The media and Democrats are so focused on Iraq as a quagmire and as a failure of the Bush policy. I’m reminded that in October 2001, the same people were warning ominously the same things. They warned that the Afghans had defeated major powers in their mountainous country in the past and they would do so again. We would be committed to years of guerilla warfare, soldiers dying every day. Every time there was an apparent setback, they leapt up with their “Aha!”, claiming they were right all along.
Yet in the end, the Taliban were defeated, most Afghans embraced the overthrow, and despite initial guerilla fighting, and independent Afghan government was set up and continues in place. That’s not to say that it’s been easy or that there won’t be future setbacks, but by now all the predictions of doom have been proven false. Of course, that doesn’t deter those who made the predictions in the first place, because they have moved on. Now it’s all about Iraq, with predications of disaster caused by the Bush foreign policy. Yet, once again, they will be proven wrong. The terrorists will be pacified, democracy will sprout, and peace will return. Naturally, it’s not a guarantee that no conflict will ever hit Iraq in the future, but in the short term, Bush’s policies will be proven.
If you’re going to be guided by “faith based” foriegn policy (things will turn out allright in thr future) you should be be guided by the arbiter of the actions of the Holy Spirit in the World—the Vatican.
And what the Vatican pointed out before the war has been confirmed time and again after it. Iraq does not serve the cause of fighting terrorism, and has actually increased it (to the tune of the hundreds of deaths, and thousands of casualties in Iraq of US soldiers to terrorism which would not have happened otherwise.
Which council declared the Vatican infallible in matters of foreign policy?
Iraq does not create terrorists, it channels them into one place where they can be dealt with. All the doomsayers predicted that the Arab street would rise up in protest and the Middle East would be inflamed against the West. The Arab street rose up alright, but against its oppressive masters. There are demonstrations in Syria against the Baathists, in Iran against the ayatollahs, and elswhere.
The war in Iraq didn’t create more terrorism. It unleashed the thirst for freedom and enkindled in peoples’ hearts that it is really possible.
When the Vatican speaks on Natural Law, as it did in the case of Ratzinger’s clarification on “no preventative war” and that war must be a “last resort” never an elected option, that is ordinary magisterium. Just War Doctrine is natural law teaching.
As for its other statements, on the effects of the war, those were prescient rather than infallible. Iraq is in civil war, and the administration was told this would happen. Another example of that prescience was given yesterday on ABC’s this week, when Rumsfeld explained that unlike Israel’s decision to assassinate Yassin, the United States aims to “capture Bin Laden” if possible.
You’re reaching, Al. Iraq is not in civil war. The vast majority of people welcome the change of regime and are law abiding. A small group of internal holdovers from the Baathists stiffened by a cadre of foreign terrorists continue their terrorist actions. You’re doing what the liberal media does by pumping up what’s really going on into something it’s not.
The faster we get out of Iraq the better, so I have no interest in playing Chicken Little. We have on obligation to stabilize things for them, and then a compelling interest to bring our boys (and girls) home.
But the simple reality is that the cakewalk “prophets” in the administration who cook up crud like the “flypaper” argument, and morph wars against Al Queida into efforts to realign the middle east by force, demonstrably lied when the contradicted people like Shinseki—if we had the troops he said we needed in there to pacify the population, the Al-Sadr’s would have a lot lest ammunition to foment revolution. Unfortunately that is not the case.