The must read article of the day week month year so far is from Fouad Ajami, writing in The Wall Street Journal on Why We Went to Iraq.

A few excerpts:

Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the “charities” that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.

Emphasis mine.

Many, many years from now, when the history books are being written (assuming that they’re not being written by some BDS-suffering typical Liberal academic), this is going to be the lasting legacy of this war.

And it will be remembered as a just and necessary war, and President Bush will be esteemed for his resolve, as “they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.”

And Ajami reminds us of the start of this necessary war:

Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush’s war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq’s disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.

I doubt it would have mattered had Mr. Barrack been seated for that particular vote. As history has shown, he most likely would have just voted “Present anyhow.

With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.

It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to “sell” the war. Wars can’t be waged in stealth, and making the moral case for them is an obligation incumbent on the leaders who launch them. If anything, there were stretches of time, and critical turning points, when the administration abdicated the fight for public opinion.

Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of “reform” in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an “original” war aim, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was, by Lincoln’s own admission, a product of circumstances? A war for the Union had become a victory for abolitionism.

Every time I hear a liberal clown spout off anything about this being an “illegal war”, I want to punch them in the eye socket for being too stupid to logically even walk upright.

We’re still in Iraq because President Bush’s resolve to protect our nation from radical Islam is greater than his concern over ratings, criticism of his policy, and outright lies about his motives.

And history is going to side with President Bush.

________

Gina Cobb writes:

Let’s also remember that Saddam Hussein tortured his own people, trained terrorists, and paid $25,000 to the families of bombers who detonated explosives filled with shrapnel in crowds of innocent people in Israel. This, for me, was sufficient justification for the Iraq war. If “never again,” in reference to the Holocaust, has any moral meaning at all, it means “never again, anywhere on earth.” Saddam Hussein’s tyranny and terrorism amply justified the removal of that evil regime.

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | Trackback |