Lugar
The Big Pharaoh notices that Egypt is unhappy at how Iran supported Hamas's takeover of Gaza. Egypt is probably not alone. At the start of 2007 Richard Lugar argued that conflict in the Middle East was beginning to take on the character of a regional conflict. In the Washington Post article entitled "Beyond Baghdad" Lugar wrote:
At the center of this realignment is Iran, which is perceived to have emerged from our Iraq intervention as the big winner. We paved the way for a Shiite government in Iraq that is much friendlier to Iran than was Saddam Hussein. Bolstered by high oil revenue, Iran has meddled in Iraq, rigidly pursued a nuclear capability, and funded Hezbollah and Hamas.
But the pendulum of Middle East politics may be swinging back against Iranian assertiveness. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states and others have become increasingly alarmed by Iran's behavior and by widening regional sectarian divisions. Because of this dynamic, U.S. bargaining power in the Middle East is growing. Moderate Arab states understand that the United States is an indispensable counterweight to Iran.
Today, Senator Lugar publicly announced that he no longer saw a reasonable possibility that a multiethnic Iraqi state could emerge from the current US strategy and counseled withdrawal. The Chicago Tribune reports:
Lugar said that sectarian strife in Iraq, stresses on the military and domestic divisions over the war "are converging to make it almost impossible for the United States to engineer a stable, multisectarian government in Iraq in a reasonable time frame."
In other words, Lugar now calculates that the US does not have the political will or the means to construct a unitary Iraq and had best seek other options. It is as close to an admission of defeat as possible without saying so openly. Lugar went on to say that some kind of plan of retreat should be agreed on now in order to avoid fracturing the nation. Later will be too late.
"A course change should happen now, while there is still some possibility of constructing a sustainable bipartisan strategy in Iraq," Lugar said. "If the president waits until the presidential election campaign is in full swing, the intensity of confrontation on Iraq is likely to limit U.S. options."
And the way to craft a retreat would be to start with the Baker report recommendations. This, he probably believes, can serve as middle ground that both sides of the aisle can support.
Lugar cited the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker, as a "useful starting point for the development of a Plan B and a template for bipartisan cooperation."
The panel recommended a shift in focus to training Iraq troops, an intensified regional diplomacy effort and withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.
Lugar suggested drawing down U.S. troops and redeploying remaining troops to Kuwait, Kurdish territories in northern Iraq or defensible positions outside urban areas of Iraq.
At heart, Senator Lugar's recommendations seem to be an attempt to reposition for what he believes to be a larger fight ahead. He does not want to quit so much as fight another day. Fight the Big One, which will require bipartisan support. Although the Senator doesn't say so openly, it is strongly hinted that what is at stake is the edifice of US alliances with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The calculus runs thus: events in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza have suggested that Iran and its clients are gaining in strength vis a vis Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. If this trend is not reversed, it will eventually threaten America's position in the Middle East. Therefore Lugar is calculating that America must cut its losses and fall back.
But it is important to see what the position will be after the retreat. Having already determined that there will be no multiethnic successor state in Iraq, Lugar's endorsement of a plan to withdraw to Kurdistan and Kuwait essentially means abandoning Iraq to a monoethnic regime. And that can only be a Shi'ite regime. Whatever fig leaves of "troop training" and advisory missions are adopted for cover, this essential fact should not be obscured. It is simply a restatement of Lugar's key assumption: that America has lost the war. If so, we know who won it and that fact should be borne in mind at all times because it will be reflected in the subsequent position on the ground. Lugar is arguing is that America, not having the will to win in Iraq, must abandon it to a Shi'te regime and pull back to defensible positions to avoid dragging a vulnerable Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan into the maelstrom. Absent a bipartisan commitment to that "fight another day" strategy, the conservatives are likely to continue their fruitless attempt to win in Iraq, but absent liberal support will only make the failure more catastrophic, and in failing pull down the entire edifice of alliances in the Middle East. Reading between the lines it is probably safe to infer that Senator Lugar has been receiving many worried calls from American Sunni allies in the Middle East and probably from Israel, too.
