Speaking of the Religion of Peace....Here is another subject that came up the other day in class. One of my students asked me a question. She said, "Why are we still in Iraq when all these Iraqis are fighting our soldiers and trying to kill them? If the Iraqis don't want us there, why don't we just leave?"
That is a good question young lady. The thing is, I needed to correct her, because by and large, most Iraqis want us to stay, and it is not Iraqis who we are mostly fighting. The men we are fighting, such as these fine specimens in Fallujah pictured above, are predominately from Muslim countries other than Iraq, starting with the most wanted man of all in Iraq right now: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is the leader of the group called al-Qaeda in Iraq. Actually, I just recently heard that now they want to be called al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia... seriously. al-Zarqawi, the holy head chopper himself, is from Jordan. The men who fight for al-Zarqawi and bomb American soldiers and (Muslim) Iraqi citizens with equal fervor are mostly from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, "Palestine", Chechnya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and every other Middle Eastern stinkhole you can think of. I'm not saying that there are no Iraqis fighting our troops; of course there are. But, by and large, the average Iraqi on the street recognizes what the U.S. is trying to accomplish, and they support our efforts. If you read some of the blogs and other accounts written by our troops themselves, instead of the doom and gloom of the U.S. media, you would find that more is going right over there than you realize. For some true and straight skinny, visit this blog by Michael Yon. He is an independent journalist who was embedded with an American unit for 8 months, and just recently returned to Iraq to do it again. His stories and photos are amazing. Even if things were going crappy for us, and yes sometimes it is, we cannot back out now. We are committed and we must finish what we started. This letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi that was released to the media the other day, that describes Iraq as where the terrorists have chosen to fight the Americans, perfectly illustrates why we must stay and see this through.
My only complaint about the War in Iraq so far is that we haven't been fighting it hard enough. When our Marines are told to be careful where they shoot, lest a Mosque receive a few errant bullet holes - well, that's just a bunch of dog squeeze. Fight to win, or get the hell out. I thought we learned that lesson in Vietnam. I'll tell you another lesson we learned from Vietnam. After we cut and ran in 1973, Southeast Asia turned into a bloodbath in which possibly up to 3-5 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were killed, and millions more were "reeducated" or permanently displaced, and our national psyche was scarred for the next 20 years. Only the success of the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 exorcised the ghost of Vietnam from our national conscience. Of course, then two years later, we went back to our old ways when we cut and ran out of Somalia with our tail between our legs. It has been determined that our hasty departure from Somalia was not lost on the al Qaeda and the masterminds who cooked up September 11th and their current effort to make the world Muslim. George W. Bush needs to stop worrying about offending the Muslims and start doing what it takes to win. Most of the resistance in Iraq is happening in certain cities and in pockets of different cities. Places like Fallujah should have been reduced to grease spots a long time ago. Compassion does not impress these people who fight us, only overwhelming and violent force does that. Does our country still have the guts to make that happen? I'm not optimistic.
Good Day to You, Sir
No comments:
Post a Comment