If President Bush has done anything wrong with the Iraq war, it was in not fighting it aggressively enough during the initial combat phase, or in the aftermath.
Marvin Olasky apparently agrees. From his TownHall.com column:
It turns out that Sherman was right: When an army gains an advantage, it has to pound away, not let up. My early misassumption -- and far more important, the Bush administration's -- became evident quickly: On May 15, 2004, the cover headline in World, the magazine I edit, was 'WHAT A MESS: U.S. mishandling of postwar Iraq is a recipe for civil war.'
Olasky now realizes "compassionate warfare" isn't feasible:
Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman would have scoffed at such a campaign. His doctrine was, "War is cruelty. You cannot refine it." He ravaged Georgia and South Carolina in 1864 and 1865, but had he not shown how devastating total war was, the surrender of Robert E. Lee might have been followed by years of guerrilla warfare.
Sometimes you just have to get in there and fight...and sometimes people get hurt.
I think Bush may have made the same mistake in Iraq that he made when he came to Washington determined to implement this "new tone" business, where he thought he could work rationally with national Democrats.
The fallacy of this assumption was quickly proved after he invited Ted Kennedy to the White House for popcorn and movies, only to have Kennedy viciously stab him in the back and malign him politically. Bush failed to realize that Washington Democrats aren't like most state-level Democrats. Back home in Texas, Democrats were still somewhat reasonable; in Washington, 98 out of 100 of them are nothing but socialists that would rather see their own country disgraced and crippled than see a Republican succeed.
Similarly, Islamic fanatics will never love the United States. You can set them free from their Islamic oppressors, and they'll only hate you for fighting another Muslim. Not all Muslims are like this, but there are enough to make Iraq a tough row to hoe.
Bush's "misassumption" with Ted Kennedy and Islamofacists is the same misunderstanding that many Americans suffer from: they can't come to grips that some people are just evil.
There are some people out there, as hard to believe as it may be, who are intent on doing harm to good people. They are intent on doing evil. It's a simple fact. It's also a simple fact that people like this must be dealt with swiftly, firmly, and without hesitation.
The faster Bush--and the American people--realizes this, the better we'll all be.
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