Thursday, August 18, 2005

The same Lebanese blogger who once suggested that it would make more sense for Al Qaeda to attack China than America has pointed out the importance of something Newt Gingrich said recently. I have to say, he is the only other Republican than John McCain who is ready to say that any politician serious about Iraq must ask Americans to sacrifice.

That's why I say, "Thank God, for Newt Gingrich." In the same Times article has this to say:
""Any effort to explain Iraq as 'We are on track and making progress' is nonsense," Newt Gingrich, a Republican who is a former House speaker, said. "The left has a constant drumbeat that this is Vietnam and a bottomless pit. The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well."
Republicans, Mr. Gingrich said, should make the case for "blood, sweat and toil" as part of a much larger war against "the irreconcilable wing of Islam.""

First, Gingrich manifests true understanding of the conflict by denoting "the irreconcilable wing," something few other politicians have shown the capability of doing. Bob Pape and his former undergraduate assistant Steven Cicala at the University of Chicago have done an excellent job of showing what motivates suicide terrorism around the globe. Sadly, they are some of the few people who have shown the connection between Sri Lanka, Palestine, and 9/11. However, that connection really isn't relevant to the War on Terror.
Gingrich aptly scopes in on the actual target.

Secondly, Gingrich does the right thing. This is a dirty conflict. There are a lot of heinous individuals, groups, and governments working against the Iraqi people. None of these odious entities have the power to take over Iraq, nor would their rule be just if they could. But these malevalent forces have the power to disenchant the one country on the planet that can make things right in the Middle East.

Iraq is not Vietnam, and radical Islamic terrorism is not Communism. Those are major distinctions uber-Left need to make.
Losing Iraq doesn't mean losing one country. That failure will reverberate globally.

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