Axis of Appeasement

But if they are so bad, why aren8217;t we doing better? It has to do with the pigheadedness of the Bush team and the softheadedness of many allies. Regarding the Bush team, let me say yet again: We do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we never did. From the outset, the Bush Pentagon has treated Iraq as a lab test to prove that it can win a war with a small, mobile high-tech Army. Well, maybe you can defeat Saddam that way, but you can8217;t build a new Iraq 8212; and control its borders to prevent foreign terrorists from coming in 8212; with so few troops, especially when you disband the Iraqi army on top of it.

Don8217;t tell me we have enough troops in Iraq when our soldiers are getting picked off daily by roadside bombs, when our aid workers are getting murdered and when Iraqis are getting massacred by suicide missions. Don8217;t tell me we are not fighting this war on the cheap when our diplomats in Baghdad don8217;t have enough armoured cars, cellphones, bulletproof vests or escort troops to protect them as they try to travel around the country. We are now paying for the contradiction between President Bush8217;s two great projects: his war on taxes and his war on terrorism.

Yes, we can still win this, but right now, despite L Paul Bremer8217;s heroic success in helping Iraqis forge a progressive interim constitution, we can still lose it. If we do, it will be largely due to the Pentagon8217;s inability to secure Iraq, which has encouraged Iraqis to turn to sectarian militias for security, undermining nation-building and planting the seeds of civil war. Second, it will be because we have so few real allies. As Spain proves, we had a few friendly governments, but most people in Europe and Asia have never been with the Bush team 8212; especially when it continues to insist that we are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war. It8217;s time for the Bush team to admit it was wrong about this and move on.

Unless Bush dispenses with his discredited argument for the war 8212; WMD 8212; no one will hear or listen to what I believe was always the only right argument for the war and is now the only rationale left: to depose the genocidal Saddam regime in order to partner with the Iraqi people to build a decent government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world 8212; because it is the pathologies and humiliations produced by Arab misgovernance that are the root causes of terrorism and Muslim extremism.

Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by pulling Spain8217;s troops out of Iraq 8212; even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.

I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq 8212; to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis8217; attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.

My dream is that the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the United Nations8217; return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq8217;s first democratic election.

The notion that Spain can separate itself from al Qaeda8217;s onslaught on Western civilisation by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill8217;s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: 8216;8216;You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.8217;8217;

New York Times