"Freedom" vs. Killing our Enemies
Andy McCarthy on the Iraq war and the surge:
That's why I get so disheartened when I hear the president talk this nonsense about the universality of freedom. If the surge is just about Iraqi freedom, we shouldn't be doing it. The American people don't care what form of government Iraq has — not enough to fight a war over it. They care about defeating enemies who threaten the United States, and the president has never made the case — nor do I think he could — that American national security is materially affected by whether Iraq remains Iraq as we know it, whether it is democratic, or whether the Shiites and Sunnis — despite knowing they are being played by al Qaeda — decide they nonetheless need to slaughter each other in order to somehow vindicate Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate.
and
Until we finally decide to do what obviously needs doing, the overall war can't be won. But if we have no intention of doing what needs doing, then it pointless to go on. That is why regular Americans — not the media and the Left, but regular Americans — have not gotten four-square behind the surge. If we are not committed to REAL victory, meaning defeating this enemy—which is far from limited to the Iraqi insurgency and includes Iran and al Qaeda's new safe-haven on the Pakistani/Afghan border — then that's slow-motion defeat. If we're for slow-motion defeat, we should stop belittling the people who are ready to sign off on defeat now. I don't think we are for slow-motion defeat. But that means we've got to start demanding a plan to win the whole thing, not just to avoid losing in the Iraq theater.
I think he's mostly on-target here. Bush has chosen, over and over again, to make the case for the Iraq war in a Wilsonian, "save the Iraqis" fashion, perhaps in an attempt (albeit a hopeless one, IMO) to win over the left. In the meantime, by not making the conservative argument (kill our enemies), and by fighting with half-measures, and largely ignoring the provocations and outright acts of war against us being committed by Iran, the President has signaled to the right that he is not serious about winning, which has lost him support on the right.
I hope that as a country we will commit ourselves to winning the war against radical Islamic terrorists, and preferably before another major attack on our homeland. But like McCarthy, I'm not entirely confident that's what will happen.