Pick one, Perry: Wanting to win is one thing. Everyone wants to win.
or I don’t believe that the sacrifices that we’d have to make as a nation are worth a win in Iraq.
If we need another 500,000 troops, then the sacrifice we’d be making as a nation would be restoring the active duty military to the size it was during the Carter administration. We’d have an additional 0.17% of the country in uniform – and that’s assuming all 500,000 came from new enrollment rather than shifting people around (out of Germany, for example.)
I don’t think you appreciate the dangers of defeat in Iraq. You claim to value allies; we have one in Iraq, a flawed one to be sure. If we go back on our word and leave, our ally will be destroyed. What effect will that have on future alliances? Certainly if we were to always do as the French instruct, they would be willing to use us for their own purposes, whether that purpose is keeping alive oil contracts with Saddam or simply restraining our independence. It is breathtakingly naive to describe France as a friend to anyone but itself.
Algeria has some parallels to Iraq, but America has not and will not approach anything like French ruthlessness and disdain for human rights in the first few years of that struggle. The French were fighting (as they always do) to enrich and empower France. We have always been fighting with the goal of establishing a stable, free, independent Iraq. For all the reasons we are different from the French, we have more local support than they did.
If America leaves Iraq, so will the tv cameras. People here will be able to pretend there is no more killing, as we pretended in the 90s when CNN turned a blind eye to Saddam’s killing, as the networks today ignore Central Africa. But people who trusted us will be killed. And the people who made it happen – al Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran’s puppets – do you think they will stop?
