Posted by
JP on Monday, June 16, 2008 12:50:14 PM
by Ralph
Peters [author,
novelist]
Whenever
retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are
confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, "Al Qaeda
wasn't in Iraq in 2003."
Well, I happen to agree with Sen. Barack Obama and his supporters on
that count: At most, the terrorists had a tenuous connection with
Saddam's regime. But it's 2008, not 2003. And our next president will
take office in 2009. It's today's reality that matters.
It's as if, in June 1944, critics had argued from facts frozen in June
1939. ("Why invade Normandy? Hitler's content with Czechoslovakia.")
In the course of a war - any
war - the situation changes, enemies evolve and goals shift. A war to
preserve the Union becomes a war to end slavery; a war to defeat one
set of totalitarian systems empowers a new network of tyrannies. It's a
rare war whose end can be forecast neatly at its outset.
And you don't get any do-overs. [more]