I’ve had it!  Enough with stupid Iraq debates!

The price of victory
I ask those of you in the stay-the-course crowd whether we will deter terrorism more effectively over the next decade if our troops are trapped in Iraq or rested and ready to strike Iran, North Korea or Pakistan in the event that our nation’s safety depends on our commander in chief being able to make that threat with a straight face. If you have to mull that one over you are too clueless to operate common household appliances, let alone debate military readiness in the 21^st century.

The war on terror will not be helped by expending more American lives, trillions of dollars and American military readiness over a civil war where Sunni roadside bombs and Shiite death squads are the most advanced means of offensive weaponry. Grisly stuff to be sure, but not a threat to kill millions of Americans in Manhattan, Washington or L.A.

For those Republicans who continue to tell me we cannot lose in Iraq, I have one question: What is the price of victory? Is it worth a loss in Afghanistan? A nuclear Iran? A reinvigorated al-Qaida with nuclear weapons?

Blinded by contempt
If Republicans’ reasoning is impaired by national pride, too many Democrats’ view on Iraq is blurred by their contempt for George W. Bush.

Many of these dumb Democrats remind me of dumb Republicans who roamed the Earth during the Clinton years. And like those Republicans, some Democrats now seem more concerned with payback on the president than helping America. Whether George W. Bush is an idiot, or lied to get us into Iraq, or has left us stranded in Iraq is no longer relevant to solving the crisis there. Besides, too many of those calling the commander in chief an idiot seem far more dense when pressed on Iraq.

I really don’t think I can continue being polite to idiots who keep telling me how George W. Bush lied about WMDs so he could drag us into war. The suggestion is that Bush concocted his plan while cutting brush on his Crawford ranch and somehow sold it to Congress and the world. But this intriguing narrative overlooks the fact that when Bush pushed his CIA director on whether WMD evidence was too thin to justify war, George Tenet jumped off the Oval Office couch and shouted, “Mr. President, it’s a slam dunk!”

The CIA director wasn’t alone.

Intelligence directors in Britain, France, Russia, China and across the world also concluded Saddam Hussein had WMDs. The U.N. Security Council concluded the same thing. Hell, even Saddam Hussein admitted he had WMDs. But that doesn’t stop idiots from shouting slogans that have nothing to do with how we extricate ourselves from the crisis we now find ourselves in.

Too many Democrats still call George Bush an idiot for believing that most Iraqis would greet American troops as liberators. Those critics would keep their mouths shut if they weren’t so ignorant about Iraq’s demographics.

For the first three years of this war, most Iraqis wanted Bush’s democratic experiment to succeed. It had less to do with ideology than raw numbers. More than 80 percent of Iraq is made up of the Shiites and Kurds, who were brutally oppressed by Saddam Hussein. Say what you will about the leaders in the Bush administration, but they know how to count votes. And having eight out of 10 Iraqis on your side is not a bad base of support.

The situation was so grim for Saddam’s Sunni terrorists after two successful elections (where a higher percentage of Iraqis turned out than Americans in the 2004 presidential election) that their only hope of killing Iraq’s democratic revolution was drawing Shiites into a bloody civil war. They succeeded, but not because George Bush was an idiot. They succeeded because of their unfathomable ability to blow up grandmothers, babies, wedding parties, university students, places of worship, hospitals and any soft targets where innocents could be slaughtered. Civil war finally broke out after Sunni terrorists blew up the Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22  last year. That tipping point unleashed Muqtada al-Sadr’s death squads and launched the country into civil war.

One year later, Americans have succeeded in chasing al-Sadr out of the country — for now. And once again we find ourselves where we were before the Samarra bombing. Sunnis are killing Shiite pilgrims, and we can’t do a damn thing to stop it.

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