Moonbats on the march: It’s bigger than Iraq

posted at 4:52 pm on September 16, 2007 by Bryan
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Michelle and I joined about a thousand patriots who came to Washington on Saturday to protect our war memorials and to show the world that Cindy Sheehan doesn’t speak for most Gold Star families or even most Americans. It was an honor to be among so many good folks who give of their own time and money to show up and support our troops when they could be doing something else. But as inspiring as the Gathering of Eagles III was, the fact is, we were outnumbered. The other side had more people, were better organized and enjoy better financing, mainly because there is no right-wing equivalent of George Soros who will commit any resources to the cause and because we have no single national organization or voice on our side who will champion the Eagles. One or two patriots in the right place could make all the difference in the world. But instead of seeing photos of patriots supporting the troops:

The world woke up today to photos like this.

These people represent the hardened anti-war left. They’re well organized by groups like ANSWER and World Can’t Wait that trace their lineages, their ideologies, their organizational skills and their funding straight back to Communist groups. They have the money muscle of George Soros behind them and they get favorable media coverage. Having slipped in among them for a little while Saturday and also during two previous marches, I can tell you that not only do they believe all the nonsense they say — everything from “America is a police state,” said with a straight face while standing on the steps of the Capitol that has crafted policies that these folks oppose, to believing that Bush and Cheney are actual war criminals — they enjoy saying it. The louder and more profane they get, the more they enjoy it. If they can make it a song, all the better. These people love what they’re doing: They love prophesying doom and they love hating me and you and most of their fellow Americans.

It’s not too hard to see what makes them tick. Like most everyone else on the planet, these people want to be a part of something larger than themselves. For most Americans, this need is satisfied by having families or going to church or belonging to a group or club or softball team; for the moonbats, it can only be fulfilled by marching around militantly singing John Lennon songs and pretending to be an evolutionary step past me and you. We’re not going reach them with reason, we’re not going to out-cuss them, and we’re not going to intimidate them. They hate America and everything it stands for, they revel in their self-appointed hero status, and they also revel in a kind of self-granted martyr status if you confront them. And if you get in their face or do something that they don’t like, the “peace” rhetoric gives way to violent action in a nanosecond. I have some footage for proof.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is, they’re a minority of the anti-war set. These are the hardened ones, and they’re pretty much unreachable in the short term. A few might peel off and become the next David Horowitz, but most of them won’t, and the ones who do will take years or decades to come around. Most of them will just always smell like hippies.

Most of the country doesn’t like these people and doesn’t listen to them. Most of the country is still open to the idea that America is actually a force for good in the world and not the source of all evil. Most of the country still wants to win in Iraq, but has lost patience with the fight for one reason or another (and there are some good reasons to have lost patience with the entire political class in Washington regardless of political party). Without being able to bring huge numbers of counter protesters to the streets whenever the moonbats can, how do we reach the rest of the country and remind them that the war is worth fighting and winning?

Well, one of the things that I try to keep in mind is that whether we win or lose, what happens in Iraq won’t stay in Iraq. If we leave before we have defeated al Qaeda and set up a stable government, there probably will be a genocide in Iraq (and it’s a shame that Sen. Barack Obama is evidently fine with that), but the war is likely to spread beyond Iraq’s borders. You don’t have to care all that much about Iraq per se, and you don’t have to be a Pollyanna about the role that that Islamic revolution/reformation is playing across the Islamic world right now, to get this: It’s bigger than Iraq.

Suppose we bug out and leave Iraq to the tender mercies of al Qaeda and Moqtada al-Sadr, and his Iranian masters. The Maliki government is likely to collapse, which will be no great loss to the world, but it will take our central strategy against the Islamic jihad with it. Expect Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to get directly or less directly involved in Iraq, and someone outside the fight is going to end up arming all of those factions. Only Iran is capable of building its own fighter jets, for instance, and its indigenous plane is mostly experimental. We might arm the Sunni side, Egypt and Jordan and the Saudis, but you can be sure that the Russians and the Chinese will end up arming the Iranian-Syrian side. If we choose not to arm anyone (which is unlikely), the Russians and Chinese will just arm both sides. If you think the Middle East is awash in arms now, just wait until we leave Iraq before it’s stable and can defend itself. As regional war breaks out in the Middle East focused on Iraq, the price of oil skyrockets, and the global economy will face a very serious crisis. This will weaken countries that are more dependent on foreign oil than we are, and strengthen the hand of oil-producers like Iran, Venezuela and Russia. So we’re probably looking at a serious economic slowdown if not a depression, if Iraq’s collapse draws its neighbors into a free-for-all, just because of what will happen to the price of oil.

