Blankley on “realism”: The last mistake

posted at 4:39 pm on November 22, 2006 by Allahpundit
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Consider this a counterpoint to Derb’s piece, which welcomed the return of “paleorealism.” James Baker’s influence is waxing, some Iraqis are calling for a new strongman (namely, former PM Iyad Allawi), and the debate among Democrats and some Republicans isn’t if we’re going to start withdrawing but whether it’ll be within the next six months or twelve.

The stage is thus set, says Tony Blankley, for America’s biggest — and last — mistake:

If we, the most powerful force on the planet, in a fit of disappointment and anger at our bungling policies to date, decide to shrug off our responsibilities to the future — we will soon receive, and deserve, the furious contempt of a terrified world. In fact, even those Americans who today can’t wait to end our involvement in the “hopeless” war in Iraq will — when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest — join the chorus of outrage…

Those who call themselves realists are the least realistic. Their great unreality is that they can’t imagine that the passions of the people — for good or ill — are to be reckoned with. Thus it was they who for half a century supported and exploited the Middle East dictators who caused the Islamist pathologies that threaten the world today. It is they who will do business with the corrupt dictators to the very minute that they are overthrown by the Islamist mobs. They will keep the cash register humming until it is flooded with blood. The “realists’” unjustified conceit is, today, the most dangerous pathology facing America.

As in all struggles, each side will make mistakes. We have certainly made several. But as the last century’s great chess master Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower once famously observed: “Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” Retreating from Iraq would be the last mistake.

Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon’s Druze leader and the Middle East’s most prominent anti-Syrian politician, told WND yesterday after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel that Assad is “emboldened by the fact that the Americans are searching for an exit strategy from Iraq. This is encouraging all kinds of people to kill and create chaos in the region.” The problem for him, for Blankley, and for us, though, is that we don’t have much choice left in the matter: Iraqis want us out, not immediately but sooner rather than later. Blankley’s point about the last mistake is well taken but the fact is we’re only facing the last mistake now because of all the other mistakes before.

Which brings us back to Allawi. I leave you with a quote comparison. From his address to Congress on September 23, 2004:

For the skeptics who do not understand the Iraqi people, they do not realize how decades of torture and repression feed our desire for freedom. At every step of the political process to date the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people has proved the doubters wrong…

As Prime Minister Blair said to you last year when he stood here, anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom not tyranny, democracy not dictatorship, and the rule of law not the rule of the secret police.

Do not let them convince others that the values of freedom, of tolerance and democracy are for you in the West but not for us.

For the first time in our history, the Iraqi people can look forward to controlling our own destiny.

And from this Sunday’s Times of London regarding speculation about his dictatorial aspirations:

“Iraq was not and is not ready for elections,” Allawi said in an interview last week…

Asked whether he would be willing to lead a new government, Allawi said he had found his premiership “so lonely” — but hinted that he could be ready to “give it a final try”…

Allawi said that he had told friends in the West that they could not “photocopy” their democratic systems and impose them on Iraq and the Third World. “You can’t just get out of tyranny and go to the ballot and choose,” he said.

He was in London at the time to receive treatment for hypertension.

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