(cont'd)
MistakesCritics of Bush love to cite the many "mistakes" his administration has made. Most of these "mistakes" are arguable -- are they mistakes at all? -- and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we've made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.
Worse yet, Bush's opponents invariably depict these mistakes as being the result of deliberately chosen policies -- a ludicrous charge, but one that is taken seriously by an astonishing number of people who should know better. The game, you see, is
blame. It's not enough to say, Bush made a mistake. You have to say, Bush deliberately did it wrong for evil purposes and he must be punished.
But let's accept the fairy tale that this war has been badly run. That still does not change the fact that on all of the
biggest points, Bush has made exactly the right choice -- and he has been the only one who has even
seen the need to make those choices!
Take North Korea, for instance. Bush recognized instantly that North Korea, with China as its sponsor and protector, is simply beyond the reach of American power
at this time. This will not always be true, but his administration is pursuing a careful, quiet, firm policy of diplomatic pressure on China to do what must be done to curb North Korean insanity.
What about Iran? The idea of a ground war in Iran -- especially when we're still fighting in Iraq -- seems impossible.
But it is also probably unnecessary. Because Iran's present government is not just hated, it is also losing its grip on power.
Not on the
trappings of power -- they control the "elections" to such a point that nobody can be nominated without the approval of the ayatollahs.
But government power -- even in democracies -- depends absolutely on the will of the people to obey. And when you rule by tyranny and oppression, the obedience of the people comes from the credibility of the threat of violence from the government.
The obvious examples are Red Square in Moscow and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In Moscow, when Yeltsin and the pro-democracy demonstrators defied the tanks,
the Russian Army did not open fire. Why not? Either they refused to obey the order to shoot, or the order was not given -- but if it was not given, it was almost certainly because the tyrants knew that it would not be obeyed.
In other words, the government had lost the ability to inflict deadly force on its own population.
In Tiananmen Square, however, the government gave the order and the troops
did fire. As a result, the tyranny continued -- and continues to this day.
Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people
and be obeyed.
In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is
huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs' days are numbered.
If President Bush invaded Iran on the ground, bombing Iranian cities and killing Iranian soldiers, he would accomplish only what Hitler did by invading Russia -- uniting an oppressed people in support of a hated tyrant.
But, as was pointed out in a pair of excellent analytical pieces in the most recent
Commentary magazine, we don't have to do anything of the kind.
Oil Is Our Weapon, TooIran's ace-in-the-hole is not its nuclear weapon -- in their rational moments, even the most rabid of the ayatollahs must understand that if they ever used (or allowed someone else to use) a nuclear weapon, we would destroy them, period. That nuke is meant only as a deterrent -- it can't be used any other way -- and while there's a remote chance that Iran might allow their nukes to be put into the hands of some terrorist group, it would have to be a group they control absolutely. In other words, it would not be Al-Qaeda. (Though Hezbollah would be bad enough.)
The
real threat from Iran is their ability to shut down the Persian Gulf and cut off the world's supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf nations.
That would not really bother the United States -- gas prices would shoot up on the open market, of course, but we can get by on oil provided by non-Gulf sources.
Not so for the rest of the world, though. And Iran is poised, with small boats and thousands of missiles, to shut down all oil production and transportation in the Persian Gulf.
What few seem to realize (according to the article in
Commentary) is that Iran is
far more dependent on oil revenues than we are on getting their oil. When President Bush determines that he has given the Iranians ample chance to demonstrate to the few rational statesmen left in Europe that there is no possibility of meaningful negotiations with the tyrants of Tehran, his obvious course of action is to shut down Iranian power in the gulf and seize their oil assets.
If we strike first, we can eliminate their ability to do mischief in the gulf quite readily. Their forces, however numerous, are pathetically vulnerable. Unlike their dispersed and shielded nuclear development capability, their military forces in the gulf are in obvious and accessible positions.
So are their own oil assets. They are as dependent on the Gulf to reach the world oil market as any of their neighbors. If we seize their oil platforms, destroy their shipping, and impose an absolute blockade on Iranian shipping in the Gulf -- while eliminating their ability to damage anybody else's shipping -- how long do you think the tyranny would remain in power?
Here's a hint: They'd run out of money very, very quickly.
Here's another hint: Their military is already refusing to obey their most outrageous orders. When the military finds themselves saddled with a government that has brought the destruction of most of their oil revenues, all because of their insane determination to take on the United States, how long before the ayatollahs are arrested and sent home? Or else made irrelevant by placing a "committee of public safety" above them, to veto their decisions and make peace with the West?
Maybe it wouldn't turn out that way. But it's our best chance -- and that's the chance that Bush is obviously preparing for. He has made no attempt to prepare the American people for an
invasion of Iran. But he has made it crystal clear that Iranian misbehavior will not be tolerated -- and that regime change is the desired outcome.
