The Rewards of a Surge?

We are told that the risk to reward ratio is well worth sending 21,500 more American troops to stabilize Baghdad’s chaos. If Maliki’s government succeeds and stabilizes Iraq because of the additional soldiers, President Bush will have saved Baghdad, his legacy, and maybe even opened the door for further pre-emptive democratic global strikes in the Middle East.

The risk will have seemed to pay off, and the cost of sending extra American boys today will have been considered minimal in a “Baghdad Final Push”. For these reasons, the risk is well worth the reward in trying to prop up a fledgling government toward stability.

What happens, however, if Iraq collapses or is commandeered by the bad guys? Will the terrorists from Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Iran, and Al Qaeda chase us down in Omaha, Peoria, or Chicago looking to “destroy our way of life” after the last helicopter whirls out of Saigon/Baghdad?

On the contrary, the Shias, Sunnis, Persians, Kurds, and insurgents from Syria, Iran, Jordan etc…will be so enthralled in a bloodthirsty battle for Iraq and the Middle East, that there will be no time, desire, or effort to chase down the Yankees across the ocean.

Such a view, though, is not consensus in Washington. The positions of President Bush, John McCain and even Pat Buchanan are such that the bloodthirsty battle of Iraq will be waged against Americans across the globe and in on the homeland after an American withdrawal.

“If we fail in Iraq,” says the President, “western civilization hangs in the balance.”

Why does this President habitually overstate the case about the “grievous” effects upon western civilization and America? Will scaring American citizens force them to buy into his erred war strategies?

“It will be a catastrophe if we pull out of Iraq,” states Senator McCain. And of course, Pat Buchanan views a premature American pullout from Baghdad as utterly catastrophic for American prestige.

History, however, has much to say about the effects of previous modern day American pull-outs, cut and runs, and retreats across the globe. Apparently, American power, peace, and prosperity have never been greatly affected by previous American military blunders and redeployments.

Was it not Vietnam that fell to Ho Chi Minh? Yet, the Domino Theory never did materialize as was so feared and American lives on the homefront remain unchanged. Ho Chi Minh wanted neither capitalists nor Soviet Communists dictating the fate of Vietnam, as it turned out. Thus, neither superpower was able to dictate to Southeast Asia much of anything. The great tragedy was humanitarian for sure; not military. Pol Pot murdered 1 in 10 of his Cambodian citizens in the early 1970’s after American forces were pulled out of Vietnam. Laos faired not so well either.

Did not Truman’s War in Korea in the 1950’s prove to be a catastrophe? Eisenhower flexed wisdom and remarkable statesmanship. He extricated our boys from what he called, “a God-forsaken peninsula where we do not belong.” Yet, no American lost sleep or liberty when American soldiers were pulled back from the Yalu River.

In which of these cases, or any other, did American citizens find themselves losing sleep, losing business deals, or losing prosperity because the American military retreated from “foreign entanglements”?

Did Mao’s 1947 revolution of 700 million Chinese destroy America’s vital interests in 1947? Did the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 harm America’s sovereign interests? Did Vietnam and the “domino theory” vitally threaten America’s existence or super power status? The obvious answer in retrospect is no.

Whatever else we say about the massive military blunders of Truman, Dean Acheson, Johnson, John Foster Dulles, or Robert McNamara, the 20th century retreats of American soldiers again and again has never threatened America’s security or position as a superpower, much less its sovereignty.

On the other hand, senseless foreign policy “globetrotting interventionism” by do good “Mother Theresa” foreign policy presidents is a dangerous 20th century phenomena. Such meddling in the affairs of other nations is a losing proposition for our republic. In fact, fostering global democratic revolution is a dangerous wish. Yet, our “entanglement” foreign policies of “reshaping the Middle East” will always be destructive; not advantageous because it is not our land. How many centuries must we study, and how many presidents must we endure to learn this bitter history lesson?

President Bush has for sure overstated the repercussions about what a pullout of Iraq will mean. “If we bring our troops back home, the terrorists will follow us here”? (Where does he get this garbage?)

Quite the opposite will occur. An American redeployment will allow terrorist groups to camp out in Iraq to fight for their version of Iraq. Terrorists will take little time to plan, nor will they have purpose, to conduct relentless attacks on the American people on American soil. So preoccupied will Islamic forces be, both Shia and Sunni, with gaining power in Iraq, Lebanon, and other parts of the Middle East, that America will not be of central interest to any of the 1.2 billion Muslims, clerics, ayatollahs, mullahs, and the like. That is if American soldiers are withdrawn from Iraq and sensitive Islamic lands within the Middle East.

The “Great Satan” will be a distant memory once his footsteps are off of Middle East soil. Americans will be tucked safely behind American borders, while witnessing the Middle East insanity of fundamental Islam in a war to destroy its own children.

Perhaps returning to Reagan’s policies of arming both sides of the Islamic battles between 1980 to 1988 to maintain a balance of power will become popular again? After all, no American wants to see either Shia or Sunni achieve complete dominance in the Middle East. Furthermore, funding the selling of arms to all parties involved would ensure a relatively stable, though bloody, protracted conflict that involves no American men in a foreign land.

What matters to most Americans is that this bloody proxy battle in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis will not involve American men and the war will not be exported to our shores. Instead, terror will be focused on innocent civilians, both Shias and Sunnis, in the barbaric Middle East cultures of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Thus, it is not American citizens who will feel the brunt of a “broken Iraq”; but the citizens of the Middle East, as Colin Powell so predicted.

President Benjamin Harrison stated, “America has no mandate to police the globe.”

Yet, not many of Harrison’s White House descendants would buy the Harrison Doctrine.

In fact the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Truman, Johnson, Clinton, and Bush #43 are the liberal types that have gotten our republic into global trouble with their naïve foreign policies. With over 780 military bases in over 150 countries across the globe during the post-Soviet collapse, is it any wonder that America is perceived as an imperialist overlording nation in Arab lands with F-16's, runways, military bases, and secret deals with peculiar Arab governments?

And until Americans recognize that it is not our “freedoms and liberties” that are so despised by radical Muslims, but it is the very presence of our military bases and intelligence operations in the holy lands of Riyadh, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, and no fly zones covering Iraq since 1990 that are the target of hatred and destruction.

In fact, if we connect the bombings from Tanzania, the USS Cole, Nairobi, Riyadh, Lebanon, World Trade Center, and 9/11, all of these wicked attacks occurred after Iraq’s invasion, occupation, and economic sanctions of 1991. The American occupation of Muslim Holy lands since the fall of communism has been the primary reason 9/11 and other terror attacks have occurred.

America’s shift toward a “New World Order” under Bush #41 became the rallying cry of all Muslims. As the Soviets were driven back, Muslims plan to drive back the Americans using asymmetrical warfare until an American president clears the Holy Land of American military personnel.

The risk to send 21,500 more American troops may well be worth the costs since we are so far into the quick sand. But Iraq’s future is not as an American friend fighting terror, most likely. Iraq instead will be a land governed no differently than that of Syria, Iran, or Palestine in its days to come.