That's Lugar's argument, near as I can make it out. It is not just Egypt that is watching the expansion of Iranian influence with increasing nervousness, it is Washington, too. My own belief is that the withdrawal which Senator Lugar proposes, however well intentioned, is now too late to effect. Given the national political division over the War on Terror, there is no obvious reason why a withdrawal into Kuwait or Kurdistan will slow down the forces of conflict which are in full cry. If anything they are likely to accelerate. The counterargument to Lugar's proposition has always been the assertion that however bad Iraq looks now it is nothing to what might follow upon a retreat. And if that means anything, it equates to a much greater stress on US Sunni allies, a greater load upon the military and a more fractured national consensus. The Big One is ceteris paribus going to be more stressful than its prequel.
Without American forces to moderate either al-Qaeda or the Shi'ite militias, all-out civil strife in Iraq is almost certain to follow. The Sunni states will be drawn into defending their bretheren, or watch them helplessly slaughtered. And that will probably occur by Sunni state support for al-Qaeda, which can break with any Iranian support and draw sustenance directly from its sectarian base. And the very same lack of a national consensus which handicapped winning the war which Senator Lugar now believes is lost will be sorely stressed in this subsequent conflict. A retreat is only useful if it improves a position. This proposed retreat confers no such benefit.
Yet Lugar's argument must be given its due. If the current strategy, soberly considered, is a losing one there is no sense continuing it. But there is equally no sensing exchanging a losing strategy for one that promises defeat at a greater rate, simply for the sake of change. Unless perhaps what Senator Lugar is really counting on is that once the liberals take ownership of policy, they will be obliged to ensure its victory and can count on conservatives, whose patriotism is likely to trump partisan feeling, to support it in any case. Then in some sense, what is being proposed is not so much a surrender in Iraq as a surrender in Washington. Let the liberals fight the war, because they will only consent to fight it under their banner and conservatives will support them with gritted teeth. Those are the terms of national victory. Surrender or lose.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/26/2007 05:58:00 PM
19 Comments:
Except the Liberals propose to surrender absolutely. Maxine Waters and other House Democrats are calling for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Predictably.
So if we surrender to Iran and Al Qaeda in Iraq, proving bin Laden right that we can be forced out of anywhere, at around 3,500 casualties, who will be our allies?
Won't all the other nations simply surrender to bin Laden and Iran and get the best terms? Won't Iraq and Afghanistan having forced us out become a haven for our two greatest enemies?
Venezuela is talking about basing Iranian nuclear missiles there, as soon as the Iranians have them.
Doesn't surrender to bin Laden and Iran in Iraq put a giant "nuke me" sign on every US city?
So of COURSE we will get nuked, after our Dem led surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan (you knew that latter was coming didn't you?).
Then ... well more offers of surrender by Dems who are constitutionally incapable of fighting terrorists or being patriotic. Since they represent wealthy elites who hate America and the average American. Since both threaten their hereditary aristocracy.
So we will have some Clintonian impotent response, and lose several US cities as bin Laden and/or Tehran takes full measure of Dem impotence and surrender. Only then will we see a Jacksonian uprising and a total war designed to kill as many of the enemy as possible with no moral restraints whatsoever.
Tragic. And all so avoidable except for the feminization and fetishized weakness of our elites. Who literally have no backbone.
I think I have probably said this a couple of times here, but isn't the best US strategy to encourage partition of Iraq. We will end up with a military presence in the Kurdish area and probably the Sunni one as well
Mubarak offers Hamas an olive branch. Forbes has more details, all of which are probably relevant to Lugar's assertion that US national interest in the Middle East is now at risk. If Mubarak is feeling the heat, Lugar probably got a call.
The move signals Cairo's concern about the implications of the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas. Mubarak is also attempting to solidify an Arab position toward the new situation in the Palestinian territories through talks this week with Saudi King Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz. Cairo was well aware of the nature of the hostilities between Fatah and Hamas over the last few months, not least because the Egyptian security services have spent the past four years mediating between the two. Nevertheless, the rapid collapse earlier this month of Fatah's security infrastructure in Gaza--which Egypt had helped build--took it by surprise.
