Freedom's Fidelity

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Afghanistan, Iraq and Lies

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq we were told some "lies" by the left. Among them: It would take 6 months and the lives of 10,000 U.S. soldiers to take Baghdad; We would face brutal house to house fighting in Baghdad and the Iraqi army would fight much harder to defend their home country than they did Kuwait; There would be a major humanitarian crisis as millions of refugees flee Iraq into neighboring countries; Saddam Hussein would use his chemical and biological weapons on coalition troops and may even launch them into Israel; the Arab Street would become enraged and rise up against us and our Middle Eastern allies; the region would become unstable and Israel will be drawn into the war, derailing the Middle East peace process. 10 days into the war, as U.S. troops paused during a blinding sandstorm, it was pronounced a quagmire. Then a week later Baghdad fell. There was no house to house fighting, there was no mass flow of refugees - indeed quite the opposite occurred as those Iraqis that had fled abroad during the Hussein years returned to their homeland. Ironically pre-war, many argued that because Hussein had chemical weapons we should not attack him, as that would cause him to resort to using them. Now post-war, the fact that we can't find those weapons is proof that we should not have attacked him. The Arab street remains as unarousable as ever and with Saddam Hussein and his financing of Palestinian suicide bombers out of the picture, terrorism in Israel has dropped by more than half. Don't think that this will slow any of the dire predictions though, being wrong over and over again is hardly an inconvenience. See the current Bush=Draft fear mongering.

This is the pattern though. Before Iraq similar doom and gloom prophecies were made about Afghanistan. All the predictions from our leftist armchair generals were of getting bogged down in a Vietnam like quagmire just as the Soviets did. The terrain was too treacherous, too alien, and the winters were too harsh, the Al-Qaeda fighters too dedicated. But then a funny thing happened, the Taliban were routed, Al-Qaeda was on the run hiding in caves as Daisy Cutters rained down blowing their murderous bodies to bits. Where the Soviets were bogged down for years, this war took us 6 weeks. But what do facts matter? For the last two years we have been hearing from the mainstream press that we are in danger of losing Afghanistan, that the Iraq war distracted from the rebuilding process, that the Taliban is making a comeback and controls three-fourths of the country, that Bush did nothing more than install a Karzai as the mayor of Kabul and pronounce the work done.

Nevermind that business is growing, that a cultural revival is occurring after years of bans on art, music, and writing and that women now have rights beyond being locked inside their houses cloaked in burkas. Nevermind that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda promised to disrupt elections with assassinations, car bombs and drive bys of polling stations, yet they couldn't even pull off one attack? Afghans, both men and women, came out in droves and waited patiently - sometimes for a few hours - to have their votes counted. This is a country that has been at war for the better part of the last century, a country that many on the left pronounce culturally incapable of self-governance, yet three years removed from Taliban rule they held successful elections. That is why this is getting a relatively small amount of press in the western media. It undermines the characterization of quagmire that has been pushed for the last three years, which means Bush must have done something right. You can bet though, had their been attacks and disruptions, it would have been front page news and the elections denounced as a fraud. But success, especially when it is a Bush success, just simply isn't news. And the pattern continues.....

posted by Paul  permalink | |