position":4},"title":"The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Anbar province, the region of Iraq that 1,300 American soldiers died pacifying, is at risk of being taken over by al Qaeda jihadists and their affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. 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