I think, though I am just speculating, that Egypt and Saudi Arabia are very worried, probably about their internal stability more than anything else. Radical politics in the Middle East has been successfully taken over by Islamic extremism and the rout of Fatah is one sure sign of this.
Where I am not sanguine is the belief that Mubarak's olive branch or Saudi bribes will achieve anything. I think both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are doomed. And their doom has been a long time coming. The stresses produced by Iraq may have accelerated the trends, but as has been argued elsewhere, demographics and ideology have really dealt body blows to the governments in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Withdrawing to Kuwait and Kurdistan will be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The other factor entering into this calculus is that with the grassroots conservative rejection of immigration amnesty, President Bush may no longer have enough support within his base to keep fighting the war.
The liberals have held together well. Amnesty, withdrawal. Amnesty, withdrawal. And now Lugar believes he is looking at the handwriting on the wall. But the rub is, what does the handwriting say? Withdraw to Kuwait and everything will stop? I don't think even Lugar believes that, though he may hope for it.
Newt Gingrich says the West is losing World War IV and in its own way his article echoes both this post and Lugar's argument, but reaches a different conclusion from Lugar.
What really got the Sunni governments worried was Gaza and Gingrich cites it repeatedly as an example of how something Egypt thought it had in hand simply got out of hand. But the other argument he makes, which is strikingly similar to points I have made in this post is that the Left, though small, has made it impossible to win. But he attributes this success to the lackluster peformance, not only of the President, but of nearly every Western leader.
These defeats are not a function of the courage and will of the American people. In a June poll sponsored by American Solutions, 85 percent of the American people said it was important to defend America and its allies. Only 10 percent were opposed. On an even stronger question, 75 percent said it was important to defeat America's enemies. Only 16 percent disagreed.
So the hard left in America is only 16 percent. It is outnumbered almost 5-1 by those who would defeat our enemies.
The source of failure is not to be found in the American people but in the inarticulate and unimaginative leaders all across government who now preside instead of lead.
The tragedy of the current debate in Washington is that while the inarticulateness and the failing performance of the Bush administration have led the American people to desire a new direction, the politics of the left insists that the new direction be less than President Bush. Yet the lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, New Jersey, the JFK plot, the Algerian bombings, the Iranian nuclear program, the conflict in Lebanon and now the defeat in Gaza all point to the need for a war policy that is substantially bigger and more robust than Mr. Bush.
Like Lugar, Gingrich sees the need for a new policy to replace the limited Bush doctrine. But unlike Lugar, he doesn't put his trust in the proferred bipartisan accomodation.
This is clearly a political calculation, finally seeped into the redouts of Republican strength, and I will tell you why.
As Wretchard points out, Lugar's diagnosis may be basically compelling. It is clear that, without the overriding fear imposed by Hussein and his predecessors' brutality, the Iraqis have reverted to their ancient prerogatives of tribe and religion, upon which any sense of nationalism was dependent. Moreover, the military is probably stressed; and it is expensive to maintain the effort.
However, the regional implications are so obvious that Egyptian and Saudi advocacy of US withdrawal is either unconvincing or stupid. It is unconvincing because the Saudis and Egyptians are not Americans; it is not for the sake of salvaging some shred of pluralistic feeling among Iraqis, only prevented from flowering because of hostility to the US presence, that they advocate our departure. They want to retain Iraw as a bulwark against their much larger revolutionary neighbor. Revolutions export themselves. It is by now common knowledge among interested people that the Wahhabi exportation - Wahhabism standing in permanent revolutionary relationship to its co-religionists' other versions - is the result of Saudi wealth, a need to distract attention from its own departures from historically-expected asceticism and egalitarianism of tribal rulers, and a perceived threat from the Shi'a revolution in Iran. Islam being not only theological, but total, this is a natural reaction from fellow, though antagonistic, Muslims. And for practical purposes, the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood jives elegantly with Wahhabis, and has been the scourge of the Egyptian government since Nasser's first days. Therefore, Egypt and Saudi Arabia may want Iraq free of the US so that they might apply their force there among Sunnis to maximum advantage.
