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International Affairs
Nancy Takes a Trip and Meets a Tyrant
Toby Westerman
U.S. tactical errors in Iraq have been compounded by a strategic blunder of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. The people of the United States will pay a heavy price.
U.S. President George W. Bush has made serious miscalculations in Iraq. He believed that the U.S. would be able to construct a viable civilian government as quickly as coalition forces destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Catholic Pelosi enters a mosque during her visit to Syria |
The group that the U.S. generally supported for the task of governing and rebuilding Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi, had more support in the West than in Iraq. The vacuum created after the fall of Saddam was almost immediately filled by rival Muslim clerics who had little interest in any government based upon Western democratic principles.
Regarding weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration never followed up on significant evidence that Russia, our ally in the war on terror, moved Iraqi WMDs to Syria just before the coalition invasion.
The traditional media added to the public's initial concern about the war with a never ending and unrelenting series of dismal reports on Iraq. The media never punctuated its dispatches from Iraq with information on the notable success by the nascent Iraqi government or the remarkable achievements of U.S. and coalition forces.
Although Bush did at first underestimate his opponents in Iraq, he consistently has had a realistic understanding of their ultimate goal - the destruction of the United States. The fundamentalists are not fighting merely to expel the United States and its allies from Iraq. For militant Islam, the war in Iraq is simply one more battle on the road to an eventual defeat of the U.S.
Pelosi and her allies, however, lack this perspective.
The elite of the Democratic Party do not comprehend the gravity of the threat that exists against the United States. The excursion to Damascus of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the series of Democrat attempts to hurry a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq display a child-like exercise in "magical thinking," that is, wishing makes it so.
Syria, like Iran, is a sworn enemy of the United States. The antipathy of Damascus and Teheran stems from the very nature of our society. The individual freedom of the United States clashes directly with the authoritarianism exercised by Syria's Bashar Al-Assad and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There is little evidence to indicate that either of these two leaders could exist in an environment of free elections supported by free, unhindered sources of information.
The authoritarian and rabidly anti-American nature of these regimes apparently escapes Speaker Pelosi. Her visit to Damascus and visit with tyrant President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and the unyielding determination of the elite in her party to set a withdrawal date for American troops make the United States look weak in the eyes of our enemies who themselves are unyielding.
Our enemies will not evaporate as we leave Iraq, they will press their attack.
Soon America will again be ground zero in the war on terror. The bombs and rockets that will be used against us will not check for party affiliation before detonation. The explosions from those weapons will not discriminate on the basis of political registration.
All of us will be targets, and the ultimate goal of our attackers will be the destruction of the human freedom against which they vent their fury.
Our greatest hope, however, lies where America has always found its greatest strength, faith in God. The Easter, season which is upon us, is the celebration of the greatest form of human freedom, the reconciliation of humanity to God through the Cross and Resurrection. This is the light that can guide our way in the very difficult days ahead.
They will attack, and, if we keep our faith, they will fail. He is Risen!
Posted April 9, 2007
Toby Westerman writes and edits
International News Analysis - Today
An investigative, analytical, and uncompromising weekly analysis of the world situation
Contact T. Westerman at www.inatoday.com
or P.O. BOX 5182, Rockford, ILL, 61125-0182
This article was published in the April 7, 2007 online edition of INA Today
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