Victory in Iraq

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A long while back I said something to the effect that we won in Iraq the day we crossed the border, that ultimately victory itself would be defined by how long we needed to stay and by how perfect we want to leave Iraq. There are still some strides to make, some terrorists to kill, and stability to build but it’s close enough to perfect for me to celebrate this day.

Here’s a previous essay during May of last year when the surge and  the idea of it was under heavy assault, where I defended it due to the terrible consequences of defeat. I’m glad the majority of them are not going to come true now, however we do have the dems in control:

Abandoning Children

girlflag.jpg It’s ridiculous, but it has happened. The Democrats sent the surrender-now bill to the White house for veto. They are political posers positioning for next election, and playing with lives in the process. They toy with the blood and lives of our troops and the future and the lives of the Iraqi children, those they would have us abandon tomorrow.

<<< Do you think this girl would live long if we pull out tomorrow? What about the woman in the famous picture holding up the purple-dyed finger?

The political poseurs rarely think beyond the next news cycle and what theater they can create for it. The deepest thinkers and policy wonks of the democratic party rarely think beyond the next election cycle.

Right now however you must face reality and put the past aside — whatever your opinion or political persuasion is, put it aside a moment and think ahead. What will happen in Iraq in a year, two years, five years, ten, if we leave right now? What will the outcome be for the children of Iraq?

Immediately following pullout sectarian strife will ignite in Baghdad like a tenderbox, with Al Qaeda operatives happily supplying the fuel of blown-up mosques and markets filled with human charnel.

There will be a genocide, and it will start with the Sunnis in Baghdad. Without a controlling civil authority strife will spread out in waves from Baghdad, and the 14 provinces which are now peaceful will succumb to violence, feuds, and turf wars as every faction tries to grab the oil lands.

iraq-smiles.jpgWithin a year there will be a humanitarian crisis of tremendous proportions as the masses flee the strife-torn country. The UN will be calling for aid in the billions, and children in the camps will be dying from heat, deprivation, and brutality. Will this girl have shoes in the refugee camp, or will her feet be bare and blistered, her mother raped and gone?

How much in aid will the US have to spend if that occurs? If Iran invades, (and they would love to,) would we have to go back anyway? Do you think Syria might have interest in the north of Iraq, and what land they could take?

suleimayeh-children.jpgThe Turks have their army massed on the border of the Northern Kurd provinces of Iraq, and they’ve been waiting since last summer for pretext or cause to invade. With the US out, what would stop them? Would they race to the oil fields, killing all Kurds in their path? Would these Kurdish children live five years past the pullout?

If you think this is wild imagination, let’s for a second do what the democrats do, and compare this to Vietnam. Here’s the Wiki entry on Vietnamese boat people, lets not mention the millions killed inside Vietnam post-war for the moment, or the killing fields of Cambodia.

Viet Nam Boat People

Events resulting from the Vietnam War led many people in Cambodia, Laos, and especially Vietnam to become refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s, after the fall of Saigon. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge regime murdered millions of people in the “Killing Fields” massacres, and many attempted to escape. In Vietnam, the new communist government sent many people who supported the old government in the South to “reeducation camps”, and others to “new economic zones.” An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials. 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe. Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed. These factors, coupled with poverty, caused millions of Vietnamese to flee the country. In 1979, Vietnam was at war (Sino-Vietnamese War) with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and many ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, who felt that the government’s policies directly targeted them also became “boat people.” On the open seas, the boat people had to confront forces of nature, and elude pirates.

Would-be middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, would travel 1,100 km to Danang by road. On arrival, they would take refuge for up to two days in safe houses while waiting for fishing junks and trawlers to take small groups into international waters.

The boats, most usually not intended for navigating open waters, would typically head for busy international shipping lanes some 240km to the east. The lucky ones would succeed in being rescued by freighters and taken to Hong Kong, some 2,200 km away. The unluck ones would face a two-week long perilous journey in rickety craft.

[Editor’s note: The Wiki article does not speak of the hundreds or thousands who drowned in their effort to escape because it’s an unknown and there’s no documentation to cite to support any figure. Using common sense you can figure out that many probably did drown and die from deprivation]

The plight of the boat people became an international humanitarian crisis. The UNHCR, under the auspices of the United Nations, set up refugee camps in neighbouring countries to process the “boat people” and was awarded the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize for its work. There were untold miseries, rapes and murders on the South China Sea committed by Thai pirates who preyed on the refugees who had sold all their possessions and carried gold with them on the trips.

You must always consider the children when it comes to crisis like this first; the children and what their future will be. If we pull out now, the future for the children of Iraq becomes a darkened bloody nightmare. Are you sure you have the stomach or the guts to surrender and face the guilt?

