Good For the Dems

I'll give them props for not stopping funding or requiring an exit timetable.

I know this war is unpopular. And I might be the last liberal hawk on the planet. But I still believe in several things:

1. Wars aren't won and lost by opinion polls. I believe in Representative Democracy, not direct democracy. We elect a President and a Congress and they should make what they think are wise foreign policy decisions, not decisions based upon electoral popularity or what the rest of the world thinks.

2. Which brings us back to what is wise foreign policy. With respect to the Middle East, America has basically two options:

a. Support stability
b. Support reform

Supporting stability means helping those in power stay in power - in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, in Iran, in Syria. It also means alienating another generation of young Arabs and giving them little option other than to suck it up and live in autocratic, repressive societies or turn towards radical Islam. It is the cheaper option of the two. And it is what most Americans now want. They want the headlines and the death to go away, get out of their face.

I, on the other hand, support reform. I support minority democratic movements in Iraq and Lebannon. I support representative government and not tyrannical regimes. Not only do I support it in moral principal, as most Americans do, but I support it in terms of America's financial and human resources. And I also believe we should continue to support, nurture, and protect these movements and send a firm message to potential democrats in the region - if you stand up, we'll stand by your side. We've never done that in the Middle East - ever. We've always sold them short so we could keep the oil flowing. And maybe those were the right decisions at the time. I just don't think they would be the right decision anymore. Maybe I'm being naive, but we've been blessed with a lot in this country and I think maybe we should be willing to sacrifice some of what we have so that others can have a similar opportunity.

3. Iraq is a keystone state in the region. This is not Vietnam, an irrelevant state from a world scale perspective. Iraq is in the heart of the most volitile region in the world, which also happens to be where 80% of the world's petrol reserves are.

4. Our need for oil is not going away anytime soon.

In order for me to admit defeat and want to leave Iraq, I guess you'd have to convince me that most Iraqis don't want us there. I am still under the impression that it is only a small minority of people committing the atrocities in Iraq, all of which are designed to make us leave. Otherwise, I'm down for sticking it out until there is a political solution whereby the majority of the insurgency puts down their weapons and together we all focus on rooting out the most radical elements, ie Al Queda.