Consequences

Let's get our Aretha Franklin on, shall we? R-E-S-P-E-C-T...what it's all about in the Middle East.

There's a lot of talk about us backpedaling on the Iraq "mistake." We'll just put the kitten in the box with a little food, drive it WAAAY out in the country and leave it on the side of the road. We'll drive home thinking about the happy life the kitten is going to have on a pretty little dairy farm.

Wrong. In real life, the kitten gets flattened on the highway. In the kitten-as-Iraq analogy, the kitten gets smashed on the highway and all its kitten relatives follow you to your home and piss on your carpet for years.

Let's talk about the Iranian hostage crisis. You know, the one where we made some disapproving sounds and launched one spectularly unsuccessful attempt to free our people? Yeah - that one. That was Them shoving Us. And we flailed around the ground for a while and then they let us get up and run home.

And then there was Beiruit and the 241 dead Marines and Sailors. And then there was Khobar Towers. And the first attack on the World Trade Center. And the African Embassies. And the USS Cole. And the SECOND attack on the World Trade Center.

And then we kinda blinked and said, "huh? Someone out there hates us? Well, let's KILL 'EM!"

Which was precisely the right response, albeit 20 years late.

So now we're thinking about running the Hell away from Iraq. Because it's difficult, and winning would require more than a week and courses of action that are not easily fit on a bumpersticker.

Hmmm...I'm not really into the Vietnam analogies, so let's see if we can find another situation which might shed a little light on Iraq's future without some serious adult supervision. We need a country with lots of Muslims. A country where the U.S. tried to help and left when things got hairy. Preferably one we've visited in the past 20 years...

Oooh! I've got it! SOMALIA!

Now, of course, Somalia is in Africa, has a less-educated populace and fewer natural resources than Iraq. But the security situation is making Iraqi school attendance iffy and the populace is settling nicely into the habit of sitting in the dirt and watching their goats while thinking hateful thoughts, so it's really not a BAD comparison.

Somalia is a sore topic here at Bad Dog Central, as, 14 years ago, Mr. Abby did a lot of sweating in the dirt there. He LOVES to watch CNN while they point out what a violent, evil pit of hysterical Islamic Terror that country is swirling into. Makes him feel like it was time well spent.

If they're not already, Al Qaeda will be running airplane-takeover drills in Somalia very soon. Al Qaeda leaders will be living in mud huts and giving evil orders on satphones from Somalia.

If we leave Iraq, they'll do the same things from there.

Also, if we leave Iraq, the neighbors will notice. They will notice that Americans will NOT tough things out. They will notice that Americans will NOT be inconvenienced at home by a protracted war. They will notice that AFTER Iraq, Americans will NOT be willing to send a single soldier any farther east than a pub in Germany.

And then they will begin again. With no fear that we will come storming in and destroy their nasty little dominions, the masters of terror will take a poke at our warships. They will carbomb western businesses in the middle east. They will storm our embassies and take hostages.

And someday not so very far in the future, they will take more of our planes. They will knock down more of our buildings. They will kill our children and our non-combatants here in our country again.

And we will wonder why.

The Middle East is a strange place. The currency is R-E-S-P-E-C-T and the language, the only one universally understood, is Force. There is at least one country in that region that is working toward developing the world's most dangerous weapons, and he is watching closely what we do on his border.

We must not leave Iraq whimpering. There is no painless solution, as much as we Americans like painless solutions. We change strategies, pay the price and win in Iraq now. Or we will bleed at home later. There is no third way.