Islamic vs. Islamist

middle_east.jpgAs the Democrats continue to posture and bluster about progress in Iraq and by neglect propose surrendering to Al Qaeda, the Sadrists, and Cowardice, it’s time to continue delving into the potential outcomes of surrender. [Editor Update: More on the planned Al Qaida State in Iraq at LGF.]

We covered the consequences to the children of Iraq in my earlier post, this post will continue to look at the longer-term geopolitical and global economic consequences.

In countries that the US has conquered, the ones best off were occupied for long periods, and have standing US bases by reciprocal agreements between governments. They are allies, have strong economies, and they are democratic with large measures of protections to civil liberties. Yes, I speak of Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Spain (referencing Puerto Rico.)

In countries where we left immediately without alliances or where we retreated, things did not go as well. Viet Nam is a prime example, but you could also count East Germany and North Korea in the mix of countries where we retreated and did not establish an alliance or bases. Afghanistan is another fine example – a little nation-building there would have benefitted us much more than the “Peace Dividend” Reagan left us with and that congress squandered to buy votes in later elections.

So judging from the past the future looks bleak for Iraq if we don’t establish an alliance and small but continuous military presence there.

Facing reality if there’s a power vacum in an Islamic country there will be a power struggle, and we’ve gone into the potentials of neighbors interferring already in the previous post. Whether it’s Al Qaida still trying to establish a base by murdering fellow muslims, sectarian strife, the Kurds trying to take all of the oil fields, or the Sadrists, it doesn’t matter –if we pull out the balloon will go up and the neighbors will jump in.

The effect to the oil supply, and the world economy is hard to calculate, but it’s a safe bet that prices would rise. Iran might jump in, or might wait to pick up the pieces. Either way they are positioned to block and control access to the Persian Gulf, and their military has extensive plans for this drawn up already.

There are Islamic governments, and there are Islamist governments. Islamic governments exist in Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and Bangladesh. All of these are fragile, like feathers upon the sand awaiting the deathwind of Jihad.

The Islamist countries always wish to expand their boundaries and to establish Muslim shariat rule across the world, much as the Soviet Union wished to establish Communism across the globe. The Islamists learned well from the Soviets, and they always have agents in the other countries, inciting them to become Islamist instead of Islamic.

The expansion of the Muslim brotherhood throughout the Islamic world, and their popularity, is proof enough of this. The Islamist nations attempt to remake their neighbors in their image, but really this is an ancient game of tribal ascendency that even predates Islam. Extreme shariat and Jihad just happen to be a very good tools to use in this pure power struggle. [see previous essay “Ancient Enemies“]

There are two Islamist governments in the region: Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Arab Sauds are much slyer and more subtle than the Persians about exporting jihadism, but they do it nonetheless.

The method is to pick at sores: the divisions in sect, class, and race within the muslim world. The Islamists export radical cells to all countries to build mosques and madrassas to incite the young. Eventually they destabilize or even topple the existing government, turning the country to their use while remaining unharmed and out of the fray themselves. This is why the muslim world remains in chaos and behind the rest of the world.

If you are working to destabilize Pakistan, you pick at the sore of Kashmir, if it’s Palestine it’s easy to point at Israel, or the US as Satan — especially if you don’t want the focus to be on you.

Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia would allow Al Qaida to take Iraq, and they might go to war for control when push comes to shove mid-country as the Shia battle the Sunni. It would be the 8 year Iran-Iraq war over again, but on a much larger scale.

With the region in chaos, oil prices high, and maritime trade interupted, what would follow?

Extreme duress would be experienced by citizens of all countries in the region from interupted food supplies and disrupted economies. There would be famine in Bangladesh and Africa again. The third world countries that have recently pulled themselves out of the ditch of extreme poverty would fall back into it from the collapsing world economy.

Other nations would excercise their expansionist options hoping to be ignored in the larger strife. Sudan would press more strenuously in Darfur, and it’s likely that Hamas and Hiz’Allah would take more shots at Israel, perhaps with Iran or Syria joining in.

Do you think there might be effects from this in Pakistan and Afghanistan?

What about Libya? What would they do? Algiers — what would happen there? Where would the Islamist states focus next? What would demands increase to? Would we see World War IV? In the chaos what would happen in North Korea? Venezuela? Bolivia? What would China and Russia do?

Now picture all of those potentials with Democrats controlling congress and the presidency. Think you can handle it liberals?

Your ascendency if even a quarter of this occurred, (and some of these scenarios are very likely,) wouldn’t last two election cycles. You would become known forever as the party who surrendered in two wars and who ushered in two genocides.

That’s why if you are a liberal partisan it’s time you came to your senses, to let things play out, to stop heeding the radicals within your party. If it was a mistake to rush to war, it would be an even greater mistake to rush out of it. Doing so will hurt all of your causes in the end and kill millions again.

Of course most democrats don’t think beyond next election cycle, so I don’t expect the logic to sway many of them.