Dis-Strib-Ute

In the Sunday Star Tribune, on page 6 of the A section (the news section) there was an article with this headline: Wisconsin professor: War is now a debacle

I cannot explain to you why this was in the news section, and not in the opinion section. Well, I can explain it. It's because a finance professor from UW-River Falls said this about the war in Iraq: "The whole thing has turned into a huge debacle".

He has extra special credibility because he voted for Bush, and Bush pere as well. So, the message apparently being, if someone like this declares the war a debacle, a perfesser no less, than it must be so.

And just to really make the point that the Wascly Wepubwicans took us where we had no business going, the Strib includes this comment from the good perfesser:

Corcoran doesn't believe, though, that Bush can achieve his goal of using Iraq to plant democracy in the Middle East: "I don't think it can work to impose our way of doing things on a part of the world where the notion is foreign."

Given the Arab tradition of tribal identity, he said, the effort "is destined to fall on its face."

If I try to do anything with this blog, it's to point out the success the US military is having in Iraq.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his column at NRO Friday wrote eloquently about the moral imperatives of this war.

That goal was what the U.S. military ended up so brilliantly fighting for — and what the American public rarely heard. The moral onus should have always been on the critics of the war. They should have been forced to explain why it was wrong to remove a fascist mass murderer, why it was wrong to stay rather than letting the country sink into Lebanon-like chaos, and why it was wrong not to abandon brave women, Kurds, and Shia who only wished for the chance of freedom.
....
The Left now risks losing its self-proclaimed moral appeal. It had trashed the efforts in Iraq for months on end, demanded a withdrawal — only recently to learn from polls that an unhappy public may also be unhappy with it for advocating fleeing while American soldiers are in harm’s way. Another successful election, polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly wishing us to stay on, visits by elected Iraqi officials asking continued help, and a decreasing American footprint will gradually erode the appeal of the antiwar protests — especially as triangulating public intellectuals and pundits begin to quiet down, fathoming that the United States may win after all.
....
Strangely, I doubt whether very many would agree with much of anything stated above — at least for now. But if the administration can emphasize the moral nature of this war, and the military can continue its underappreciated, but mostly successful efforts to defeat the enemy and give the Iraqis a few more months of breathing space, who knows what the current opportunists and pessimists will say by summer.Will they say that they in fact were always sorta, kinda, really for removing Saddam and even staying on to see democracy work in Iraq?

I would like to see Gloomy Gus's like the good perfesser and the "news" editors at the Strib answer the questions Hanson poses.

Perhaps instead of running editorials in the news section, they could get some reporters to do some actual reporting and lay out for their readers the progress that has been made in Iraq. Perhaps they'd find that people like me might pick up the phone when they call and subscribe, instead of glancing at the caller ID and just letting the phone ring, as I did yesterday.

Security Watchtower points out some comments from Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, where he talked about the National Strategy in Iraq, and why it is necessary we be there.

Among other things, Gen. Pace said:

Pace also refuted claims of those who believe the threat will go away if the United States stopped fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and stopped chasing down terrorists.

"I say, you need to get out and read what our enemies have said," he said. Before World War II, Adolf Hitler clearly outlined his intentions in his book, "Mein Kampf," Pace told the group. "He said in writing exactly what his plan was, and we collectively ignored that, to our great detriment."

Similarly, terrorists today have publicly stated their goals, both on film and the Internet, he said.

"(There's) no equivocation on their part," the chairman said. "They're not saying, 'If you stay home, we will not come after you.' They are saying their goal is to rid the Middle East of all foreigners, then to overthrow all governments that are not friendly to them, which means every single one of those governments."

But terrorists have made it clear that they don't intend to stop there, Pace continued. Their ultimate goal is to bring the whole globe under their domination within the next 100 years, he said.

It's perfectly valid for perfessers of finance to have opinions about the war in Iraq. Any concerned citizen has opinions. Goodness, that's what I do here, just read and think and write about it. But for newspapers to use perfessers as a patina of credibility to pass off their opinions without answering serious points raised by those who have thought and worked and strategized to build a new Iraq is part of the reason why you're reading blogs like this one, and not the Star Tribune.