Iraq; Beginning Of Western Decline

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Iraq; Beginning Of Western Decline

By Mike Haran
Dec. 7, 2006

With the ascendancy of the democrats in both houses it is now time to consider the ability of the west to handle its own defences. Biparisanism is now the keyword for what is to all intents and purposes calls for appeasement by entering into a dialogue with Syria and Iran in order to come to some kind of an agreement regarding the situation in Iraq. This is tantamount to asking Hitler and Mussolini for help regarding the situation in Czechoslovakia or Poland during the 1930’s. Some will put this down as the posturing of the left to embarrass the Republicans no matter what; some claim that the US is politically incapable of fighting small wars; some that the reason for the lack of progress is the inherent dislike of all for a US presence in Iraq.

I think that it a much more complicated than this. The Democrats, while mirroring the desire of their constituents to pull out, are not stupid, and must realize that a pull out in Iraq now will only lead to a more serious future situation attributable to them. A Mesopotamian/ Iranian border beginning at the western and southern courses of the Euphrates will be forever be an Albatross about their necks.

Middle Easterners who urge a US pullout are those who will benefit the most. Scores of Christian Assyrians and some of their supporters demonstrated in front of the White House yesterday, highlighting an alarming trend reported by the U.N.: While representing just 5 percent of the Iraqi population, 40 percent of the refugees fleeing the country are Assyrians. These are without a voice and have no supporting militia, constantly brutalized and killed just because of their religion, events strangely analogous to the silence regarding the suffering of the Jewish population of Germany during the nineteen thirties.

Maybe what is happening is that the US is incapable of fighting small wars due to the fact that the out of power party is sure to use them as a way of attacking the incumbents? When exactly did the US win a war any way? The only recent victory was the Grenada Invasion of 1983. That this did not spill out in to Venezuela, Honduras and other spots in Latin America was due to the fact that it was undertaken by the elite USMC and the 82nd Airborne Division backed up by a meticulous plan.

Is the present American generation to be blamed for the lack of US military resolve. Events during the early days of World War Two were much more desperate than the present crisis in Iraq and no one then urged talks with Hitler and Mussolini, let alone Tojo. No one lambasted Roosevelt for the lack of progress in the Pacific, or for the disaster in North Africa at the Kasserine Pass, yet the majority of Americans (and British too for that matter, which is not so serious as they are used to being told what to do) want a US, and by extension the UK also, to pull out.

What is happening, in my view, is the beginning of an historical trend, and not one confined to the US alone. Denmark, Sweden, France and Germany, while willing to deploy troops to Afghanistan, are unwilling to let them serve in the south where most of the fighting is taking place. Canada, bearing on a population percentage basis more casualties than the other countries with troops in the south, the UK and Holland, has asked that Denmark, Sweden, France and Germany pull their weight too, only to be given vague promises that they will help out in an ‘emergency’.

In Imperial Rome easy living bred a climate where the military was composed more and more of Germans, and then of Barbarian invaders given land as a sop, ending with the dismissal of the Roman Emperor by the barbarian chieftain Odoacer.Will we in the west be more and more under the thumb of the barbarian, who will also in the future dismiss our chief executive?

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About the author: Read Mike Haran's essays on history at http://www.geocities.com/manzikertca/

Email: manzikertca@yahoo.com

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