Iraq's Future and Ours

Stay, Americans, and fight, says Mohammed Fadhil of Iraq the Model.

I wasn't surprised when I saw Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appear on Al Jazeera to announce America's defeat last week, not long after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did. Zawahiri claims Al Qaeda has won, and Reid claims America has lost.

But from here in Baghdad, I see only a war that's still raging - with no victory in sight for Al Qaeda or any other entity. In fact, I see Al Qaeda on the ropes, losing support among my fellow Iraqis. [SNIP]

It is up to us to show tyrants and murderers like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Syria's Bashar Assad, and their would-be imitators who seek to control Iraq's people and wealth that we, the people, are not their possessions. They can't take out our humanity and they can't force us to back down.

The world should ask them to leave our land before asking the soldiers of freedom to do so. [SNIP]

And so, my friends, I will call for fighting this war just as powerfully as the bad guys do - because I must show them that I'm stronger than they are. The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.

They understand only power.

Reading Mohammed's plea, I am reminded of Carroll Quigley’s theory about cultures: that successful ones are future-oriented. He said a heck of a lot of other non-PC things in his 1300-page tome, Tragedy & Hope (after all, it was published in 1966) but that particular observation stands out in my mind, especially in relation to the “beef” that Islamists have had with the West since long before the onset of the Iraq War. Mohammed and others like him are looking to the future—not only of their country, but of their entire culture which encompasses nationality, ethnicity and religion. What I’m wondering is whether these forward thinking persons can overcome those among them who want to settle the old cultural scores or want to opt for an alternate “future”: the one in which sending enough True Believers to Allah and consigning enough “Infidels” and “Apostates” to “Perdition” will cause the remnant of the latter two to submit to the will of the former.

And I can’t simply say that the dearth of the forward thinking mindset is one that is unique to Arab Muslim cultures. We need only look around us to see that the “right-now” mentality is all too prevalent in the West—not just among its citizens but in a good portion of the various governments of the West.

Was the decision to topple Saddam Hussein a valid one, made not just taking all available information into account, but fusing such information together to see how future events might play themselves out? It’s a valid question to ask and to keep asking up to a point. But if the answer turns out to be ‘no,’ due to an insufficient projection of possible future events, why should any of us make the same mistake over again?

Many interested observers, such as Mohammed and other peace-loving Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims, along with those in the West who aren’t willing to make a pre-emptive bug-out from Iraq due to their projections of the future: a future containing the speculation that Islamists will overrun the abandoned Iraq and, having had their speculations about the West confirmed—that we’re a weak-willed spineless lot who will abandon our commitments once the going gets too tough—will bring the fight to the West’s shores in earnest. Why would the many interested observers believe this? Because it has already happened many times before 9/11, many times since and several unsuccessful attempts to actually do so have been foiled. (and don’t get me started on how that crew got here).

See, it isn’t enough just to tick off the facts or go over the mistakes of the past or lament the situation of the present; one, or rather, all of us have to figure out how past, present and future fit together using all of the information we have and then figure out what to do next.

To those who were against the Iraq intervention in the first place or have come to the conclusion that it was a bad idea and have changed their minds, I, for one, accept your conclusions in good faith. But if you think that the decision to intervene in Iraq was made without adequately predicting what might happen in the future, I beseech you: don’t make the exact same mistake.

(Thanks to Michelle Malkin)