April 12, 2004

The Wider War
If you haven't discovered Belmont Club yet, you must now.
Its author, "Wretchard the Cat," is one of the few sources anywhere for war news and analysis.
(Sadly, the partisan media is too caught up with reporting either that Iraq is the new Vietnam where the U.S. is going to lose or that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a mistake based on a Bush-obsession.)
That being said, do read his take on what we're facing now with the "Shiite uprising."
BC maintains that both Baathist Sunni Syria and Shiite Iran (mainly in the guise of Hezbollah) are sending Islamist guerrillas to fight us there, even though most journalists have portrayed the enemy as hordes of Iraqis who are opposed to the "occupation" on general terms.
IOW, nothing's changed since we forcably disarmed Saddam a year ago.
Iraq is the "flypaper" to draw the terrorist flies.
This showdown was going to happen sooner or later and it may last awhile.
Tragically, some more of our fine young men and women will be killed "draining the terrorist swamp."
But that's what the WOT is all about.
If only it were not so.
That is why President Bush prayed today at Easter services at Ft. Hood that more service men and women wouldn't be killed or hurt in this fight and I pray that myself, but our forces are in for it, no question about that.
As Steven Den Beste put it so aptly and probably prophetically:

But now al-Sadr and his supporters have risen in open rebellion. And that means we no longer have to put up with them. It means more hard fighting, and more casualties. The next couple of months will see the worst fighting in Iraq since the invasion. Once it's over, the situation overall will be immeasurably better.

However, in the short run it's going to be painful. The rate of casualties will rise.

But as I said last year, better for our trained and equipped military to fight the evildoers in Iraq than for we civilians to try and stop them here in the streets, skies and ports of our cities.
Outing the presence of the Iranians in places like Falluja is important because we need to know what we're up against and what the stakes are and if Belmont Club is right--and I think that he is--the stakes are pretty big:

Here are two accounts, one translated contemporaneously from the Arabic press [BC cites a report from MEMRI here.--Jen] and a year-old analysis from the National Review [This by Iranian specialist Michael Ledeen.--J.T.] which agree on almost every single salient point. What we do not know is the extent to which the US Government appreciated the threat, and how this now-manifest Iranian intervention interacted with European efforts to convince Teheran to open their borders to nuclear inspection. In the coming days the public may learn what contingency plans, if any, CENTCOM had poised against this threat. More importantly, we will discover whether these plans were held back or watered down over a desire not to antagonize Teheran, lest the nuclear proliferation issue be entailed. The linkage between the two would establish that the current war in Iraq is far more perilous than it might seem at first glance. What we are witnessing is not a confrontation between the United States and some nationalist "insurgents", but possibly the opening acts of a confrontation with a nuclear armed terrorist state.

Don't know about you, but this made me pretty nervous.
If we thought that our war work was done when we toppled Saddam and took Baghdad, we were wrong.
The fight is here and now, taking place as the "Shiite uprising."
British PM Tony Blair elucidates the Big Reason in Sunday's UKObserver so eloquently why we must win this fight and not abandon the struggle in Iraq.
While the Marines have called a temporary ceasefire in Falluja to get refugees to safety and to move more Marines in, it supposedly is also a pause to allow the Islamist killers the chance to surrender, although the Lying Liberal Left press has tried to make it sound like an American "retreat."
[SkyNews is reporting that the ceasefire is already broken, probably by the Islamists.]
Gen. Kimmit shouldn't offer many more such opportunities or allow time for the guerrillas to hide their guns and "Mahdi Army" uniforms so that they can blend back in with the civilian population, only to strike at us again later.
Now is not the time to show mercy (God knows they haven't shown it to us.), but the military walks a fine line as it tries to root out the bad guys without totally alienating the non-complicit Iraqi population.
We need to surgically clean out the IslamoFascists from Falluja, Sadr City, Najaf and wherever else they turn up.
It will be interesting to see if the Iranian mullahocracy officially acknowledges that their people are there engaging us in combat; as might be expected, Khatami has already disavowed any solidarity with fellow Shiite al-Sadr.
As regards Iranian nuclear proliferation, I'm sure that confrontation will most surely happen in the very near future, particularly given the sit rep in Iraq, only next door.
We are exactly where we need to be and those who talk of Iraq being a "mistake" in the WOT either don't know what they're talking about or are in league with the Islamists and are being disengenous in an attempt to keep us from triumphing over our enemy.
As I said, I join with President Bush and lots of other people who pray that our men and women in uniform will stay safe and unharmed and that they will come home victorious soon.
Til then, I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their bravery, courage and selfless dedication that they would be willing to lay down their life and limb to make my life more secure and safe.
May God bless and keep them all.