No Left Turns comments

My latest post at No Left Turns Comments:

Although this may be kind of a bizarre place to have this discussion (since we all have our own weblogs, or two, or ten...), I’m glad we are having it. The humanitarian aspect was just one of many reasons the United States and the coalition invaded Iraq. Like my friend Derek Catsam, I think it is reason enough, and I am openly critical of our indifference under various administrations to step in and stop humanitarian abuses abroad. Still, no one, not even the president, has ever said this invasion was launched entirely for humanitarian reasons. Let’s be honest, despite the various conspiracy theories out there, the Bush administration never would have invaded Iraq without September 11 (or some other drastic event). We invaded Iraq because we believed it threatened our security--due to Sadaam’s unstable history, access to resources (oil) and thus money, and his acting as a state sponsor for terrorism (which meant he could and did give money and/or weapons of mass destruction to terrorists hostile to the U.S.). The fact that there are clear humanitarian issues to the invasion is a fortunate bonus. Don’t get me wrong, this is exactly where President Bush’s inability to communicate effectively forced him to reduce the causes of the invasion to "WMDs," then "Sadaam was bad." There is a difference between being a straight-shooter and losing precious details for the sake of simplicity, and for that I am an outspoken critic of the president.

All that said, this is still a war--not on terror, but on the radical fundamentalist Islam that spawns terrorists who attack the United States and its allies. It is not a war on all Islam--as if Islam was monolithic--but it is a war on more of Islam than we often admit. Like it or not, there are sizable portions of the civilian population of places like Iraq that are either on the fence or actively supporting the terrorists. Those are the people we need to convince that making war on the United States is a fatal mistake. Obviously I do not have the intelligence on the ground in Iraq, but from what I understand, much of the civilian population of Fallujah fled the city after the riots there in anticipation of the American counterattack. It seems to me those people already realize the folly of fighting us. They voted with their feet. As did those who stayed behind. We could have destroyed large sections of the city, and the terrorists and their supporters therein, and sent a message that we will not tolerate terrorist activity or its support from the larger population.

I know this sounds harsh, but I’m skeptical of the idea that all carrot and no stick is going to win over the hearts and minds of all the Iraqi people. And if enough of them resist or support resistance, than the noble goal of liberal democracy is perilously threatened. What is more, we will have failed to address the radical fundamentalist Islam that is at war with the United States and got us into the war in the first place. So they will continue to attack, and more Americans will die, maybe even tens or hundreds of thousands if the terrorists manage to use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. In the worse case scenario, we will be forced to kill people by the hundreds of thousands if not millions in return. But even if it is not that bad, we will have to continue to hunt down terrorists who will increasingly hide among supportive civilian populations, leading to more collateral damage and death.

All this when the destruction of one city might have shown just how serious we were about responding to terror, and scared the civilian populations away from supporting a suicidal ideology. Then the cowed formerly hostile population would be much more open to the ideas of liberal democracy. Germany and Japan at least partially prove that.