Iraq: What Now (re Vanity Fair)

Cliff May responds to the Vanity Fair article that perports to show neocons abandoning Bush on Iraq.

David Rose writes that he “spent the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none them is optimistic.”

Of course they are not optimistic. If they were, they’d be fools since it is obvious that after three years the mighty American military machine has not been able to suppress insurgents, terrorists and thugs armed with cell phones and garage door openers. That is depressing and frustrating.

Rose adds: “Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.”

I would argue that there has never been any question: No one knows how to export democracy, certainly not to a region as troubled as the Middle East. But there is a difference between exporting democracy and supporting democrats and freedom fighters wherever you find them. By failing to do that in the Middle East (as we did, for example in Eastern Europe), we left people in the region with only two options: dead-end dictatorships or the Islamist dream of victory and conquest.

I also would argue that the evidence does not suggest that most Iraqis prefer not to be free, that most would rather not choose their leaders, that a majority enjoys a good suicide bombing every day or two.

The evidence suggests that a fanatical, determined minority can do vast amounts of damage, can destroy faster than anyone can build, can so terrorize people that they relinquish their hopes in exchange for protection. Why is this surprising? When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, it was not because most Russians were Marxist-Leninists. Most Germans were not Nazis in the early 1930s. When New Jersey store owners pay the Mafia protection money it’s not because that’s the way they like it.

I would suggest that there is also too much attention being paid to Iraq. If this surprises you it’s because you have not been paying attention. The media focus has been on Iraq so that’s what people pay attention to. But we are in a war against Islamofacism or, as the administration have termed it, a “War On Terror.” Keep in mind that none of the 9/11 highjackers were Iraqis. In that respect the Left is correct; if we had simply struck out against the immediate perpetrators of 9/11 we would have struck Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq.

But while the immediate focus is on Iraq because that’s where one of the major battles is being fought, we are not in a war with Iraq, but in a much wider war. The epicenter of the ideology we fight is in Iran. It also has a locus in Saudi Arabia which openly supports and finances the export of the particularly virulent forms of Islam that infects much of the Islamic world and many parts of the West. There are festering sores of Islamofascism in Pakistan, only partially held in check by General Pervez Musharraf.

And an area that has gotten almost no attention is Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country which has a violent uprising ongoing headed by the group known as Jemaah Islamiyah.

So the attention paid to Iraq is also a distraction, and takes away our focus on the big picture. The bloody lessons we are learning in Iraq will help us to overcome and defeat the Islamic threat that we face on a global scale.

And I, for one, am optimistic.