CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER RICK MORAN HAS A SOBER, THOUGHTFUL POST on the war in Iraq. We are, he says correctly, running out of time:
I have come to the conclusion over the last few days that, due to domestic conditions here in the US and the inability of the Iraqi government and society to deal in a timely manner with the political problems that must be solved if Iraq is to have a viable, multi-sectarian society the United States is on the verge of suffering a humiliating defeat in Iraq. A perfect storm of almost non-existent public support for our war aims coupled with US pressure on the Iraqis to shoehorn radical changes in their society, their constitution, and their politics into an unrealistic and inevitably, an impossible time frame will ultimately doom our efforts to take any military success achieved via the surge and turn it into progress on the political front.
If we had 3 or 4 years and the political will to maintain troop levels where they are now, then we would have a real chance to make the difference. But our commitment to the military aspects of the surge will be measured in months, not years.
That’s right, isn’t it? Either because Congress will presently compel our withdrawal, or because we will elect a new president who commands it, our remaining time in Iraq can now be measured in months. (Meanwhile, as Mark Steyn observes, mischief-makers everywhere are noting well the limits of American resolve.)
But before the genocide begins — and with it, a regional conflagration that will have catastrophic implications for our national security — I have a question: Have we made any plans to evacuate the thousands of Iraqis who were publicly supportive of our effort to bring freedom and democracy to their country? I’m thinking of those who hitched their hopes to our wagon and lent their names to our enterprise. I’m thinking of people like Omar.
Do we have plans to get them and their families out? Or will we compound our surrender with betrayal and again prove Bernard Lewis right: “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
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April 29, 1975: With the North Vietnamese advancing, throngs scale the wall of the American embassy in Saigon. |
Tags: Iraq, War in Iraq
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