51 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
51 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
The smell of victory, part deux
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<p>Aha. The <a href='http://news.pajamasmedia.com/2005/12/18/6710814_Sunnis_say_they_.shtml'>Sunnis<br />
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say they want to work with US</a>. This comes hard in the heels of<br />
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reports that the Baathist dead-enders protected al-Qaeda polling<br />
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places from jihadis during the just-concluded elections, in which<br />
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turnout pushed 70% even in the heart of the Sunni triangle.</p>
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<p><span id="more-245"></span></p>
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<p>I expect this story will be just as thoroughly overlooked in the<br />
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mainstream media as <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=143'>Qaddaffi’s<br />
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terrified capitulation</a> was back in 2003. But it’s even more<br />
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important. We’re getting a clear message that the ex-Baathist end of<br />
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the insurgency wants to put down its guns and enter electoral<br />
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politics. This matters a lot, because they were most of the footsoldiers.<br />
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The al-Qaeda fighters are far fewer, and have alienated most Iraqis with<br />
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a terror campaign that has killed more Iraqis than it has coalition<br />
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troops.</p>
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<p>If the insurgent leaders believe they must stop fighting, this<br />
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implies two other things: that the Sunni street has accepted that<br />
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Sunnis aren’t going to run Iraq any more, and consequently that Iraq<br />
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is not going to fly apart into three Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’a<br />
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fragments. The political foundations for a stable Iraq deeply hostile<br />
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to the Islamofascist program have been laid.</p>
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<p>(Yes, I support the development of a stable Iraqi state despite<br />
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my anarcho-capitalism. This is because I don’t think it’s possible to<br />
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go from tribalism and autocracy to market anarchy in one go. At<br />
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mininimum, it takes a couple of generations of civil society to prepare<br />
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people for true self-government. Cultural experience matters.)</p>
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<p>Others in the blogosphere have noted that George Bush’s most recent<br />
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speech uses a lot more “I”, that he’s taking personal responsibility<br />
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for the U.S.’s Iraq strategy, and that this means he is now sure of<br />
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victory and wants to nail down the credit. I agree with this<br />
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assessment. For the first time since 2003, I am now feeling fairly<br />
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sure that all the home-front sabotaging of the Iraq campaign by the<br />
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Left and the mainstream media is going to come to nothing in the end.<br />
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It’s not, after all, going to be Vietnam II; they will not snatch<br />
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defeat from the jaws of victory again.</p>
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<p>I’d like to think this means emergency conditions will end soon,<br />
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and I can return to my natural position of calling for the dismantling<br />
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of government power rather than reluctantly supporting a government<br />
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war. Unfortunately, the Iraq campaign, like the Afghani campaign<br />
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before it, is only part of that longer-term war. I think it is quite<br />
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likely we will be required to invade and subdue Iran before the larger<br />
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struggle to break the will of Islamofascism is over. Alas, wishing we<br />
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had tools other than state power for achieving this won’t make it<br />
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so.</p>
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<p>Still. I expect to enjoy the effect on U.S. domestic politics as<br />
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the Iraq insurgency collapses. The American Left, having committed itself<br />
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to defeatism, is going to get badly hammered in the 2006 elections. I’d<br />
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relish that even more if I could be sure that the beneficiaries of their<br />
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collapse wouldn’t be the Republicans, but you can’t have everything.</p>
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