Filling in the 'Holes' for Fareed.
Some will portray this past week in Iraq as a sign that the U.S. has gotten into a quagmire. Fareed Zakaria, of Newsweek, went so far as to write that the U.S. is following the failed policies of the United Kingdom in it’s sectarian practice of favoring one faction to create a government, thereby setting up eventual civil unrest, war and antipathy towards the West. The actions of the past week show no such behavior or tendency on the part of the allied forces or U.S. policy. Citing the deal that ended the battle in Najaf, and other cities, Zakaria implies that the U.S. may be siding with the Shi’a forces in Iraq after finding no means to control the Sunni areas of the country. The truth is far from Mr. Zakaria’s analysis.
The U.S. policy has been and remains focused on the development of a free and democratic Iraq for all Iraqi ethnic or religious groups. One must look no further than this blog to find disagreement with the policy to allow Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers to simply walk away from the battles in Najaf, yet it is also clear that the decision to do so was one of good will, not toward Muqtada al-Sadr, or the Shi’a of Iraq, but rather toward the interim government of Iyad Allawi. U.S. actions, if not policy, will allow both success and non-catastrophic failures by the interim government, as both a means to develop and a means to establish it’s authenticity or legitimacy within Iraq and the Middle East. Prime Minister Allawi also offered an amnesty to those who had been fighting against the interim government and the U.S. This was rightly overturned by the U.S.
The failure on the part of Mr. Zakaria, and the left in general is in their view of American ineptitude in dealing with the insurgency, as they call it, and our resolve in bringing democracy to the Middle East. Mr. Zakaria interprets the actions in Najaf as though it is a U.S. capitulation to the Shi’a and a statement of our inability to deal with the Sunni. He then goes on to describe how the U.S. cannot take the country from the Sunni “guerrillas” due to high civilian casualties and the creation of an angry public. There is no better argument for taking the country from the Sunni “guerrillas” than the fact that they currently hold the public hostage, and wield their power not politically but through their support of terrorist acts against the U.S., the Iraqi government and civilians of both Iraqi and non-Iraqi nationality.
Mr. Zakaria offers that the insurgency will grow given the Iraqi military’s current size and the U.S. forces inability to capture Sunni cities. Yet he offers the opinion of Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations, Samir Sumaiada’ie, that the insurgency will grow unless the U.S. and Great Britain add significant numbers of troops. The idea that the insurgency will grow unless the U.S. and Great Britain increase the number of troops in Iraq, a point Mr. Zakaria should have seen as opposition to his own thesis, if in fact the insurgency grows due to our involvement, wouldn’t more troops mean greater insurgency, leads to the conclusion that Mr. Zakaria and the left are looking for arguments that lead to the same conclusion they seek in all actions by the U.S. in Iraq, our defeat.
The realities of Iraq are simpler than the elite media care to report.
The U.S. won the war with Saddam Hussein’s forces.
The U.S. captured Saddam and removed his military forces, political agents and sympathizers from control.
The U.S. aided in the development of an interim government, and has a process in place to ensure the election of the first government of Free Iraq.
The efforts of so-called insurgents, their main tactics being those of terror, are driven by the loss of power, supported by Iran and Syria and the blind eye of Saudi Arabia, and are no match for the interest in both freedom and self-representation among the Iraqi civilian population, which develops with each day of continued U.S. involvement.
The U.S. policy is not built upon hope, as the Left would like to describe it, it is built upon actions. The only hope related to our policy in Iraq, is that it affords the average citizen of Iraq, the hope of freedom from religious persecution and compulsion, freedom from tyranny and strife, freedom to vote and elect representation in their government, and freedom to live a life better than the generations that preceded them.
