Winning in Iraq

Another glimmer of hope in Iraq occurred Sunday with the sentencing by the new government of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for war crimes, thus proving the business of state is ongoing despite the recent upsurge in violence. As London during the Battle of Britain, the equally defiant citizens of Baghdad are rising from the ashes of war to stand beside America, building a future based on the principles of justice and liberty for their nation and the Middle East.

Winning in Iraq will send a message to rogue regimes and expansionist powers that lukewarm UN sanctions or endless negotiations and appeasement will never do. It will be a signal which we failed to send to Germany and Japan in the 1930’s, or Stalin’s Russia in the 40’s, that free nations will no longer allow tyrants to have their way with weaker rising countries.

For those who say we shouldn’t be fighting the terrorists in Iraq, the obvious question is “where will we fight them”? The most obvious place is, of course, Afghanistan, where the new Jihadist movement hails from. Were we to pull a Dunkirk-like retreat from Iraq, or a gradual withdrawal as in Vietnam, it is unlikely that our current allies would stand beside us in the Afghan or elsewhere. It is likely that moderate states such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or even India might come to an accommodation with Islamic Fascism, if they can no longer trust America to stand beside them.