Tuesday, August 02, 2005

What Does Victory in Iraq Look Like?

The always intelligent and thoughtful Wretchard at The Belmont Club has an interesting post on what the end state of Iraq may look like.
But what sort of victory would it be? Perhaps a shadow victory like that achieved in Korea 50 years ago. A Syria belligerent but not really; Islam still the 'religion of peace' -- whenever it is not inciting attacks against America; Bin Laden in Pakistan but only when he is actually spotted; an Iran with nuclear weapons which they will be bribed not to use. A West partially mobilized against enemies it cannot bring itself to name or destroy, a display of aggression from the civilized herd to prevent further attack from the circling pack of predators serving in lieu.

This is totally unacceptable. No more detentes, no more half measures. Let's solve the problems. I do hope that President Bush and Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld will begin to hint heavily that if Syria doesn't clean up it's act, we will be withdrawing those 60,000+ troops from Baghdad to Damascus next year. The way I see it, given the CIA's projections on Iran (and their recent record) we have until 2012 to come up with a solution to an Iranian nuclear state. DMZs are not my preferred solution on two very long borders.