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The definition, so unclear, of victory
On the basis of some criticisms in the Moslem world of the terror insurgents’ demonic behavior, David Frum suggests that we may be winning the war in Iraq, or, rather, he comes up with yet a new definition of what winning would consist of: that the insurgents so repel their fellow Moslems as well as their European apologists that the Islamic world and the EU turn against Islamic extremism as such. It’s an interesting way of recasting as a success one of the greatest strategic foul-ups in history: our ill-thought-out occupation of Iraq sets off such a monstrous murderous reaction on the part of our enemies, killing so many innocents and wreaking such havoc, that the Moslem world comes to our side and embraces real and enduring political reform. Of course, it’s conceivable. Anything is conceivable. But highly unlikely. This is the trap I warned about in “The Search for Moderate Islam Part II”: that it condemns us to spend the rest of our lives obsessively taking the political temperature of Moslems, and getting all excited if we see some signs of “moderation,” and then sulking when the moderating doesn’t seem to go anywhere or turns into extremism again. This is what Bush and the neocons want us to spend the next 50 years doing, instead of attending to the welfare of our own country, which includes, among other things, protecting ourselves from the Moslem world, not being its nanny.
Meanwhile, Frum’s catalog of the good news in Iraq is the same thing I have criticized throughout. All the schools and other internal improvements don’t bring us one inch closer to victory. Thinking that they do is the non sequitur at the heart of our Iraq policy. Email entry |