Think before you fail to act


Are the war naysayers practicing caution or panic?
Gerald Baker of the London Times sums it up best. At least so far.

... The critics of the war were right to say three years ago that it represented the high-risk option. There’s no doubt, as they said at the time, that not invading would have been the safer option.But over time, repeatedly exercising the easy option rarely produces long-term stability. By repeatedly deferring difficult decisions, repeatedly seeking accommodations with an ever more unacceptable status quo, we make the ultimate crisis that much larger, its consequences that much more devastating. The fluid of all those easy decisions crusts eventually into a hard carapace that can only be cracked with explosive force.

We would be making the same understandable but lethal mistake now if we were to decide that, in the teeth of the difficulties in Iraq, we should take the easy option and get out of there as quickly as possible.

When the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action, obviously we must act. It is not so obvious when the costs may be years down the road.

Like it or not, we have been fighting Islamist terrorism for decades. Our unwillingness to decisively deal with it then led to 9-11. Just as it had led to many incidents before. Iraq wasn't directly responsible for 9-11, but Hussein's government fostered terrorism. Just as the actions of the United States during the Cold War supported tyranny in the Middle East to contain the Soviet Union.

Democracy and a free market economy in Iraq will do more to promote freedom in the Middle East than the combined militaries of the entire United Nations. As important as the war is, the war is secondary to the real changes taking place right now in Iraq. Not without struggle, not without hardship, and not always according to plan.

Just think about it, those pictures of Iraqi women holding up their blue stained fingers after voting probably did more for women's rights globally than anything else since World War II. That in turn will spark an examination of Islam at it's core. If Christianity can do it, if the Jewish faith can do it, then Islam certainly can.

We are witnessing the rebirth of Islam as a modern faith. We are witnessing the separation of church and state on a scale not seen since the Protestant Reformation. And we are witnessing fundamentalists of nearly every faith being challenged.

We're changing the nature of the game, not just the rules.

I have no idea where it will end up.

But I do have faith.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - December 2, 2005 at 07:42 AM  Tag


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