Most nights I lie awake wishing one of two things-- a larger liberal readership and that everyone at BYU didn't agree with me. No wait, I wish I had a larger readership and I would love it if more people agreed with me. Or, I wish I really knew everything while now I only think I do.
Sometimes I think everyone should let me run their life. I'm a heck of a lot more decisive than the girl in front of me at the Cougar Express, trying to decide between the orange and the bag of potato chips. She knows she wants the bag of potato chips, who does she think she's fooling? And the next time anyone (sorry girls) pays for a $0.59 candy bar with a check, I'm going to slap that Snickers out of their hand so fast that for some reason they'll wish they'd bought the orange instead.
I'll tell you one group that definitely should be letting me make their decisions for them, all those who thought 12DailyPro was a great money making opportunity. Regrettably, some of my friends got caught up in that scam. Seriously guys, didn't your fathers tell you about their own rough encounters with earlier pyramid schemes?
Enough of the crazy autocratic rants; without further delay I give you the next in a series of conservative but not--unfortunately--religiously fundamentalist posts.
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The Defeaticrats
Of hearts and minds, at home and in Iraq
by Mark Steyn
INSURGENCY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
On the other hand, this does belatedly prove the anti-war crowd’s long-held view that Saddam’s secular Baathists and Osama’s theocrat terrorists would never collaborate, even if it took until last month for the participants themselves to get wise to it. And, alas, unlike the Dems with Hillary, in the Sunni Triangle there’s no Sunni triangulator to craft a more nuanced position to hold both the Lieberbaathist and Pelosama wings together.
So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, and the Baath party have figured Iraqi democracy’s winning. That leaves al-Qaeda. Well, not exactly: Ayman Zawahiri, the number-two honcho in al-Qaeda while they’re maintaining the polite fiction that bin Laden’s still functioning, recently rapped terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on the knuckles and called on him to cut out killings that “the masses do not understand or approve.” (The twitchy Mr. Zawahiri was presumably thinking of, for example, the assassination of the septuagenarian grand imam of Fallujah for urging Sunnis to get out and vote.)
So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, the Baath party, and bin Laden’s deputy think the insurgency’s a bust. Hands up, who thinks it’s winning?
Well, there’s Howard Dean: “The idea that we are going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.” And look over there, it’s Jack Murtha, and he’s a veteran, and he thinks we need to scramble for the last chopper over the embassy compound right now! “There’s a civil war going,” he says. “Our troops are the targets of the civil war. They’re the only people that could have unified the various factions in Iraq. And they’re unified against us.”
By “us,” I think he means him and Zarqawi. And no, I’m not “questioning his patriotism”; I’m questioning his sanity. It was famously said that the Vietnam War was lost on television. In this instance, the Iraq War’s being lost only on television. In Iraq, it’s a tremendous victory. Indeed, it has the potential to be one of the most consequential, transformative victories of the modern age; but even if it doesn’t ever fulfill that potential, it’s still a huge success.
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I guess what I really dont understand is why there has to be a Democrat or Republican position on the current state of affairs in Iraq. I understand that many thought the war was wrong in the first place. We can agree to disagree on that point. However, that doesn't change reality and I think a reasonable analysis of our position must logically lead to the conclusion that success, not immediate withdrawal, is the best possible outcome.
By all means, let us debate the alternatives in Iraq and even future strategy in the war on terror. Pulling our troops out now or before Iraq can defend itself from enemies abroad and within will have disastrous consequences. Then Iraq will turn from a promsing young democracy into the terrorist haven that many liberals believe it to be now.
2 comments:
For those of you who where scammed by the now infamous 12 daily pro. i really do not even feel sorry for you. If it sounds too good to be true it is. here is a little video clip i found that you might be interested. I think it is always fun to see who it is that used and abused much of the great BYU school of business. Despite warnings from your dean and the Church itself. http://www.abc4.com/mediacenter/
then just search 12 daily pro and enjoy.
This entire article, from what I can tell, is built around a single poll that is not even cited (in the blog at least) and the author uses the results to draw his own conclusions. He doesn't compare the poll to other polls taken in Iraq in other periods, and the best he can do is compare the results to European countries. So if I use a similar logic that the author employs, I would have to assume that because Europeans are less optimistic than Iraqis, that established democracy actually makes people less happy. Maybe the Iraqis should cut and run before democracy can be established so they don't turn out like those depressed French and Germans. Or maybe war actually makes people happier. Maybe the joy of Christ is being spread by Americans in Iraq and the French are paying the price of becoming more liberal. Or maybe we don't know what the hell that poll really means, if it is in fact a statistically meaningful poll. Maybe the author is exactly right... How would I know? - I don't know what is really happening in Iraq, and neither do you Jake. But I do know that this is some weak writing you decided to post that uses an ambiguous poll to draw conclusions that support the author's personal opinions. And even if the author turns out to be right, that doesn't mean he made a valid argument.
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