Transitioner
Over at The Left Coaster, where Steve Soto recently banned me after years of vigorous, but principled, debate, is this:
I am a minority among the center-left bloggers when I say that despite what I think of this war, and my desire for an immediate pullout, I support a residual force for several years to provide a Special Forces capability to reduce or eliminate the Al Qaeda threat inside Iraq. We owe the Iraqis many things for breaking their country, but one of the things we can do is to clean up Bush’s mess and try and reverse his dereliction of duty when he allowed Al Qaeda a new safe haven in Iraq.
Such thoughts anticipate, however retardedly, the inevitable realization among the anti-Bush Left that the purpose of our presence is to be in Iraq. To destroy dictatorship and make possible representative government. To invite trouble from across the whole of the Muslim world and whip its ass front and center. To create the potential for new markets, new security arrangements (as Soto himself goes on to suggest), and a new world where the Muslim ideology is set on a path to transformation. Not reformation, but transformation.
Islama mutanda est.
If we were to withdraw from Iraq, wouldn’t that just make it easier for Iran to hold the world hostage and to commit mass murder against the Jews of Israel? Where do the anti-war Dhimmicrats think we’re supposed to withdraw to? Their ideas on the war —beyond the merest and most sniveling sort of opposition— are either non-existent or incoherent.
Better and braver men and women than I could hope to be have sacrificed themselves in Iraq and for Iraq. So I choose to honor them here in my own small way. We have a great thing to accomplish there. Don’t dishonor them by pretending they haven’t served a great and worthy cause.
And fuck any Dhimmicrat who can’t wait to surrender to the anarchists and Islamofascist murderers. What a disgraceful party.
