Sunday, July 22, 2007

Worse 'n Gerson   [Mark Steyn]

Michael, that Gerson piece is amazing, coming from someone so close to the heart of the White House. "Hostile powers are adding accelerants to Iraq's frothing chaos"? Hang on, it wasn't chaotic and frothing until the hostile powers got to work on it. The idea that Iran and Syria are merely the septic cherries on an already toxic cake is profoundly wrong. Both states have been consciously committed to not just to "feeding sectarian rage" but to creating it, by any means necessary: Iran, for example, has supplied material to both parties in Iraq's "civil war" in a four-year-long campaign to persuade the locals to show up for it.

And, as for the notion that Syria "allows the transit" of suicide bombers, no, they promote it: the only ones who passively "allow the transit" are the coalition forces who took a decision in the spring of 2003 that the foreign subversion of Iraq could only be resisted defensively (in contrast to what the Brits did when faced with Indonesia fomenting trouble in post-independence Malaysia).

I don't believe the President thinks of Syria and Iran as mere "accelerants". But it's unnerving that someone so close to him these past six years does. 

07/22 11:30 AMShare