From the desk of Diana West on Wed, 2010-01-27 10:49Today, I am posting an extraordinary letter from a soldier currently stationed in Iraq, a sometime penpal of mine to whom I sent my three-part series on the aftermath of the surge to elicit his opinion. Knowing how thoughtful he is, I expected a substantive response. Given his time constraints alone, I did not expect an essay of this scope and I decided, with his permission, to present it here. It is unlike any commentary I have read from Iraq; it is both coolly reasoned and deeply passionate, and certain to challenge and disturb readers across the political spectrum: PC-believing liberals, Iraq-as-success-believing conservatives, Islam-as-a-religion-of-peaceniks of both Left and Right.So be it.
He writes:
I apologize for the delay in my response. I have been putting in long days ... lately and I hadn’t had the time to put the thought and effort into writing this until now.
Your three-part column series wonderfully analyzes Iraq and reaches the correct strategic assessment that no one in power wants to acknowledge.
I have many things that I want to say but I do not wish to waste your time and I therefore put an executive summary at the beginning of this e-mail so you can skip the expanded version if you wish.
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You correctly assessed that we have not gained anything positive from our efforts in Iraq and that the nation is not our ally. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I will go as far as saying that the Iraqis are our enemies—enemies better equipped to wage jihad against us than they have ever been. We will regret what we have done. We will regret that we created this officially Islamic nation. And we will regret that we created an officially Islamic Afghanistan. We will regret that we have placed ourselves in the service of Islam, waging jihad worldwide as we advance the Religion of Peace and eliminate Christians in the process. (So much for the accusation that the U.S. is on a “Crusade.”) It is a shame that so many people refuse to recognize how horrible Islam is, and that the U.S. made a fatal mistake when it refused to declare war against Afghanistan and Islam—when it refused victory by binding the greatest military force of all time.
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The Full Analysis:
Parts 1 and 2 of “The ‘Surge’ and ‘Success’” correctly identify that we have gained nothing positive for our efforts in Iraq while the Iraqis have betrayed us. I do not trust any Iraqi or Middle Easterner. I do not care if anyone calls me a “racist” or “bigot” anymore. Those words have lost their meaning. Do I think that every single Iraqi or Middle Easterner is bad? No. But I think it is difficult to tell. An Iraqi or Middle Easterner will smile to your face or be your best friend one moment, and cut your head off in the next. It is odd that so many people cannot comprehend this. It is even weirder that those who pride themselves on being “culturally aware” cannot grasp that Middle Eastern culture and thought, and Islamic behavior and thought are completely different than ours (than ours on the Right, at least). Perhaps this ignorance partially explains why the U.S. had no reaction when Maliki declared victory over the U.S. when we moved out of the major Iraqi cities. But even if it is a partial explanation it still is no excuse.
The Iranian War in Iraq is a travesty and has been since it started under Bush. I still cannot believe that a nation can war against us and murder Servicemen, and not pay the price of oblivion for it. Our nation sits back and apologizes, and defends itself constantly from accusations of an “illegal” and “unjust” war yet Iranians, other foreign terrorists, and even Iraqis go about murdering American troops without any consequence whatsoever. We should war back against them. But we won’t.
I remember when people said that we had brought on the September 11 attacks because “we created Bin Laden.” I never understood that. In fact, that we had helped the Afghanis defeat the Soviet Union should have been even more reason for us to kill Bin Laden and destroy Afghanistan. We had saved their lives and they repaid us for it by murdering us on our own soil. Yet our government refused its God-given duty to its people to mete out punishment and justice. History repeats with Iraq. The Iraqis lived under oppression for decades and when we liberated their nation they repaid our unimaginable mercy and sacrifice with betrayal. It is sickening.
Part 3 (“Victory” in Iraq? Really?) perfectly summarized where the U.S. is now in our “war” in Iraq. Once we made Iraq an officially Islamic country I knew that it would become among our worst enemies. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I said years ago that the end result of our efforts will be that Iraq will be a rebuilt nation better prepared than ever to wage jihad against us. You cannot create an officially Islamic nation and expect anything less. Regrettably, our leaders and our nation cannot identify Islam for what it is: evil. And so we continue our suicidal practice. The Iraqi betrayal of the U.S. started sooner than I expected it but I expected it nonetheless. This is outrageous. Yet the situation is even more unjust than this.
Muslims have waged jihad against the West since their insane, pedophiliac founder started their cult; they have waged jihad against the U.S. since our inception. But what is worse about our policy of establishing officially Islamic nations and pouring money, technology, weapons, and training into them is that we have been labeled as “occupiers” being on a “Christian crusade to wipe out Islam.” Think about that. We have been demonized as “occupying Christian crusaders” (if only!) even as we have waged jihad in the service of Islam, helped Muslims spread Islam and wipe out Christians, and died for ungrateful Iraqis even as terrorists from all over the war invaded and occupied Iraq, and slaughtered and oppressed Iraqis. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that we—the United States of America—are truly being invaded and occupied by illegal aliens warring on us!)
