I’ve been watching the debate prior to and following the President’s address of 10 January 07 on where to go in the Iraq war. I have noted one question that is never asked of those espousing a “phased withdrawal/drawdown/redeploy” (a.k.a. “cut and run”/surrender) approach to the war. The cut-and-run proponents’ rationale for this course of action is that it will force the Iraqis to “stand on their own”, that it will send a message to the Iraqi government that they need to take responsibility for their future. This logic is debatable; if the results of the Russian pull out from Bosnia or our own pull out from Vietnam are any guide, this is not the result predicted by history. Nevertheless, let’s assume they could be right, for argument’s sake.
We come then to THE question not yet asked of those critical of the President’s new plan. It is the flip-side to their own logic, i.e. “What is the likely affect of a cut-and-run plan on the terrorists?” If announcing a pull-out will cause the Iraqis to say, “Oh, the Yanks are leaving; we’d better try harder to stabilize our country,” will the terrorists in Iraq also conclude, “Hey, the Yanks are leaving; we’d better scale back our attacks.” Please consider adding this to your standard list of questions for guests on your show, whether they are for or against the President’s new plan.
On a related issue, what effect would a pull-back of US forces in Iraq have on coalition efforts to help rebuild Iraq, efforts that are heavily dependent on non-Iraqi civilians? Iraqi stability depends at least as heavily on economic and political progress as on security progress.
Finally, I've never seen the press so determined to see us loose a war. In WWII, the press would report bad news, but would also go out of it's way to report when things went right. They understood that maintaining the national will to win was every bit as important as building tanks, planes and ships. And some things have gone well in this war; you just wouldn't know it from the reporting being done. The behaviour of some politicians is also reprehensible, and didn't happen in WWII, no matter how bleak the outlook sometimes looked. We were in a war for national survival, just as we are today. If you doubt it, then you haven't considered the likely consequences of failure. And for the record, thousands of Allied soldiers died after the fighting officially ended in Germany, due in part to having to fight Nazi insurgents that refused to accept the new order. It took 10+ years before West Germany was considered capable of full sovereignity again. A like period of time was required for Japan to operate on it's own, and even then we've maintained forces in both countries since the end of WWII (60 years).
