Getting Real About Iraq

The saintly Republican idea about Iraq was to depose a horrendous Nazi-like dictator with whom we were already at war over the "no fly zones," the "oil for food" program, nuclear inspections, and the inconclusive end to the previous war about the world's oil supply. It seemed perfectly obvious given that we were already at war and that we had just failed to preemptively make war against Afghanistan (which appeared to be 1000 times less threatening than Iraq) on 9/10 or earlier. This is a simple point but nevertheless beyond the intellectual grasp of Democrats who continue to hallucinate that Iraq was somehow not directly connected to 9/11.

Moreover, not only would striking Iraq remove Saddam's Nazi-like regime and the huge threat its very existence implied in a post 9/11 world, it would also, hopefully, pave the way for democracy which might then spread throughout the Middle East and the world and thus fulfill our moral duty to the world's citizens as well as make us and the world safe from another 9/11 type of attack. It was a bold plan to use our position as the world's moral and military superpower to spread freedom, limit gov't, and prevent war.

The Democrats had no plan except to flip flop around like spineless jellyfish. John Kerry, the Democrat standard bearer, at first wanted to treat terrorism as a matter merely in need of policing, then, to further clarify what he failed to clarify in a two hour debate, said, "who's talking about quitting, we're talking about winning," and now he's talking about quitting again just as he was talking about quitting in Vietnam and just as he will be talking about quitting in the next war, no matter who it is against or why it is fought. All this leaves the Democrats with an on going problem because 1) they lack the intellect to understand freedom and therefore see the promotion of it anywhere as recrudescent imperialism at best and 2) as the opposition Party they are they feel compelled to oppose the majority Republicans, rightly or wrongly. In this case it is highly awkward at best since the Republicans are dutifully fighting rabid dog terrorists who have been authorized to and are in the process of trying to kill 10 million of us while the silly Democrats are reflexively opposing and in fact doing more to help the terrorists than the Republicans.

When Bush said "mission accomplished" and it did seem that democracy was immediately spreading to Palestine, Libya, Egypt, and Lebanon. The Democrats were stone cold silent having stood foursquarely in the way of freedom once again. But, once the war started going badly, as wars can, they became instant Bush haters who instantly claimed perfect hindsight. By now most have actually convinced themselves that they knew it all along. They feel no sense of hypocrisy about their "mission accomplished" silence as they now proudly exploit the situation for political gain despite having no agenda if they should succeed in achieving political gain.

But still, the war in Iraq has gone badly; primarily because Bush never had a plan to pacify the minority Sunnis who had brutally dominated the less pugnacious Shiite majority. Rather than give up power to the majority Shiites and become second class citizens or worse, the sweet Sunni Muslims did what they had always done to dominate the majority: they started killing them in brutal fashion. The key mistake was for Bush to de-Bathify the country thus disenfranchising key Sunnis permanently to then become