But this is ridiculous, because the Sunnis will lose; even if they prevail, following some bloodletting, they will not be able to control the Shi'a, who have been armed and organized to sufficiently destabilize any potential government they like. Moreover, the absence of the US geopolitical tripwire will obviously encourage Iran to apply the same strategy to its own co-confessionals, who outnumber the Sunnis 3-1 in Iraq.
Bah this is probably too long for a blog post already. I'll stop.
The real regional strategic tension is this.
Fatah al-Islam attacks Lebanon from Palestinian camps in the north of Lebanon (Tripoli); Hamas evicts Fatah from Gaza. Hezbollah rearms, and in fact attacks the UN in Lebanon's south/Israel's north - a probing attack to guage UN reaction, which has been nil, so more attacks will follow, perhaps resulting in UN withdrawal, or surrender to Hezbollah.
Israel is therefore forced to deploy along all its borders.
Syria's rockets are ready, it continues to stymy UN investigations, however ludicrous those may be in any case.
Pretty good disposition of forces, against a very favorable geopolitical sentiment, from which to attack the Jews. Iran, of course, has been calling for annhiliation of Israel, promising immanent destruction.
Now, let's say that they attack, but don't achieve their ultimate victory. Simultaneously the USA is backpedalling; Iranian intelligence sees USA building alternative bases in Kurdistan, or moving equipment to existing forces. Iran hears the calls among EU and USA diplomats; the Saudis' and Egyptians' and Jordians' concerns become known to it.
Even if Iran does not, through its proxies, succeed in slaughtering the Jews, it will be viewed as having wounded them, perhaps gravely, and effectively evicting the USA from the region, and certainly defeated their goals. All the while the "world" press will howl gleefully.
Now, if you were al Qaeda, supported by Iran, would you claim that the time to strike America again was now, or some other time when such propitious circumstances could not be promised?
If you were Russia, would you decrease or increase aid to Iran? If you were China? If you'd just been elected to the French presidennt?
The point is retreat from Iraq, instead of just killing Sadr and the known recalcitrants among the Sunnis, instead of rolling up Iranian networks, instead of generally getting hard and ignoring the political bullshit, so tragicomically terrified of the phalanxes of journalists, will be catastrophic. It will hasten regional war, it will plunge the region more thoroughly into blood than anyone has imagination for. And all that oil.
So instead of just killing judicially and effectively we will abandon the field to the murderous incompetents who run falied states in the name of a barbarous religion that has absolutely no feeling for anything like "human rights."
Pathetic.
What's wrong with me, that I think a winning strategy is simply not losing? It is, after all, what the jihadists are doing.
To continue as we are in Iraq is less bad than full retreat, and less bad than conspicuous escalation, like, for example hitting Iran with an air assault and naval blockade. (Still, a little judicious bombing of Syria might be advantageous: it would put the monkey of "what am I gonna do now?" on Iran's back.)
Why does our goal in Iraq have to be an honest Iraqi government and Iraqi democracy, rather than a large US footprint there and aggressive military operations to kill AQI, keep the Shi'ia, Kurds and Sunni from massacring each other wholesale, and keeping heat on the borders of Syria and Iran, all the while running covert operations to undermine each country, thus thwarting their expansionist inclinations?
True, it doesn't define "victory" in the affirmative, or present a time line for the conflict ending, but it seems to me to be better than either of the alternatives, and it would buy us time to degrade the Iraqi insurgents, pressure Iran and prevent the inevitable massacre, absent a US presence.
I know there's no sympathy for this: the best of our political leaders value a well-defined end more than they do a victory. The worst value retreat more than victory.
Still, one can dream.
Iran and Saudi Arabia share a common interest in partitioning Iraq into respective spheres of influence. Their essential disagreement isn’t whether Iraq should be partitioned but where the boundary should be.
