Useful Fools

Today there was apparently an extremely significant victory in World War IV (poorly named The War on Terror). Libya has announced that it is abandoning its WMD programs (including a very advanced nuclear program that was “close to producing weapons”).

The left is baffled. How could this have happened? Did the sanctions finally work?

The answer, of course, is obvious. Khadafi doesn’t want to suffer the fate of Saddam, or worse (see below). The US has demonstrated it will go after those who support terrorism and who have WMD’s or major programs to develop them. And it demonstrated that by conquering Iraq, something that the left (who have long had a feeble understanding of geopolitics) thinks was either a useless war, or (in their fevered minds) was a war to enrich the friends of Bush (which is a terribly offensive accusation of intentional mass murder for profit against Bush).

Actually, it had a number of goals, as is common in international affairs (and especially in the very complex mideast). One was to rid Iraq of the WMD’s that everyone except Hans Blix thought that he had (why else force the UN to maintain sanctions for 12 years?). Another was to destroy a regime which had long supported terror against us. An important reason was to geographically split the middle east, placing a regime unfriendly to terrorists squarely across the lines of communication between Iran and Syria, both terrorist dictatorships. Another reason was to put great pressure on dictatorships in Arab and Muslim countries by demonstrating that freedom was possible for Arabs and Muslims. Finally, a very important reason was to demonstrate that we had the willingness to back our intent with violence and with the blood of our troops - a very important factor - especially when dealing with “shame” cultures that are common in the Middle East.

And it worked! Libya is coming clean!

This just increases the pressure on Syria, Iran and North Korea.