The main reason I have pretty much stopped contributing to Unconventional Wisdom is that I had nothing to say that somebody else wasn't saying. There are so many voices in the Blogosphere, many excellent, that saying something new and interesting is a challenge -- and something that is not new and interesting isn't worth saying.
Three years ago, when blogging campaign 2004 in the early stages, it was novel to predict the rise of Howard Dean. No one else was saying it. But now I can't even devote this blog to making fun of Chuck Hagel, because others are already doing so, and anyway, is he worth the space?
But I do have something to say that, to my amazement, no one else is saying. And the best part is: It's Unconventional Wisdom.
Iraq is turning into a success. Not an unqualified success, not ideal, not perfection, but a success. We went to war in Iraq because of September 11, 2001. From the attacks of that day, some of us learned that bad people who want to kill us cannot be allowed to acquire the means to do so on a massive scale. (Fortunately, some of the people who learned this were in power in the Government, and those who didn't and never well were in the minority -- then.) We believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That turned out to be wrong. We also believed that once Saddam Hussein was gone, we could make Iraq a democracy that would serve as a beacon to the people of the middle east, which in turn would enable moderation to triumph over extremism within Islam. That turned out to be wrong too, or so it seemed.
But ultimately, we believed that going to war in Iraq would make us safer here at home. I believe that is turning out to be right -- more right, in fact, than I ever imagined.
It's now been more than 5 years since America was successfully attacked by Jihidists, either at home or abroad. Before that, there was the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, the 1996 Saudi embassy bombing, the 1998 African bombings, the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and of course 9/11. So now that five years have passed, the question of why we haven't been hit again is critical. It's been too long to just be coincidence. Perhaps our forces really have kept al Qaeda on the run. Perhaps they have no money. Perhaps counterintelligence overseas is working. Perhaps all the really bad guys have been captured or killed.
But maybe there's another answer, one we see on the news every night. Perhaps our enemies are too busy killing each other than killing us. The Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq hate us, and want to kill us. Instead, our war has led to them killing each other. And not just the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, but foreign fighters. Those who used to go to Afganistan to train in terrorist camps are now going to Iraq to fight. They are killing many Iraqis, but not so many Americans -- only as many in the entire war as they managed to kill on one sunny September day five years ago. It's not so much, "Fight them there so we don't have to fight them over here." Rather, it's "Watch them fight each other over there -- and kill each other over there -- so they can't even think about coming here."
The likes of Joe Biden love to hear themselves talk about a political solution in Iraq that protects the interests of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. But the Kurds are not really part of this; they're content to have their autonomy up in the north. This is between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and the Shiites have a huge numerical advantage. Their leaders think they already have a solution: Kill the Sunnis.
This total chaos that will happen if we don't "succeed" in Iraq apparently involves the Shiites letting loose on the Sunnis. This could lead to a wider war, of course, because the Sunnis, who are the minority in Iraq, are the majority in the Muslim world. The Iraqi Sunnis might be aided by Saudi Arabia (home of bin Laden), or Jordan (home of Zarqawi), or Egypt (home of Zawahiri). Maybe those countries would intervene. More likely, their most extreme citizens would. That might antagonize the Iranians (Shiites) and the Syrians (pseudo-Shiites) and the leadership of Lebannon (puppet Shiites). And then you've got a regional conflaguration. A regional war.
O the hand-wringing! Look at what Bush's policy has wrought! A regional war! Oh, how foolish -- if only we could go back to 2002, before the invasion, when Iraq was "stable," when Saddam was in power, when all of the middle east was free to focus on the Palestian uprising and their hatred for us!
But maybe not. Maybe as long as they are killing each other, they are not focused on killing us. Maybe there will be terrible consequences of the Iraq war for the middle east. Maybe there will even be terrible consequences for "U.S. interests." Certainly there will be the harmful consequence of making us relunctant to go to war again in the future, against Iran; it is now apparent, as our enemies can see, that we don't have the stomach for it. But those who spent a decade devoting their energies to hitting us are now focused elsewhere and may soon be dead. And yes, maybe images of the war did create "a million bin Ladens" -- though this would only show the irrationality of the ememy -- but most of those million have neither the skill nor the guts nor the resources to act on their inclinations, and those that do can die in Iraq or the larger regional war.
The primary rationale for reelecting President Bush was that he would do his best to prevent us from being attacked again. In Iraq, that rationale is being vindicated. Not as Bill Kristol would like. Not as President Bush himself would like. But it is being vindicated nonetheless.
A plan for victory in Iraq? That's too much to ask. We've already won.
Recent Comments