The Baker-Hamilton plan is worse than a mere withdrawal because it not merely seeks permission from Iran and Saudi Arabia to withdraw, but invites them to carve up Iraq into spheres of influence. In contrast, our plan ought to be to foster sufficient internal agreement among Iraq’s factions so they will not only be united but sufficiently strong to threaten the power of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The very fact that Iraq’s military does not deter its neighbors invites their meddling.
wretchard:
The other factor entering into this calculus is that with the grassroots conservative rejection of immigration amnesty, President Bush may no longer have enough support within his base to keep fighting the war.
There is a time when one picks one’s battles.
Whenever President Bush focuses on a domestic priority instead of the war in Iraq, support for the war in Iraq goes down. The reason should be obvious. When President Bush focuses on a topic like social security reform or amnesty for illegal immigrants, he tacitly signals that victory in Iraq is not his highest priority. And when our president has more important priorities than winning the war we are fighting, this leads citizens to question the importance of fighting this war.
Worse, President Bush may well have lost Iraq today. The anti-amnesty faction of the Republican Party is angry at him, perhaps not enough to impeach him for his refusal to guard our borders, but furious nonetheless. The consequences of defeat in Iraq may be monumental, but try telling that to some carpenter in Sheboygan Falls who lost his job because of free trade and imports from China. If that carpenter feels that corporate America wants to replace him with foreign workers and the Left wants to replace him with foreign voters, he will be suspicious of any calls for more sacrifice from a President who neither understands nor cares about what he is going through.
One essential problem President Bush faces is that he simply isn’t trusted to secure our borders. He isn’t trusted to enforce our laws. And that is a serious constitutional crisis.
Interestingly, the very success we are now having in Iraq doesn’t help President Bush’s reputation at all. If a president only adopts a winning strategy once his political opponents gain control over both houses of Congress, his congressional opponents have almost as much right in claiming credit for success as the President, notwithstanding the dubious nature of the advice of his congressional opponents.
One interesting scenario would be if congressional war hawks, and especially conservative Republicans, seek to continue to support our war effort in Iraq but decide that it would be more effectively conducted by another commander-in-chief. And this would leave the Left with the awkward position of either keeping its nemesis in power or toppling its nemesis with a conservative right-wing pretext antithetical to its own belief system.
The most interesting aspect of Lugar's reasoning is his implied assertion that by November 2008, it will be too late. This can only be interpreted as asserting that an unavoidable regional smash will be in train by then. Lugar's assessment might be taken to mean that we have already lost, not just the battle, but probably the war. By withdrawing now, there is some chance of preventing a total collapse, but if things are a serious as he suggests, it just a chance, not an assurance.
What we are looking at is a whole region dominated by Islamist politics. Those are the stakes. But of course, those have always been the stakes. In retrospect the War on Terror was dominated by two considerations: to fight terror and keep the established strongmen in power. Now it turns out that you could possibly do one, but not both. To fight terror was to participate in the Islamist versus authoritarian political divide which runs through the Middle East; to enter into internal politics. Therefore it had to be fought with half measures, with half an eye to what the Egyptian, Jordanian or Saudi street would say. Iraq was to Bin Laden and the Ayatollahs always about domestic politics in their own countries, and ironically, the same became true for America. Bin Laden was probably right when he said the West never had the political stomach to reach him. September 11 notwithstanding.
And now, if things turn out the way Lugar predicts, America will have neither quelled terror nor maintained its clients in power. Not only Iran but the entire Persian Gulf will have been lost. This is the reason why the withdrawal, such as he proposes, is really a forlorn hope. It's an acto of desperation really. Because in all probability once the Islamists are triumphant, neither Kuwait nor Kurdistan nor Turkey, not to mention Saudi Arabia, will be safe haven. But this is the price for not having the will to win, as Osama predicted, and as Lugar reluctantly acknowledges is probably true.
alexis,
The dilemmas of immigration perfectly mirror the dilemmas of Iraq. People doubt whether GWB has the will to protect the borders. But no one has any illusions about what the Democrats will do. They've stated their intentions plainly. So you have a choice between a shambolic border policy and one of frank surrender. In the War on Terror, the choices may effectively be the same.
