Patrick J. Buchanan: Stopping the next war

I know; I can't believe I'm posting this either. But give it a go; sometimes I agree.


Stopping the next war

By Patrick J. Buchanan

09/14/07 "WND" -- --- President Bush has won the Battle of September.

When he turns over the presidency on Jan. 20, 2009, there will likely be as many U.S. troops in Iraq as there were when Congress was elected to bring them home in November 2006.

That is the meaning of Gen. Petraeus' recommendation, adopted by President Bush, that 6,000 U.S. troops be home by Christmas and the surge of 30,000 ended by April. Come November 2008, there will likely still be 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Will this make America safer, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked. "I don't know," answered the general. An honest answer. None of us knows.

The general did know, however, that "a premature drawdown of our forces would likely have devastating consequences."

So we are trapped, fighting a war in which "victory" is not assured and perhaps not attainable – to avert a strategic disaster and humanitarian catastrophe should we walk away.

While the posturing of the Democrats, using Petraeus as a foil for their frustration and rage, was appalling, it is understandable. For, as this writer warned the day Baghdad fell, this time, we really "hit the tar baby."

What has the war cost? Going on 3,800 U.S. dead and 28,000 wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqis are dead; 2 million, including most Christians and much of the professional class, have fled. Millions have been ethnically cleansed from neighborhoods where their families had lived for generations.

Once the most advanced country in the Arab world, Iraq has been devastated and is coming apart. Sectarian, civil and tribal war has broken out. Al-Qaida has a presence. And it is a fair prediction that when the Americans depart, they will have fought the longest war in their history, only to have replaced the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with a Shia dictatorship aligned with Iran.

more...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18379.htm

If no one knows if we are safer, if no one knows how long we are going to have to be there, if no one knows for sure who the enemy really is, how can anyone be so dead certain as to what will happen if we leave? I see this all the time and it begs for an answer. Maybe I'm too dense to understand. Just saying.

because we can't see into the future. I think the situation would improve myself, but I DON'T KNOW!

Unknown.