Iraq No Longer Our Main Concern?
Dave Price
Victor Hanson argues the West has bigger worries now:
For all the Western gloom, the forces trying to break up Iraq are not as strong as the fears of seeing it so trisected. Federal Iraq has survived Iranian subterfuge, the House of Saud terrorist subsidies, Turkish invasion, and Kurdish nationalism — and is still there. It won’t be quite Kansas, but the Iraqi state has a good chance to evolve into something no more violent than the usual Middle Eastern state, but without either murderous dictators or theocrats — or, of course, the genocidal murderer Saddam Hussein.
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The combination of new American tactics, the surge, shared fear of Iran, vast oil revenues, sheer attrition of jihadists over the last five years, and growing Iraqi hatred of Wahhabi terrorists over the same period, have all led to a perfect storm for al-Qaeda. It now suffers the almost unbelievable humiliation of having Arab Muslims willingly join Americans to expel it from the ancient caliphate.
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In the last analysis, the real worries about the survival of the West in this war are not with America and its courageous twenty-something suburban kids in Anbar trying to offer something better than the sharia morality of the seventh century, but with the likes of sanctimonious and cowardly churchmen in England trying to spread it.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.