We Are Afraid

Who is the real instigator behind Iraq?

Is it Iran, as the vast proponderance of the evidence has demonstrated? Or is it al-Qaeda, as the President would have us believe?

RIGA, Latvia, Nov. 28 — Dismissing suggestions that Iraq has deteriorated into a civil war, President Bush on Tuesday blamed Al Qaeda for the rising tide of sectarian violence there and said he would press the Iraqi prime minister to lay out a strategy for stopping the killings when the two meet in Jordan this week.

President Bush held a news conference today with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in Tallinn, Estonia.
“My questions to him will be: ‘What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?” the president said, referring to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “I will assure him that we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

Here is the problem as I see it. The President has almost pulled back from direct confrontation with Iran ever since his “Axis of Evil” comments elicited a shriek of outrage from the left and Europe. The State Department, in the personages of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage have endorsed the government of the Mad Mullahs as perfectly cromulent democracies and our diplomacy, such as it is, has been to treat Iran as a rational member of the international community in good standing.

It is true that some of the sectarian violence has al-Qaeda’s fingerprints on it, but largely, al-Qaeda is playing second-fiddle to the big dogs of Iran and its paid foreign policy actor Hezbollah.

We have no room now to turn ourselves around and treat the Iranian government as the murderous and dangerous regime it really is. We gave up a great advantage when we decided to leave negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program to the same folks who took billions of dollars in bribes from Saddam Hussein. We have frittered away any confidence we might have built up with the Iraqi people with such silly fripperies as the public comments of Carl Levin, John Kerry, Jack Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, virtually every major news outlet we have, and the Iraq Study Group. Right now we appear to have one foot out the door and the other about to land squarely on a banana peel.

We have, to borrow Osama bin Laden’s phrase, been acting like the weak horse instead of the strong horse. Say what you will, you must admit that bin Laden knows the Arab mind pretty darned well.

Two years we’ve spent placating clerics like Ali Sistani who have turned and stabbed us in the back without the faintest reprisal because we were afraid. Two years refusing to fight those who have killed without fear from mosques and hospitals because we were afraid. Two years allowing stone murderers like Moqtada al-Sadr to live in definace of a murder warrant to the point where we invited him into the Iraqi “political process” because we were afraid. Two years letting Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs arm and train the men who were fighting our soldiers and butchering innocent Iraqis because we were afraid.

Is it any wonder, the Iraqi President Jalal Talibani has already gone to Iran to broker whatever deal that will leave his country the most intact once we abandon it to the Mullahs. I firmly believe that he has spent the past few months watching our reactions fo the events in his country and he’s betting that in six months we won’t be supporting him in any real way.

He’s seen how we allow our fear to guide our actions instead of our courage and optimism. He’s watched us bring back to the table the very men who gave his people, the Kurds, and Marsh Arabs over to the butcher in 1991. He sees James Baker, the man who sold Lebanon to the Syrians for a little “stability” taking center stage once more.

Being Iran’s puppet is not a glorious life, but at least it’s life. That’s more than he’ll get by accepting another empty American promise of support.

Because we’re afraid to fight.

Oh we will talk. Goodness yes we will talk.

But we won’t fight.

Not even President Bush anymore.