The American Spectator

p> CUT AND WHAT? br> Re: William Tucker’s Call It a Democracy and the Hell With It : /p> p>Journalism, for all I know, may be its own occupational hazard, so that even a serious writer like William Tucker should perhaps be permitted an occasional paroxysm of irresponsibility. Just suppose, however, that we take the advice of Mr. Tucker and of the perennially irresponsible lumpenintelligentsia in academia and the media. Suppose we cut and run, abandoning Iraq to the imbecilities of a vicious minority. Where do we go then? With a demoralized military and a world whose thugs no longer take American power seriously, where would Mr. Tucker propose we should hide? br> — John R. Dunlap br> San Jose, California /p>

Tucker raises some important questions but it seems like his answer is to cut and run. He does a good job of offering the disclaimer of WWII and the Civil War because those wars were somehow more just than this current one. Why? Because the world back then was threatened by Hitler? What was the threat to the U.S. back then besides our European relatives living in capitulation? The Civil War threat was one of morality. It could be looked at as making right years of sanctioned wrong by the U.S. government. How are the European wars and our own Civil War different? Here at home we are still trying to pacify the spectacle of racism more than 100 years after the Civil War. It was only 40 years ago that we debated and legislated civil rights. After we liberated Europe and occupied Germany, how long did that pacification take? I don’t know, but did our side suffer from the same type of insurgent attacks as now?

p>As for one segment of the Iraq society trying to impose its will on the other, isn’t that what happens here all the time? Iraq was invaded because there was growing danger and that danger would have been cultivated in the next generation of Saddam in the likes of his sons. I wonder what the world would be like if we acted against Germany well before that cancer spread as far as it did. The costs of doing the right thing is sometimes very high and the sacrifice is also high. But if our foreign policy is to be analyzed strictly on accounting principles, what should the response have been to our being attacked by Japan? br> — Diamon Sforza