House of Eratosthenes

As well as a crystal-clear distillation of what exactly we’re supposed to be doing over in Mesopotamia…and which, it seems, we are indeed doing. So no, we’re not there to steal oil and kill brown people. In fact, if those are indeed the stated purposes then we need some hearings pronto, because we’re doing a pretty lousy job of it.

If you’re a screeching Lunar Chiroptera the only reason we went to war in Iraq was for the oil, or to kill brown people, or yada yada. But anyone who paid attention and had an IQ above explosive diarrhea, knew that Iraq was the first step in the long marathon of actually winning the strategic war against Islamofascism. You see, we had two choices. We could play whack a mole from now until doomsday, killing terrorists wherever we could find them, taking out one cell at a time, at a huge long term cost in lives, or we could go after their “hearts and minds” and eventually kill the ideology that spawns them.

The occasion for this commentary is, of all things, the Gray Lady, linked by Blackfive.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Abe Greenwald has a prize-winning commentary about this…

It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift. Far from “creating more terrorists” as the failed cliché goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth. A 24-year-old Iraqi college student is quoted as saying she loved Osama bin Laden at the time of 9/11. Now, after seeing the efforts of religious leaders to curtail her daily freedoms, she rejects extremism entirely. While George Bush’s critics can make no useful connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq, this young woman has no problem doing so.

People who oppose the Iraq war, by & large, also oppose conservatism. When they are left to describe in detail the conservatism they want to resist, invariably they give a perfectly functional line-by-line description of the Islamofascism we would go back to tolerating endlessly were these anti-conservatives calling the shots. Something out of the seventh century…bad for freedom…oppressive to women…steamrolling over the will of the people…a theocracy…a moldering patriarchal layer of insulated & isolated martinets imposing draconian punishments, out of touch with the common people.

It’s like something in one half of the world is perfectly alright and ought not be messed with — when you have the same thing, as they see it, closer to home, suddenly it’s time to bear any burden, pay any price, fling any rabid spittle, to overthrow it and bury it. But if something that really does fulfill all their nasty nouns and adjectives, flourishes east of Greenwich…well, that’s all good. Let it be.

Bingo, dude. You and the Rottie nailed it.
- philmon | 03/06/2008 @ 10:28
There’s all kinds of good reasons to have gone to war in Iraq. Good, long-term reasons. Are they worth the immediate short-term cost? I think so. Consider:

1. It forces the ME Islamicists (sp?) to deal with the rest of the 21st-century world. If Iraq becomes the peaceful, prosperous, democratic republic envisioned, even if it only gets halfway to two-thirds there, it’s a huge win for the region, as productive, educated Arabs will migrate there for a better life.

2. It inflates the dollar due to deficit spending on the part of the US government. This makes foreign products more expensive from the point of view of the US consumer, and improves the US trade deficit.

3. It makes US labor cheaper, improving the flow of jobs into this country. It’s been cheaper for a while to hire a software developer in Iowa than to hire one from India, and the situation will only improve for the US labor market.

4. Due to increased speculation in the oil market, it makes alternative energy sources economically viable, like solar, wind, nuclear, and various forms of electric vehicles. It makes Canada’s tar sands project (which went cash-flow positive at $40/bbl) enormously lucrative. It drives innovation and development in energy production, including areas that couldn’t get the time of day previously, like some of the more exotic electrostatic fusion systems.
- dcshiderly | 03/06/2008 @ 19:42

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