I am woefully understating the situation when I say that the U.S. has no clue how to fight wars any longer. We have allowed our enemies to control this war and make it one of media and information—information warfare / information operations . We have chosen not to win by refusing to reject the enemies’ preferred warfare; we have chosen not to wage a kinetic warfare where we could easily defeat our enemies in months if not weeks with our superior technology, tactics, and Servicemen. And through it all we seem not the least bit embarrassed that a “coalition” of dozens of nations cannot beat a primitive bunch of troglodytes. I no longer can express my outrage about this or any of the myriad horrors which plague our once great land. Every day there is something new which is more perverse and inequitable than the last day’s wickedness. I sit here in Iraq and do all I can do to stomach the disastrous excuse that passes for “strategy” in this war—a strategy where our leaders openly say that the lives of our Islamic enemies are worth more than ours; a “strategy” where the Army Chief of Staff openly states that the “death of diversity” would be a larger tragedy than the slaughter of Soldiers (and get away with it with but a whisper of outcry from the American people). I pray that I get out of here alive so I can complete my Army contract and get away from this nonsense and betrayal.
Two final things.
First, I wonder how many people have considered how successful the September 11, 2001 Islamic attacks were. Think about what they accomplished. They thrust Islam to the center of the world; they undoubtedly caused more people to learn about Islam than would have prior to their attacks. And the attacks combined with the near non-response of the U.S. doubtlessly gained them converts. Furthermore, what response the United States did produce resulted in the establishment, enrichment, and training of the officially Islamic nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the enrichment and training of countless other Muslim nations around the globe. Islam now stands better suited than ever to wage jihad across the world. The September 11 attacks also resulted in Muslims being portrayed as victims around the world (thanks to their leftist allies) and helped them (again, with an assist from their leftist allies) advance their jihad even as Muslims and leftists further vilified Christianity, America, and Western values. And finally the crowning achievement of the September 11 Islamic attacks: eight years after them the United States places as its leader a person whom can at best be described as an anti-American, racist, Islamic sympathizer (and who has the same name as an infamous Islamic dictator). This is stunning. It is bizarre. It is incomprehensible. Yet it is our nightmarish reality. The Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 achieved success beyond the wildest dreams of the Religion of Peace cultists.
Finally, I would like you to know that I am willing to comment on other posts and articles that you publish, including some of your other posts that mention the debate that your three-part column on the Surge started. I am willing to comment for two reasons.
The first reason is that everyone on the Right needs to fight back against the Islamic War on the West and stop the jihad. And one of the ways to fight back is to speak out against it. The second reason is that I want to establish for posterity that I am firmly against this evil and every other evil. I will explain why this matters.
Leftists always rewrite history so as to demonize what is Right and so as to cover their real nature. They abhor the truth as much as the vilest of Muslims. And as a way to enable their rewriting of history they use political correctness to silence opponents; to vilify them so that they have no place in society. We have allowed leftists to use political correctness to emasculate us. In fact, political correctness is the leftist weapon of choice in paralyzing the Right and aiding their Islamic allies who also advance an anti-Christian, anti-Foundational America agenda. Political correctness is what prevents us from fighting back against the left, and what prevents us from fully fighting back against the jihad and ending the Islamic threat. Political correctness makes us acquiesce to the left so as to be “moderate” and “bipartisan.” Our capitulation to the left will doom us physically by allowing the Muslims and left to eliminate the last vestiges of the West and it will doom us historically as our enslaved descendants will look back and ask how we could have allowed the twin insanities of Islam and the left to control and destroy us when we easily could have defeated them both. Our descendants will condemn us for remaining idle in the face of evil . . . and the leftists of the future will use our submission and our descendants’ condemnation to manipulate history and blame us as the originators of the horrific agenda that they instituted. The future left will use our sinful surrender to pave the way for them to control and destroy civilization once more (all in the name of “progressivism” of course).
I do not want leftists to be able to do this. I do not want them to easily rewrite history in the future. I want to be a loud voice (wherever I may be) that opposes everything Islam and the left want. I want there to be no doubt that I, a Right-wing Christian, utterly reject them and their core beliefs. I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that, “It was the Christian Right who enabled and supported the worldwide jihad (not to mention the global warming hoax, the sexual perverts, and the freedom hating communists)! It was the Christian Right who wanted them to take over and destroy the world!” I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that atheists, humanists, and secularists (like Bruce Bawer, Christopher Hitchens, Tammy Bruce, and a few others) tried to oppose the Islamic War on the West but “could not convince the mentally inferior but numerically superior Right-wing Christians to join them!” I want to counteract the in-name-only Christians and conservatives who have bought into the “Religion of Peace” and leftist nonsense, and who will do untold additional amounts of damage to civilization and our good name with their cravenness and rejection of Truth. And that is why I am willing to comment on more of your posts.
I know I am in the minority with my beliefs but I do not care. I want to be like the 300—not just the ones who fought at Thermopylae—but the 300 who fought with Gideon against the Midianites. I want to stand for the Truth.
Keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
A US soldier in Iraq
