Our Fight vs. Their Fight

Five months ago I published a column titled “Miscalculation in Iraq.” The point of the column was that, while the Bush Administration was right to invade Iraq for the purpose of eliminating Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime, the idea that we should attempt to establish an island of democracy there, in the middle of the Arab world, amounted to a miscalculation.

I pointed out that it is beyond reason to suggest that nomadic goat herders in the deserts of Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia lay awake at night dreaming of the day when they might be elected to a seat in their nation’s parliament.    

I concluded that it is not “cultural condescension,” as George W. Bush has charged, to suggest that not all peoples of the world yearn for or are even capable of appreciating the fruits of democracy. It is, in fact, simple reality. 

At the time that column was written I still supported the notion that our military forces should remain in Iraq until the Iraqis were in a position to put down a murderous insurgency and to police their own land. Now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to see things in terms of “our” fight versus “their” fight.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and a United Nations coalition was formed to remove the Iraqis by force of arms, that was our fight.

When the U.N. Security Council passed seventeen separate resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein disarm and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, all of which were ignored by the Iraqis, that was our fight.

And when it finally became necessary to invade Iraq in order to forcibly remove a dangerous and brutal regime, that was our fight.

But things have changed, especially in the area known as the “Sunni Triangle.” While most of the violence since the fall of Baghdad has come at the hands of a radical insurgency, the recent violence in Iraq’s major cities has taken on an entirely new complexion. 

John Murtha, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and a great many other Democrats have been on the get-out-of-Iraq bandwagon for a long time, but for all the wrong reasons. The fallacy of their argument is that, if the leaders of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah ever get the idea that we’re afraid to put our military people in harm’s way because someone might get hurt or killed, we might as well lay down our arms and surrender.

No, what has changed in Iraq and what is causing me to reevaluate my attitude toward a continued U.S. military presence is the recent change in the nature of the violence. 

Each day we hear of more episodes of sectarian violence – Shiites murdering Sunnis, and Sunnis murdering Shiites. They stop buses, separate the Shiites from the Sunnis, and summarily execute the ones they don’t like. They enter shops and offices, kidnap ten or twenty people, and they’re never seen or heard from again. Sectarian violence is now claiming more than 3,000 innocent non-combatants each month.

I once saw an intersection on a country road in Oklahoma with a different variety of Baptist church on three of the four corners. What miniscule doctrinal differences might exist between all those Baptists is of no concern to non-Baptists, just as the doctrinal differences between the Sunnis and the Shiites is of no concern to non-Muslims. 

The point is that I wouldn’t want to be standing in the middle of that intersection in rural Oklahoma if the Baptists ever started throwing stones at each other, any more than I want our troops standing in harm’s way while the Sunnis and the Shiites murder each other by the tens of thousands. 

The nature of the war against Islamic fascism, the clash of civilizations, tells us that, if western civilization is to survive, we, the Israelis, and our western allies, will eventually find ourselves in a killing field where the number of dead, on all sides, will far exceed that of all of the wars in recorded history. So if the forces of radical Islam appear to be interested only in killing for the sake of killing – even if it means killing each other – who are we to stand in their way? Let’s just step aside and let them do what they do best while we work on our offenses and defenses elsewhere.

Let’s hope that the Bush Administration has a comprehensive plan for withdrawal if it appears that a democratic government has no chance whatsoever of surviving and sectarian bloodletting becomes the sole raison d’etre for Iraqis. We’ll just leave the bloodstained sands of the “cradle of civilization” to the Sunnis and the Shiites. We don’t have a rooster in that cockfight. It’s not our fight, it’s their fight.