Five years later -Editorial, Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154526044522&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[Blair] and President George Bush are among the only world leaders even attempting to convince free nations that they must take concerted action to defend themselves.
[T]he principle that terrorism cannot be defeated without forcing the regimes that support it either out of power or out of the terror business has not become part of the Western consensus.
[F]ormer Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry managed to write an entire op-ed stating how his party would extricate the US from being "bogged down in Baghdad, beleaguered around the world" and advocating an alternative approach to fighting terror, without even mentioning Iran.
Much of the Western debate remains caught up in the notion that it can be fought either by addressing the jihadis' "grievances," or by police actions against the terrorists themselves. Yet even Bush and Blair, who eloquently debunk these pre-9/11 approaches that failed so spectacularly, have not fully explained to the world what it will take to win.
We are at a dangerous point in this war. The danger is that the West, having defeated lesser terrorist regimes, will allow the most belligerent of them all to obtain nuclear immunity and to undo much of the progress that has been achieved to date.
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Western Leaders See the Danger of Islamic Extremism, But Our Public Still Does Not - Prime Minister Tony Blair (Ha'aretz)
The first way to win a battle is to realize you're in a battle.
[F]or a president of a country to say they want to wipe another country off the face of the earth and at the same time he's trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability - if we don't get worried about that, future historians will raise a few questions about us and about our judgment.
1 comment:
Fortitude and going the distance are worthy qualities. There is no doubt that the terrible threat Iran poses to Israel and the rest of the world through its statements and actions should be of paramount importance to every freedom loving nation. It is a shame, therefore, that we have strained our international credibility and our armed forces resources by embarking on our Iraqi crusade. As more and more information is released to show that even our own intelligence community knew that there was no Iraq-Al Qaeda link, we must question how we pick our battles. North Korea has always been a known quantity, and Iran has been quite clear in its intentions for the last quarter century. Perhaps, if we had taken the time to finish in Afghanistan before embarking on Iraq, we could have given this conflict the consideration and examination that risking our childrens lives in combat would dictate. True, Iraq after a decade of sanctions, probably looked like an easy foe to take on, but as we see, looks can be deceiving. If we were going to get so deeply mired, which should really make us feel more comfortable at night; a neutralized Iran, a chastened North Korea, or a fractured and civil warring Iraq?
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