No Longer a Choice

Belmont Club has Bedlam by the Euphrates, which begins to address some of the points raised here.

Some have seriously suggested that if America pulled into a tight perimeter around its borders such men could not reach inward to hurt children; could not "IED" American travelers en route to Thailand or Germany; could not "mortar" the homeland with aircraft attacks like they mortar some military bases or the northern towns of Israel; could not infiltrate "sleepers" into the 8 million American Muslims the way they have infiltrated the Green Zone. Could not act abroad as they act at home. These solutions have been advocated by men of goodwill, experience and intelligence, but will they work?

The neoconservative assumption that Middle Eastern societies were transformable has been described as the product of excessive hope when it is really the counsel of despair. It is the remainder which 'however improbable, is all that is left after all the impossibles have been eliminated'. The fact that America, without resorting to mass murder, has kept such a fractious country intact, that many Iraqis daily risk their lives in the effort to beat back this darkness, is testimony to a quality of work which deserves better than the scorn that has been heaped upon it.