Mr. Quin Hillyer over at The American Spectator has written:
"Support President Bush's expected call for a troop "surge" in Iraq. It is impossible to be a true conservative and, at the same time, to accept defeat in a military endeavor in a key strategic area of the world. Forget the arguments about whether we were wise to topple Saddam or not in the first place. (We were right, by the way.) The fact is that we are there now, and if we don't secure the peace, we will have lost, and the loss will have horrific repercussions for stability in the Middle East and for American standing in the world. Every other option on the table (other than a troop surge) is, in effect, a strategy for managing a defeat, rather than for securing a victorious peace. Those other strategies are therefore unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable. And cowardly to boot."
Mr. Hillyer is very good at forgetting and he wants you to be as well. He forgets that the war was not sold to topple Saddam (that is what he wants you to forget the arguments about), but on WMDs. He does want you to remember, we are there now and we have to win or you are no conservative and you are a coward.
So we have to have the surge. The surge, and if it does not work? Well, that he does not address.
The big problem with the article is that Mr. Hillyer has no idea of what a conservative is when it comes to war and foreign policy. The only true conservative policy is the defense of hearth and home. Saddam was Iraq's problem not ours and the WMD scare was a scam. Is Mr. Hillyer so ignorant that he has never heard of the real conservative policy. John Quincy Adams said: "America is the friend of liberty everywhere but the guarantor only of our own."
I am in most things libertarian and when not libertarian, reactionary. In foreign and military affairs, I am conservative. JQA is still my Secretary of State.
I searched for a bio of Quin and found some. It does not say if he has any military experience. I don't know if he is a reservist and will be called up to participate in the surge. If he is not, then he should weigh his words before he throws around "cowardly," as he is all for others putting themselves in danger.
Hat tip to Clark Stooksbury
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4 comments:
Sadly for the people in charge of this disaster, the public has limited patience with gross ineptitude. Our unwillingness to go along indefinitely will, however, provide them in the end with all the excuse they need for their - which will become "our" -failure.
The administration has never presented a mature and well-reasoned explanation for the invasion of Iraq. Weapons of Mass Destruction were discussed. Intelligence reports were alluded to, and - but for national security reasons - would surely have been disclosed.
Connections to nefarious terrorist groups were cited, and attempts were made to implicate Iraq, somehow, in the planning and execution of 9/11. However, this has hardly added up to a convincing case, because the emphasis has continued to shift as the evidence for one claim after another either showed signs of weakness or completely collapsed.
Admittedly, Saddam was a bad actor and his regime an unpleasant one. Neither was unique in this regard.
If ties to terrorist organizations and connections to 9/11 genuinely justified military invasion, then we would apparently have been better off taking over Saudi Arabia, an idea that not even George Bush seems to have floated, though I suppose he still has one year to make all our dreams come true. By the way George, they do have a lot of oil, in case your intelligence remains spotty.
There is obviously a lot to say about Iraq, but let's start with the fact that - to the extent that the administration has a definition of victory - it demands a radical reshaping of the Iraq political, legal, and religious psyche. This is well beyond the range of military action, which involves killing people, not rewiring their brain circuitry.
"This is well beyond the range of military action, which involves killing people, not rewiring their brain circuitry."
Well, maybe that is the problem, definition of a realistic goal. After all, Rome got pretty far with solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. Of course, we would have to ditch all that freedom rhetoric. Nah, they have no shame and would continue to use it even unto genocide.
"The only true conservative policy is the defense of hearth and home. Saddam was Iraq's problem not ours and the WMD scare was a scam. Is Mr. Hillyer so ignorant that he has never heard of the real conservative policy. John Quincy Adams said: "America is the friend of liberty everywhere but the guarantor only of our own.""
Could not have been better said.
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