This week’s column: Why the Long War Must Be Won
Via StrategyPage. I believe RCP will run it later this week.
Here’s the lede:
“War is hell,” Gen. Billy Sherman said. The hell of the American Civil War ended slavery and settled a constitutional question regarding a state’s right to secede from the Union.
Nominally over in 1865, civil rights activists of the 1960s knew the social and economic injustices they confronted were the unfinished business of Shiloh and Gettysburg. For a century, the Ku Klux Klan used terror tactics to murder innocents. The KKK’s fire bombings and lynching-assassinations pre-figure the tactics employed by Saddam’s holdout henchmen in Iraq.
For three decades, Sherman’s hell ruled Afghanistan. Communist invasion, Taliban tyranny and Al Qaeda-backed terror — the people of Afghanistan knew only oppression and destruction. Last week, I talked with Afghan farmers in a village near Bagram. They spoke of water and wheat. New elections loom. The economic and political battles — however difficult — point the way to peace.
The tyrannical grip of Saddam Hussein brought perpetual war to Iraq. The internal wars waged by his Tikriti elites against Shias and Kurds were hideous and merciless. The Iran-Iraq War, with its poison gas and human-wave attacks, echoed World War I at its worst. Recall Saddam started that war in 1980 with a quick tank strike, the same trick he tried a decade later in Kuwait.
But for 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq would have stayed in thrall to tyranny, terror and war. And just perhaps, America would have remained asleep, jarred occasionally by the bombs of Islamo-fascist radicals, taking a Khobar Towers here, a USS Cole there, until …
The Saddamist holdouts and Zarqawi’s clan are “resistance groups” in the mold of the KKK. Self-styled “anti-fascist” lefties miss that connection.
Here’s a UPI report sent to me from a listserv where Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari characterizes Saddam’s Sunni henchmen as a gang who wants “to rule again.” The Ku Klux Klan-types sought to continue de facto Southern white rule, and used terror tactics to achieve their goals. (After googling the UPI report, here’s a link to the Washington Times’ version.)
(UPI) Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari lashed out at Arab media, accusing them of being biased and hostile to his country.
Speaking in an interview with the London-based Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, Jaafari said, “Arab media are still hostile and biased, especially the satellite Arab televisions.”
He stressed that “Iraq is a country that has been stolen away for decades … and is now being returned to the Iraqis, but destroyed.”
Jaafari accused the remnants of the ousted Baath regime of Saddam Hussein of destroying Iraq. “They say either they will rule Iraq again or they will burn it,” he said.
Nice use of History to clarify what’s happening now. This paragraph really sums up what’s happening: The Saddamist holdouts and Zarqawi’s clan are “resistance groups†in the mold of the KKK. Self-styled “anti-fascist†lefties miss that connection.
Comment by John W. Matthews — 6/29/2005 @ 6:11 pm
Imagine what a military powerhouse Iraq might be in a decade (rivaling the other democracy in the area perhaps). They might even settle old debts by meeting a harsh justice upon the tyrants of Syria and Iran. Nothing like fighting for your own country.
Comment by Ari Tai — 6/29/2005 @ 6:29 pm
And you cannot refine it, before you start talking about Sherman, this from a South Carolina White Boy. Yes the Yanks whipped the South then forced themselves upon us for many years, leaving freed blacks behind and not caring a whit. If you wish to congratulate Sherman, then explain why Yanks burned churches, towns, and totally “raped” Southern culture during and after the Civil War, and why we Yankees today, in Iraq, witheld blowing the hell out of mosques and other wonderful Muslim structures. Especially when “they” don’t mind blowing themselves to vapor with those around them. Please don’t reference the South to the klan and the muslim mujadin. If I missed your point here, please forgive me. I just detest those who compare the South or any of it’s manners to muslims. Have bought via Amazon The Wrong side of Darkness and liked it but the end left me wondering, does it have a sequel?
Comment by Oogum — 6/29/2005 @ 6:48 pm
You got that right! See this essay I wrote about The Greatest Generation: FREEDOM - Thx to The Greatest Generation for Preserving It July 17, 2004 To Sherry and all my family, After reading Sherry’s post on Judge Young’s sentencing statement to the “shoe bomber,” it gave me a moment to reflect on the freedoms we do have as Americans. It also reminded me to say thanks to all of you, “The Greatest Generation.†You endured the horrors of evil of the 20th Century. It was your self-sacrifices, sense of purpose, and perseverance that preserved the freedoms we enjoy today. We of the generations that followed often take these freedoms for granted and fail to give you the thanks you deserve. We have not been personally challenged as you were by the threat of global evil. The Cold War while threatening was abstract and distant. The whiners and snivelers of our generations must appear as ungracious wimps and whooshes. Yes, we are a spoiled and complacent lot and forget the precious gift you gave us. We have not experienced the pain and hardships you lived through. WWII was already past history to be read in our schoolbooks. WWII has no collective visceral memory for us. We have no first hand experience. You did not dwell on it and shielded us from its impact. You didn’t consider yourselves as heroes. You picked up and got on with life. While the Vietnam War is still fresh in our memories some thirty years later, WWII ended less than a decade before we were born and has less of an impact. Our collective memory only is of grainy film clips and those few first-hand stories you told us on rare occasion. We demand instant gratification, super-human perfection, are quick to find fault and lay blame instead of solutions, and will equivocate on all things to achieve these ends. We too, of course, want it done by yesterday. And yes, if you please, it must be done in an antiseptic and politically correct manner, lest we offend anyone or give us queasy stomachs. Yes, we often stand for nothing and everything at once. We are unlike your generation who understood the difference between, RIGHT and WRONG, and GOOD and EVIL. You lived by these principles day by day. You are not swayed by situational ethics. You stood firm and resolute in what you held dear and believed in. […] Read More
Comment by Ron Wright — 6/30/2005 @ 9:54 am
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”. It seems the media has forgotten history when it comes to terrorism. This should be front page headlines.
Comment by Mike Burleson — 7/1/2005 @ 9:06 am