Finding the enemy
: Are we still at war? Who’s the enemy? And can we rebuild Iraq while we are still at war?
Those were the key questions in the discussion on Iraq at Foursquare.
Well, clearly, we’re still at war. But I believe it’s a much wider war than some would like to see as a skirmish with “insurgents” or “guerillas” in and from Iraq. This is a wider war with terrorism and its supporters.
Michael Ledeen says that in his latest column:
The destruction of the Taliban and the shattering of al Qaeda sent a shockwave through the Middle East, and the impending liberation of Iraq was only a matter of time. The terror masters and their gangs of killers did the rational thing: They planned for the next battlefield, and we gave them every opportunity, 14 or 15 long months. During that time they devised the strategy we see in Iraq: a terror war, modeled on their successful campaign against us in Lebanon. This required coordination, both between the tyrannical regimes that sponsor terror, and the various terrorist organizations….
The destruction of the Taliban and the shattering of al Qaeda sent a shockwave through the Middle East, and the impending liberation of Iraq was only a matter of time. The terror masters and their gangs of killers did the rational thing: They planned for the next battlefield, and we gave them every opportunity, 14 or 15 long months. During that time they devised the strategy we see in Iraq: a terror war, modeled on their successful campaign against us in Lebanon. This required coordination, both between the tyrannical regimes that sponsor terror, and the various terrorist organizations….
We are involved in a regional struggle, not just a national conflict. This is not a civil war, it is part of the broad war against the terror masters, and it cannot be won if we limit our vision and our action to Iraq. The remaining terror masters cannot and will not permit us to create a stable, peaceful, and democratic Iraq, because that would threaten their own survival.
If we persist in narrowing our vision and our actions to Iraq, the attacks will get more lethal, killing larger numbers of Americans. And they will not be limited to Iraq. Significant numbers of terrorists have been rounded up of late, from the Middle East to Europe and inside this country. They are coming after us, just as we should have expected, and there is a limit to how long we can forestall catastrophes by playing defense.
This is also why, to answer the last question, we must work hard to rebuild Iraq now. The better we rebuild the more the people will support that rebuilding over the destruction of terrorism.
