[rrpjr]

I assumed MikeCT’s piece was inspired by either Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. Both use similar forms of polemic -- the statement of the "obvious and irrefutable" truth that is really anything but. Where to begin with the fallacies of this argument?

First, if we really wish to be "clear," we should begin by clarifying that the US did not begin the war in Iraq. This war began some 12 years ago upon the invasion of Kuwait, a deliberate and belligerent incursion into the sovereign land of a US ally, and continued to be fought every day during the term of Bill Clinton's presidency as US and British pilots protected the no-fly-zone between Iraq and Kurdish provinces – despite the unconditional writ of surrender Saddan Hussein signed and flouted before the entire body on “United Nations.” "Our war" in fact may be the only reason the Kurds are alive today. Understandably, Clinton and especially Bush are beloved figures among the Kurds. These are a hugely heroic people who have held to their faith in us despite years of bitter disappointment, and whose liberation from Saddam Hussein's terror and genocide alone may be a moral justification for this war. (Incidentally, the Left used to care about genocide, at least they did so as recently as the 1990s when many democratic members of congress were urging Bill Clinton to invade Rwanda -- a place where we had no comparable strategic national interest -- even without the all-important UN endorsement. I believe even Howard Dean wrote him a letter urging him to circumvent the UN. How quickly we forget.) United Nations resolutions calling for action against Iraq were ignored for more than decade by all but the US and British.

In any case, the author (Zinn, I guess) states that the war is based on an "enormous deception": persuading people that you can deal with terrorism by war. Is that so? I think the evidence so far is plainly on the side of war as one successful tactic in fighting terrorism. War in Afghanistan has uprooted the primary training grounds and sanctuary of a large contingent of Al Qaeda. They are now billeted in caves in northern Pakistan producing bad home movies instead of bombs. It also had the small subsidiary benefits (small, apparently to the Left) of freeing a huge number of people from the oppressive dictates of Islamic totalitarianism. Not to say the results are perfect, or the job is done, but I think most people and certainly most women in Afghanistan are pleased at their new freedoms and rights. I don't believe our rulers ever said, as Zinn states, that we would end our fear of terrorism by "encircling countries and waging war on them." Pres. Bush has repeatedly said that the war on terrorism would be fought in many ways on many fronts and results would take years. War is one way, and Afghanistan and Iraq are two fronts.

As for the claim that "war is the most extreme form of terrorism," again stated as an indisputable truth, I dispute it. It is the most extreme form of diplomacy but it is by no means, a priori, a form of terrorism as we have come to define it. Declaring an intent to invade a fascist regime which had the equivalent of 18 outstanding criminal warrants against it is not a form of terrorism, it is the rational act of a civilized people interested in upholding a standard of civilized conduct. Iraq was the crack house on the corner of the civilized world. Either it is allowed to remain, or it is put out of business. We chose the latter.

Again, true to absolutist form, Zinn states we are "obviously" failing in our war. He then cites death tolls to confirm this. This is an old trick of the Left. First, we are not failing. We are making significant progress in dismantling terrorist infrastructures. Terrorists need nation hosts to operate. We can't ignore this fact. Also, nowhere does Zinn or the Left ever cite the "other" death toll numbers, that is, of people no longer being killed by Hussein. I believe a conservative estimate of the people he killed was 25,000 a year, and nearly a quarter million over a decade, and who knows for the entire term of his regime. As for the "highly respected" International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, it is only highly respected by those who like its findings. It is a Leftist think tank.

As for the press and television not playing the role of gadflies -- exactly what press and television does he mean? ABC, CBS, Reuters, BBC, CNN, NY Times, all at one point embarrassed themselves by reporting falsehoods about Iraq presumably in order to embarrass Bush. I would say their gad flying was more than equal to the task.

Yes, war is bad and kills children and innocent people. This is terrible and no one can deny it. Yet never in the history of warfare has a major military power taken more precautions not to injure the innocent, and no nation on earth spends more in blood and treasure to reconstruct and restore the nations it defeats and occupies. This day, as I write, there are officers and enlisted men from all over America working at great risk and low pay to rebuild schools and hospitals and to bring Iraq not simply back to the point it was, but well beyond that, into a truly functioning and free nation. Some may see this as the least we can do, but it is more than any nation in history has ever done before.

Zinn is certain about the wrong ways to fight terrorism. However, the best he can come up with as a hard, practical alternative is a "reexamination" of our policies in the hope we can become less despised. As if any such reexamination would somehow palliate terrorists. Herein resides the biggest and most dangerous conceit of the Left -- a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are up against. The Left used to be in the foreground of taking on something as vile as Islamicist fascism, something that posed a danger to everything it values: secular education, all human freedoms, women’s rights, art, science, all forms of empirical truth-seeking. But it is not there now. It has fallen into self-loathing moral relativism, confusing Palestinian homeland issues and troop allocations and oil politics with what is essentially an ambitious, totalitarian and death-inspired fanaticism that holds to a notion of hegemony which, if it had the means, would subdue the entire world tomorrow. Look closely at the enemy’s practice of beheading people on videotape with dull kitchen knives (that is, if you believe they even are the “enemy”). It is the perfect metaphor for them.