An Early Withdrawal From Koch

Ed Koch has had enough, he tells readers of RCP.

Long a supporter of the war -- as well he should have been, since his city bore the brunt of the initial attack -- Koch wrote that he no longer can support the war because we're not being supported by Europe and "our Muslim allies" in the Middle East.

I agree that it's hardly fair that the world, which benefits greatly by what we're doing to stabilize oil deliveries and minimize terror attacks, sees us as the Little Red Hen and is only willing to eat the bread, not help bake it. But how does Koch force his hand to write this?

My own position has been that we were better off fighting Islamic terrorism in Iraq than abandoning and having that battle shift to American soil which I am certain will happen when we depart Iraq. But my support for remaining in Iraq was conditioned on our allies joining us in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sadly, very few have done so. Instead, many of those same allies criticize us for staying in Iraq.

So, Ed, if we pull out, do you suppose your beloved allies will rush to help us when the terror attacks start happening on our shores, as you rightly predict they will?

Of course not! They'll sit back and smugly opine on how we deserve whatever horrors the jihadists smite us with, because after all, we caused all that trouble for the poor, poor Iraqis.

Koch lays the blame largely on the Iraqi government for not embracing the Sunni thugs who brutally repressed them for so long -- something akin to Koch embracing Nazis. But here's the question for him and the others who are using the Iraqi government as an excuse to surrender: If al-Qaeda in Iraq were not actively trying to shatter the Iraqi government, would it not be functioning much better?

Of course it would be, so the answer is not to abandon the Iraqi government, it is to make al-Qaeda in Iraq stop.

Every day that goes by, it seems to become easier to give up, throw in the towel and join the defeatists. But read their stuff; the logic is convoluted, they downplay or cavalierly ignore the vile, long-range consequences of defeat, and they ignore the clear evidence that shows that staying on is the best, safest route for America.