Remember that when Bin Laden calculated America had no stomach for the fight, he was calculating over both parties. His original fatwa was directed at Perry and Clinton. So it was his belief that the entire political establishment, taken as a whole, would simply lack the will to oppose him. You can say that the Mexican government, though they have not been quite so bombastic, have essentially concluded the same thing.
How will it end? Frankly, I don't know.
I think in the immigration struggle what we are seeing is a refocusing of America and its politics on internal issues. Iraq simply is not important to us any more, and whether or not we stay or leave is increasingly a moot point.
Personally, I have no problem with pulling up stakes and heading out because I have decided that the Iraqi's will never step up to the plate on their own, as long as we are there to do it for them.
And right now, the future of the United States of America is much more impacted by the flood of illegal Mexicans than it is by demented Muslims.
The rest of the world can take care of itself for a while, but we in America MUST get a handle on this immigration issue ... not to mention the disrespect both the White House and the Senate are showing to a majority of American citizens by arrogantly ignoring our loudly expressed wishes.
There's going to be hell to pay in the coming months, and it's not going to be in Baghdad. So while we're distracted by tarring and feathering our elected "leaders", it's probably not a terribly bad idea to bring our soldiers back home where they'll be safe while we're fighting it out here over who's in charge: a teensy blind and/or bribed minority in Washington, DC, or the national electorate who put them there.
As predicted, lo those many months ago, upset quite a few folk, as I recall.
Border Security would be the War in Iraqs' undoing.
It would emasculate the President
It has.
Welcome aboard, find some room, while they move those deck chairs around in DC.
Wretchard -- I read Gingrich's column from the link provided. While I agree that he's right, the Left has been able to block any robust political, military, cultural, or economic response to Islam's assertion of dominance, the question is why?
WHY a mere 15% or so of the Hard Left has been able to so completely dominate the political discussion and decision making?
Ask yourself, if you looked at the leadership and membership of Code Pink, Moveon, ANSWER, etc. and the sex of pro-war supporters, and knew nothing else at all (pretend you're an Alien from Tau Ceti), what would you conclude about who went to war and risked being blown apart, killed or hideously wounded?
If that is all you knew, you'd think women faced the hideous nature of combat and men stayed home. Instead of the reverse. [Yes I know a few women face combat bravely. But we are talking group interests wrt political organization, not unique, and brave individuals.]
The answer, I would argue, tells you both the deeper and profoundly different reasons behind the risks the sexes take in war, why we had tremendous courage and sacrifice in places like Okinawa, Omaha Beach, and Al-Anbar Province. Why the Peace Movement from the 1930s to today has been dominated by women, and why the Hard Left has been able to stymie any action at all throughout the West, and why it was able to do so in the 1930's despite the obvious danger.
If I accepted Gingrich's thesis -- for some reason all political leaders are too stupid in the West to fight back in any way, I would have to accept that leaders who can tackle the difficult problems facing their own societies successfully for the most part, all at the same time for no reason at all got very, very stupid.
I'm not prepared to make that jump in logic. Instead my conclusion is that the Hard Left speaks to the inherent interests of women not to fight the enemy at all, but rather to surrender. That we will continue, therefore, to surrender until we have an event that mobilizes men to shove women aside.
In the US public opinion was solidly against getting involved in WWII. Pete Seeger got a DAR award for his 1940 record urging people not to "fight in Mr. Roosevelt's War." But on Dec 7, every man calculated what his life would be like under German and Japanese occupation. Every young man knew his sweetheart would be a conquerors concubine. And himself at best a slave.
I suspect we will have to see several US cities in ashes before women like in WWII are simply shoved aside politically.
Left-Right politics are probably the wrong lens to use. Male-female, who benefits, who loses, who faces what risk is probably the better analytic tool.
To continue with the male-female divide in politics: the border issue.
Democrats, representing women, offer the possibility to replace those troublesome white males with cheap and compliant Mexican workers, particularly in male-dominated fields such as carpentry, trucking, drywall, carpet installation, welding, and so on.
