Won

I’m always loathe to use the “V” word in relation to Iraq.  It seems like the sort of premature happiness that seems all the more galling if it’s claimed wrongly.

But Andrew Bolt doesn’t mind saying it – that the war has been won.

His piece makes many, many points – casually mauling a lot of the left’s worn-out tropes about the subject on the way.

But the conclusion was something I’ve been harping on for years:

The battle for Iraq always involved a grim calculus: would liberation save more people than it killed?

So let’s calculate how many died under Saddam.

In 1980, the dictator invaded Iran, starting a war in which at least 500,000 people died. In 1987, he crushed the Kurds, killing perhaps 100,000 or more.

In 1990, he invaded Kuwait, starting a war that killed more than 23,000.

On his defeat, he killed some 100,000 Shiites who rebelled.

Add the mass executions he ordered, the purges he unleashed, the opposition activists he shot, the terrorist attacks he paid for.

Remember also the children who died, robbed of medicines by his regime.

Add them all up, and even by the most conservative count you see Saddam did not just threaten the West, but cost the lives of more than 100 Muslims a day, every day, for the 24 years of his barbaric rule.

That’s four times more than are being killed in Iraq today, often by Saddam’s heirs and Saddam’s like.

Was Iraq worth it? Yes. It stands, it stays, and the winning of Iraq was worth it, indeed.

Read the whole thing.

12 thoughts on “Won

  1. If you say it enough times, maybe it will come true. Have you tried closing your eyes and clicking your ruby slippers together?

  2. Clicking clown shoes together would be even tougher and sillier, so I think I’ll be glad the left is losing this one.

  3. See, I told you, Angry Clown, that all the Sunni Baathists, Shiite militias, Sunni chieftans, Kurdish separatists, and Saudi wahabists would sit down together in a spirit of peace and brotherhood and equitable sharing of oil revenues. Bustin heads does it every time.

    On to Iran! On to Iran!
    /jc

  4. The war has been won. huh? Tell that to the roughly 4,000,000 internally and internationally displaced Iraqis. When they start returning home in droves, that may be a better sign that the war has actually been won.

    While it seems a corner has been turned and the # of deaths is dropping and there are encouraging signs of progress, it is ironic to have this post while. it is reported that…

    “The U.S. command announced six new deaths Tuesday, making 2007 the bloodiest year for American troops in Iraq despite a recent decline in casualties and a sharp drop in roadside bombings.

    With nearly two months left in the year, the annual toll is now 853 — three more than the previous worst of 850 in 2004.”

  5. Andrew is a fool. period.

    Won? Hrmm…tell that to the Sunnis. I’m sure a strong, pro-US government has been assured. Or is it that victory no longer means a democratic government, friendly to the west?

    If it’s suppressing of Al Qaeda, after removing Hussien – am I the only one who thinks this is revisionist history at it’s worst? You all invaded to topple Hussien to prevent WMD from getting to terrorist, and in a ‘Wilsonian’ epiphany, Bush discovered backing democracies makes more friends than does backing dictators.

    Hussiend didn’t have them
    Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq
    and the Iranians are FAR more able and likely to give weapons to terrorists than Iraq, and the pro-Shiaa Iraqis are FAR more likely to give weapons to terrorists than Hussien ever was
    And Turkey might invade northern Iraq

    Apparently that’s victory, boy, that has a wierd look to it.

    And just by the by, considering that Pervez Musharraf (Musharaff?) recently kicked in the sand-castle on democracey (at least for a while), considering that militant, pro-explansionist (Sunni – Wabism) Islam is FAR closer to gaining nuclear weaponry in Pakistan than they likely EVER will be in Iran – it seems to me maybe Woodrow Bush was a bit.. insincere in pushing democracy, and asleep at the switch about the dangers in Pakistan – he allowed Musharraf to play the US as the great Satan in his own borders, to fail to grapple with the Taliban in Pakistan, but we should believe that somehow, squelching Al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization with a membership running into the whole 2000-5000 range as compared to potentially 20,000,000 radical Wahabist muslims in Pakistan, but we’re to believe that IRAQ was the central front, and squelching those 2000-5000 people – a force that didn’t even exist prior to our invasion, NOW that is what the whole war was about, killing off an organization that didn’t exist prior to our invasion.

    Do we usually decide to make war on a non-existent enemy, and then when it invents itself, as a small and FAR less well financed and lead group that’s a pariah on the soil of the country it’s in, we attack it, defeat it, and say “We Won!”

    Wow…

    Here’s the opinion of a MSGT I know who recently returned from Iraq – as opposed to some jackass who doesn’t know his ass from his hat.

    We’re not winning anything. AQI was never the problem – getting the Shiites and Sunnis to form a real government was the problem. Now that the country has balkanized, they’re killing each other a bit less, but we’re no closer to a solution than we were three years ago.

    Your claim that we’ve won is pure fiction. Total abject nonsensical fiction.

    But here’s what I say, GREAT we won, let’s go home.

  6. Tell that to the roughly 4,000,000 internally and internationally displaced Iraqis.

    Strawman. Nobody said “over”. Merely (according to the writer) that the end result seems to not be in doubt.

    Interesting story, though, in the past few days; thousands of displaced Iraqis are moving back. “Refugee” flights out of the country are departing largely empty, while many are returning, including to Baghdad.

    There’s a ways to go – and it’s worth noting that the “DP” problem after WWII took half a decade to completely resolve (or, given the whole “Cold War” thing, render moot), and they’re still working on it in Korea.

    Now that the country has balkanized, they’re killing each other a bit less, but we’re no closer to a solution than we were three years ago.

    Actually, if the “solution” is “a more stable secure country and footing to solve the ethnic difficulties without a civil war”, AND assuming we don’t think “jamming everyone together for jamming-together’s sake” is the sole arbiter of victory, the place is in a much better state than it was.

    Which is, of course, a big problem for the Dems.

  7. Your claim that we’ve won is pure fiction.

    No, your claim that I claim anything is fiction.

    I’m presenting a point of view – one that would seem to have some validity.

    Here’s the opinion of a MSGT I know…

    Well, fine! I’ll see your MSGT and raise you a couple of SSGs and 1SGs and a least one LTCOL, for that matter!

    And at the end of the day, all that matters is the incremental progress that IS, by any rational, empirical measure, going on…

    …and the fact that the Dems, or at least some of them, are going to start spinning their way back to supporting victory (albeit over the nutroots’ cold dead bodies).

  8. Heehee! Mitch doesn’t claim we’ve won. He merely believes the view that we have won seems to have some validity.

    Depends on what the definition of is is.

  9. “Do we usually decide to make war on a non-existent enemy,”
    Wow. You would have to be a real idiot to think Iraq wasnt an enemy. You would…..wait, was this a peev post? Oh. Never mind.

  10. Of course Iraq was a real enemy. They attacked us on 9/11, they were stockpiling WMDs, they were planning operations with Al Qaeda, and they were trying to build the new Caliphate with their allies in Iran.

    Duh, it’s like the Defeatocrats don’t even read the news.
    /jc

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