The Cost of Failure
Tony Blankley lays it out right here:
[I]f . . . our departure from Iraq yields civil war, chaos, war lordism and terrorist safe havens — it is very likely that Iran will lurch in to harvest their advantages, Turkey will send in its army to stop an independent Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Sunni states will be sucked in to fend off Shi'ite Iran's hegemony. In that nightmare maelstrom, the 20 million barrels a day of oil shipped from the Persian Gulf — and the world economy with it — will be in daily risk of being cut off.
Nor is that all. Al Qaeda and other terrorists are already gloating that they have whipped the "cowardly Americans" in Iraq. We will be seen (in fact already are beginning to be seen) as a weak reed for moderate Muslims to rely on in their hearts-and-mind struggle against the radical Islamists. Osama bin Laden was right in one regard: People fear and follow the strong horse; even more so in Middle Eastern culture where restraint is seen as weakness and murder is seen as strength.
You heard it here.
[I]f . . . our departure from Iraq yields civil war, chaos, war lordism and terrorist safe havens — it is very likely that Iran will lurch in to harvest their advantages, Turkey will send in its army to stop an independent Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Sunni states will be sucked in to fend off Shi'ite Iran's hegemony. In that nightmare maelstrom, the 20 million barrels a day of oil shipped from the Persian Gulf — and the world economy with it — will be in daily risk of being cut off.
Nor is that all. Al Qaeda and other terrorists are already gloating that they have whipped the "cowardly Americans" in Iraq. We will be seen (in fact already are beginning to be seen) as a weak reed for moderate Muslims to rely on in their hearts-and-mind struggle against the radical Islamists. Osama bin Laden was right in one regard: People fear and follow the strong horse; even more so in Middle Eastern culture where restraint is seen as weakness and murder is seen as strength.
You heard it here.
posted by LadybugUSA at 8:00 AM
3 Comments:
I like Blankley's analogy that the winner in chess is the player who makes the next-to-the-last mistake and that retreat in Iraq would be the last mistake.
Hitler and Tojo nearly won because of the then 1940s defeatists.
Let me be the last.
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