While listening to Bill Bennett\u2019s radio program the other morning, a caller, respectfully, yet passionately, expressed his incredulity over the fact that anyone continues to take the Bill Kristols and Max Boots (and, by implication, the Bill Bennetts) of the world seriously when it comes to issues pertaining to American foreign policy vis-\u00e0-vis the Middle East, particularly Iraq.<\/p>\n
The caller noted that the neoconservatives who advocated on behalf of the invasion of Iraq back in 2003 have been spectacularly, almost unbelievably, wrong<\/em> from beginning to end.\u00a0 In contrast, he contended, \u201ctraditional\u201d or \u201creal\u201d conservatives, like Pat Buchanan, have been right to the point of being prescient.<\/p>\n Bennett, to his credit, was responsive, yet he disagreed with the caller\u2019s assertion that Iraq had been a total <\/em>debacle. \u00a0\u201cThe surge,\u201d he insisted, was a success.\u00a0 Moreover, Iraq had been \u201cwon\u201d\u2014until we began withdrawing the troops.<\/p>\n Some comments are in order.<\/p>\n First, the so-called \u201csurge\u201d occurred five <\/em>years after <\/em>the Iraq War got under way.\u00a0 That is, Bennett\u2019s appeal to \u201cthe surge\u201d\u2014that there even had to be<\/em> a \u201csurge\u201d\u2014actually underscores the caller\u2019s point that, at the very least, an exercise in military adventurism that was supposed to have been a \u201ccakewalk\u201d but which went nowhere after sucking up five years worth of exorbitant sums of human blood and treasure could scarcely be billed as a \u201csuccess.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, Bennett, like many of the war\u2019s supporters, has taken to saying of Iraq that it had been \u201cwon.\u201d But, thinking minds want to know, what<\/em> exactly was won?<\/p>\n Surely, no remotely astute political thinker could claim with a straight face that it is \u201cdemocracy\u201d that we achieved in Iraq. Readers may recall that during its tumultuous or pre-surge days, the war\u2019s apologists spared no occasion to remind Americans that our <\/em>\u201cdemocracy\u201d has been many centuries <\/em>in the making.\u00a0 Thus, they concluded, we shouldn\u2019t expect for Iraq to become a \u201cdemocracy\u201d over night.<\/p>\n That the constitution of a people and the government appropriate to it are indeed the fruits of \u201cgenerations and of ages,\u201d to paraphrase conservatism\u2019s \u201cpatron saint,\u201d the great Edmund Burke, is something of which no student of politics needs to be told. But, now, polemicists for the Iraq War are whistling a different tune: they would actually have us think that what took the West millennia to develop took the West, namely America, only a handful of (post-surge) years in an Islamic country\u2014until, of course, our troop withdrawal undid all of America\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Hopefully, no one really believes any of this.<\/p>\n Third, when Bennett\u2019s caller began discussing the Iraq War that paved the way for the mess that is ISIS, the host\u2014as the war\u2019s defenders invariably do\u2014implored his interlocutor to resist the impulse to \u201crehearse history.\u201d The caller, however, calmly explained that it is intellectually and morally irresponsible to neglect past decisions when those decisions have lead to present dilemmas. History is our guide to the future.<\/p>\n And he couldn\u2019t have been more correct.<\/p>\n The truth of the matter is that Pat Buchanan wasn\u2019t alone in sounding the alarm against <\/em>invading Iraq.\u00a0 There were others, including some observers who, unlike<\/em> the Buchanans and Ron Pauls, say, opposed American intervention in Iraq (and elsewhere) while refusing to endorse the notion\u2014preposterous on its face\u2014that Islamic terrorism can be explained solely<\/em> in terms of some \u201cblowback\u201d theory or other.<\/p>\n One such writer whose counsel must now strike the ear of the unprejudiced spectator as prophetic is Ilana Mercer, a Jew whose formative years were spent living in both South Africa and Israel. The author of the hard hitting (but, scandalously, little known) book, Into the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, <\/em>as well as countless other incorrigibly politically incorrect <\/em>essays from her long-standing perch at World Net Daily, <\/em>Mercer can always be counted upon to defy the conventional wisdom\u2014even when\u2014maybe especially when\u2014it is potentially dangerous to do so.<\/p>\n In September 2002, in the article, \u201cWhy So Many Americans Don\u2019t Support Attacking Iraq,\u201d Mercer noted the readiness with which George W. Bush shifted between entirely distinct rationales for toppling Bagdad.<\/p>\n When Saddam Hussein agreed to \u201cthe unconditional<\/em> return of weapons inspectors\u201d to Iraq, Bush ignored the gesture and, instead, sought \u201capproval from the United Nations<\/em>, a body entirely unrepresentative of<\/em>\u2014even hostile to<\/em>\u2014the American people\u201d (emphases mine).\u00a0 Mercer remarked that Bush\u2019s \u201cswirl of rhetoric before the UN was not even tangentially related to the original indictment against Iraq: that it had a hand in Sept. 11 and directly supported Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n She continued: \u201cIraq is a secular dictatorship profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism.\u201d To support this verdict\u2014which is obvious to everyone today\u2014Mercer alluded to Vincent Cannistraro, \u201cthe former head of the CIA\u2019s counterterrorism office\u201d who \u201cstated categorically that there was no evidence of Iraq\u2019s links to al-Qaeda.\u201d<\/p>\n The President then charged Hussein with reacquiring \u201cweapons of mass destruction.\u201d To this, Mercer\u2019s response was swift: \u201cEssentially, Iraq is being convicted based on a rehash of its record during\u2014and prior to\u2014the war in the Persian Gulf, not based on the current threat she poses to the United States and the region.\u201d<\/p>\n Mercer puts the lie to the current line that, prior to the invasion of Iraq, everyone <\/em>believed that Hussein had WMD\u2019s.\u00a0 She refers to Republican <\/em>Scott Ritter, a long-time Marine, war veteran, and <\/em>a former UN weapons inspector who had \u201cspent seven years inspecting and turning Iraq inside out [.]\u201d\u00a0 His verdict was unambiguous: Iraq had been \u201c95-per-cent disarmed and has no <\/em>weapons of mass destruction [.]\u201d\u00a0 She added that this verdict had been confirmed by numerous \u201cexperts in strategic studies.\u201d<\/p>\n For her efforts in cautioning Americans against being bamboozled into supporting a Gargantuan Government exercise in the \u201csocial engineering\u201d of a foreign land, Mercer, like Buchanan and other opponents of the war whose arguments have proven to be sagely, was derided and ostracized.<\/p>\n And for our refusal to listen then, 11 years, many thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars spent later, we are still <\/em>mired Iraq\u2014only now we have ISIS with which to reckon.<\/p>\n It is this history, <\/em>and not some utopian ideology, on which Americans must <\/em>base their decisions on how to deal with Islamic terrorists in the future.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While listening to Bill Bennett\u2019s radio program the other morning, a caller, respectfully, yet passionately, expressed his incredulity over the fact that anyone continues to take the Bill Kristols and Max Boots (and, by implication, the Bill Bennetts) of the world seriously when it comes to issues pertaining to American foreign policy vis-\u00e0-vis the Middle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n