Meanwhile women working in white-collar service jobs such as banking and so on place great emphasis on social conformity, conflict avoidance, and group harmony, and even when their interests might be threatened they retreat. But mostly they find it inconceivable that they could be replaced in their service jobs.
Men know they are being replaced, sense quite accurately the intense hostility towards lower-status men the female-dominated Democratic Party has for them, and as noted the RINO Corporation-entralled, "bipartisan" semi-liberal Republican Establishment who have engaged in open warfare with them and their personalities. Rush Limbaugh among them.
The whole point of the border wars has been to replace the lower-status male with a cheaper foreigner. One not so troublesome and demanding of his rights, and one it is expected who will toe the female-oriented party line. The same thing in it's own way happened in East Germany: women could leave because young attractive women always find their way, while the young men even those educated were stuck, no Western employer wanted them. They were considered inferior in skills and too expensive and troublesome.
Result: utterly predictable, they joined the neo-nazis as 25% of women 18-35 left for elsewhere.
Here in the US I do not see neo-nazis gaining power. Rather a powerful, Jacksonian revolt that will unfortunately and inevitably have major misogynist elements.
Ask yourself when Hillary is trying her best to straddle national security issues and so on, no man will vote for her? Particularly considering her husband was in office during economic boom times?
This is an interesting discussion on a deeply-concerning topic.
Perhaps the issue is not male versus female -- rather politically involved versus not politically involved. Essentially, any person who wants to become involved in a democratic process is (by definition) not representative, since most people do not want to run for elective office. End result is that politics are dominated by an unrepresentative element.
Ross Perot used to quote an old Scottish historian who observed that no democracy had lasted more than 200 years. Maybe the dominance of a short-sighted politically active minority is the sign that the time for the US is up. Can't fight the tide of history.
The only joy for the rest of us is that the biggest losers in what is to come will the the politically-active minority themselves -- the guys sawing off the branches on which they sit.
Minerva's got a good point in her 6/26/2007 08:18:00 PM post.
True, it doesn't define "victory" in the affirmative, or present a time line for the conflict ending, but it seems to me to be better than either of the alternatives, and it would buy us time to degrade the Iraqi insurgents, pressure Iran and prevent the inevitable massacre, absent a US presence.
I know there's no sympathy for this: the best of our political leaders value a well-defined end more than they do a victory. The worst value retreat more than victory.
There was a time when a baseball game that went into extra innings, or where the crucial run was made at the bottom of the 9th inning, was seen as a good thing. Extra innings were extra entertainment for the same price. The crowd stayed riveted in their seats until the end of the game. They wanted to watch the whole of the conflict all the way until until their team won, or at least lost valiantly and graciously.
But if you go to a baseball game these days, the stands start to clear out after the 7th inning. People are so concerned about parking, about getting out of the parking lot ahead of the traffic, that they leave before the game is over. No matter how short the game, they want it to be shorter so they can get out ahead of the other traffic. They don't care about their team winning. They don't value winning and losing with grace and pride, but want a convenient entertainment. They get upset if the game goes into extra innings, or turns around in the 9th inning after the stands are half-emptied.
This is what we are facing in the Global Counterjihad. Chattering classes who are more concerned with their parking spaces, and with avoiding traffic, than with winning a war that has been declared against their country and fought by the other side since 1979 or earlier. They would rather lose quickly, conveniently, than win in the 20-inning struggle of legend.
Chattering classes who are more concerned with their parking spaces, and with avoiding traffic, than with winning a war that has been declared against their country ...
While we were fighting the murderous Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, our country is being given freely to the Mexicans. Personally, unless we can stop the Mexicanization of America, I am not interested in protecting it any more, nor in fighting for it.
Pull our troops out of Iraq, let the Arabs kill each other and let the Mexicans figure it out AND pay for it all. If this immigration bill goes through, the Boston Tea Party is going to look like a piker's picnic with Americans refusing to pay any further taxes in support of this government and its determination to give a bunch of illiterate illegals a free ride.
Post a Comment
<< Home