But farther afield, how will the world react to America turning Iraq over to a ragtag terrorist army and assorted Shiite militias? Competitive powers like Russia and China will probably take advantage of the fact that they’ll have a freer hand to move without fearing much reaction from us. Our allies are less likely to see us as a reliable guarantor of their security. Some will chose new friends; some will arm themselves to the teeth; some will hold out hope that we’re better against conventional enemies than we are against terrorists; some will move out of our orbit and over to either Russia, China or possibly a rising India.

Take Japan, for instance, which has been a staunch ally of ours throughout the current war. If we fail in Iraq, how will Japan see our decades-long joint security arrangements? Well, Japan is already re-arming itself. Japan is already making moves to solidify its ties with India, since it has no reason to trust either Russia or China. But Japan is also apparently holding out hope that we’ll choose not to abandon her when she needs us. Others, like the Philippines, have vacillated between the US orbit and the Chinese orbit since the war began. South Korea is moving ever closer to China (and vice versa thanks to the South’s economic strength), even while the US remains its main security tripwire. Russia, for its part, is evidently testing NATO’s unity and vigilance by resuming long-range bomber flights and penetrating NATO airspace with war planes.

To the extent that the world views the US as suffering defeat in Iraq is the extent to which chaos and the threat of war rises around the world. If Putin’s (or Viktor Zebkov’s) Russia sees NATO as divided and its senior partner too weak to take down militias in Iraq, for instance, it will become more assertive in that uniquely imperialistic and Russian way: By subjugating small eastern European countries. If China sees the US as defeated in Iraq and therefore less likely to intervene internationally for a while, expect it to begin making serious moves not just on Taiwan but also on several of its small continental neighbors. Expect regional anti-American figures like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to become more assertive and more aggressive, which means an increased likelihood of rumblings and wars in South America, across Africa and into south Asia. That’s in addition to the war that will probably be raging in the Middle East. I’m not saying that all of these possible wars will break out the second the last US personnel are helicoptered off the embassy roof in Baghdad. I am saying the world will start sorting itself out around the new reality that we have been defeated by an insurgency, again, and that that rearrangement is unlikely to go smoothly. Figure 5 to 10 years of serious and sustained regional warfare. Sure, it’s possible that Russia and China will lose in their adventures as they did in Afghanistan and Vietnam after we left Vietnam. But it’s also possible that they might win this time around, since they’ve had a few years to study the strategies that have beaten us, and since we’re less likely to get involved in anything messy any time soon. We probably won’t have a Congress with the stomach for any conflict whatsoever.

The precedent for defeating a democratic superpower by asymmetric warfare will have been set. Would-be terrorists and revolutionists the world over will take the lessons of Iraq to heart, and will spread war wherever there is any reason at all to be a malcontent and any means at all to strike. So while terrorism isn’t likely to threaten, say, China or other totalitarian states, it’s very likely to continue to threaten the West. Every little tinpot thug will think he can blow up a mall or a school and change the world, and all because we proved that they could by leaving Iraq before crushing the life out of al Qaeda there.

The hard core anti-war people understand this, by the way, better than most of the pro-military or fence sitters do. They grasp how our failure in Iraq will play out around the world, and they’re fine with it. They’re not for peace; they’re just on the side of chaos. But I don’t think most Americans would be fine with ushering in a world like the one I’ve described: Islamism’s strength growing, and the strength of non-Islamic powers like China and Russia probably growing too, while our strength and therefore influence around the world diminishes. If we’re a force for good in the world, as most Americans believe we are, then we ought to see the fight in Iraq through to success. In choosing to leave Iraq before the fight is won, we’re not choosing peace over war. We would be trading an illusory peace for a much more dangerous series of wars right around the corner.

Those wars won’t stay in Iraq, and they won’t stay out of America.

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