Why we should fight to win in Iraq

Our friend William Stuntz has a brilliant piece in the Weekly Standard urging the U.S. to fight to win in Iraq. Here’s a key excerpt:

The Iraq war is different [from the war in Vietnam] in every relevant respect. American soldiers are responsible for ousting a murderous monster and allowing Iraqis to elect their leaders after a generation under the monster’s heel. For three-and-a-half years, those soldiers have fought a loose coalition of equally murderous enemies who sought to replace the monster with their own brands of thuggery. The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran’s fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened. If there is any significant possibility that the presence of more American soldiers on the ground in Iraq would raise the odds of success [and Stuntz thinks there is], not putting those soldiers on the ground is a crime. Taking away the ones who are already there would be an atrocity.

I sense little likelihood that the U.S. will commit more troops to Iraq, but Stuntz makes a good case that we should. Please read the whole thing.

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