If Iran's ayatollahs were toppled, how long would Syria continue to misbehave? Answer: About fifteen minutes. Syria is a poor country. They are only able to make trouble because they have Iran's support.
Shiites and SunnisHere's the other asset we have that no one seems to take into account when judging Bush's conduct of the War on Terror: We are really caught up in an ancient civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.
Al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and Iran's ayatollahs on the Shiite side have both been playing the same game all along. They don't seriously think that they can conquer the United States (yet) -- so why have they been provoking us?
Because they're belling the cat. Or poking the bull with sticks. Why? Because they are performing on the stage of world Islam, putting on rival plays. Both plays have the same message: Look, we're the heroes who have God on our side, because
we're the ones who have provoked the great Shaitan and gotten away with it!
Iran's Shiites had the upper hand for quite a while, bringing down one U.S. President (Carter) and getting another -- tough-guy Reagan -- to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon and then come begging to Iran's door in his stupid, cowardly arms-for-hostages deal.
Then Al-Qaeda had the upper hand in
their play, showing the Muslim world that it was the Sunnis who were blowing up American boats and embassies and, finally, the twin towers in New York City itself.
It's all theatre. It's all an effort by Bin Laden to restore the Caliphate with himself, of course, as Caliph -- spiritual dictator of the Muslim world. The goal? Not just to unite Sunni Islam under a Caliph again, but to then make war on and crush Shiite resistance. That is the prize. Only when it is won would a united Islam be ready to conquer the rest of the world, finishing the task that was left unfinished by previous waves of Muslim conquest.
Meanwhile, Iran's ayatollahs are trying to show the Muslim world that it is they, the Shiite leaders, who have God on their side. That was what the recent campaign in Lebanon was all about -- to steal the glory back from Al-Qaeda.
But wait. It's even more complicated than that. Because there are other divisions within the Muslim world. Iraqi Shiites have no love for, and do not accept the authority of, the Persian clerics. Arabic-speaking Shiites have no desire to have Farsi-speaking Shiites rule over them.
So we have an amazingly convoluted situation in the middle east. Iran and its puppet, Syria, are cooperating support of the Sunni resistance in Iraq. Why? It's not because Syria's rulers are nominally Baathist as Saddam was -- Baathism is dead. Instead, it's the ancient tribalism that is at the fore. Syria's rulers are members of a tiny religious minority that is an offshoot of Shia, and thus they help Iran maintain access to its Shiite allies in Lebanon partly in order to shore up their own position vis-a-vis their own mostly-Sunni population.
So why are these Shiites and crypto-Shiites supporting the Sunnis in Baghdad?
Because anything that keeps America distracted is good for them. And if the Americans do pack up and go home, then the Shiites can claim the victory -- even though it's mostly Sunnis who are blowing themselves up in Israel and Baghdad.
Besides, the Sunni insurgents in Iraq are keeping the Iraqi Shiites off balance. The last thing the Iranian ayatollahs want is for Iraq to become a democratic nation with a Shiite majority, because at that moment it will be the
Iraqi Shiite leaders who will have the most credibility as leaders of the Shiite wing of Islam.
So the leadership of the Iraqi Shiites are perceived as rivals by the ayatollahs of Iran. Thus the Iranians support the Iraqi Shiites' enemies -- providing the weapons that are used to murder Shiites in Iraq.
It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost.
Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them.
North Korea might go through a paroxysm of defiance -- but they would still understand the lesson. America will not be bullied by tyrants. We will stand for democracy, destroying our enemies at the "time and place of our choosing." Negotiations with North Korea would instantly take on a very different tone; and China's attitude, too, would become considerably more cooperative with us.
This is the victory that awaits us -- and it remains possible for two reasons only:
1. America's brilliant, brave, and well-trained military, which projects not just power but decency and compassion wherever our soldiers go, and
2. President George W. Bush, who, regardless of his critics and detractors, has steadfastly pursued the only course that holds the hope of victory
without plunging us into a worldwide war with a united Islam or isolating America in a world torn by chaos.
Those are the scylla and charybdis that threaten us on either hand. If we do not win this containable war now, following the plan President Bush has set forth, we will surely end up fighting far bloodier wars for the next generation.
And the rhetoric of this election proves that we have precious few politicians in either party who have the brains, will, or courage to be taken seriously as alternatives to George W. Bush in the guidance of our nation through this dangerous, complicated world.
If we, the American people, are stupid enough to give control of either or both houses of Congress to the Democratic Party in this election, we will deserve the world we find ourselves in five years from now.
But Bush, being the wise and moderate politician that he is, may actually be able to continue his foreign policy despite the opposition of a Democratic Congress.
What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless -- only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America's future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush -- somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted -- and somebody who will "kick butt" in foreign policy.
So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we'll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.
While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.
I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush's careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.
Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children's future -- and for the sake of all good people in the world who
don't get to vote in the only election that matters to
their future, too -- vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush's leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush's restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war.
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