Ed Koch bails out

Ed Koch wrote on RealClearPolitics I'm bailing out. I will no longer defend the policy of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq to assist the Iraqi central government in the ongoing civil war. While our men and women in the military suffer casualties daily, the Iraqi government refuses to take the major political actions required to end the civil war.

I don't think any Muslim government is prepared to do anything they need to do to achieve peace.

... For well over a year, I have urged the administration to issue an ultimatum to our Muslim allies of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait, all Sunni nations and our NATO allies in Europe. Unless they joined us with boots on the ground and contributed to the ongoing cost of the war against Al Qaeda and the insurgency in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we would leave.

Our Nato allies in Europe are too chicken to do anything, but the Arab allies you mention face a major threat deom Iran if we leave.

... "But getting out has at least four advantages. First, no more Americans will be dying while refereeing a civil war.

We are not doing that.

Second, the fear of an all-out civil war, as we do prepare to leave, may be the last best hope for getting the Iraqis to reach an 11th-hour political agreement.

Good point.

Third, as the civil war in Iraq plays out, it could, painfully, force the realignment of communities on the ground that may create a more stable foundation upon which to build a federal settlement. Fourth, we will restore our deterrence with Iran. Tehran will no longer be able to bleed us through its proxies in Iraq, and we will be much freer to hit Iran - should we ever need to - once we're out.

We should take our troops to Afganistan. And the closest way is through Iran.

Moreover, Iran will by default inherit management of the mess in southern Iraq, which, in time, will be an enormous problem for Tehran.".... I adopt Friedman's reasons as mine and repeat that I would support our troops remaining in Iraq if our allies were to join us. But they have made it clear they will not.

I propose that we do what the British did when they withdrew their troops from the historic Palestine Mandate they had assumed in 1922. They simply notified the United Nations that they would be gone by May 15, 1948, and they were, leaving to the U.N. to decide what it would do. It voted to partition Palestine and create two states: one Jewish and one Arab. Palestinians and Arab nations rejected the U.N. solution and waged war against the new Jewish State of Israel. With the exception of Egypt and Jordan, they still continue in a state of war with Israel, 59 years later.

The UN at it's best. And if they did it todaym the UN would probably screw the Jews even more.

I believe we can be out of Iraq in a few months if we want to leave, departing by way of Turkey in the north and via Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the south and west. We should leave to the Iraqi army the supplies and materials they will need to protect themselves and take all else with us, after first arming the Kurds. Common decency requires that we take with us those Iraqi civilians who helped us and would be in danger when we left.

Better vet them very very closely, or we will be bringing more trouble back here.

We should prepare for the battles that will take place on American soil by the Islamic forces of terror who are engaged in a war that will be waged by them against Western civilization for at least the next 30 years. They must be defeated for if, God forbid, they defeat us they will put us, the infidels, to the sword. They refer to Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and other Muslims they disagree with religiously as infidels.

That will not happen. Armegodon will happen, and the the 1.000 years of Christ's kingdom on earth.

Remember the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who earlier this year at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay confessed to killing journalist Danny Pearl on February 1, 2002: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan." He is the same Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that CNN referred to as "the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks." Remember, they have threatened to kill Pope Benedict XVI.

Remember also how we refused to take seriously the threats Adolf Hitler made in his book Mein Kampf. There were only 80 million Germans at the start of World War II. There are now one billion 400 million Muslims. There is still not yet a majority who subscribe to the Wahabist fundamentalist belief popular in Saudi Arabia that they have a duty to kill the infidel who will not convert or pay tribute. But there are tens of millions of Muslim fanatics, including English doctors, who believe that is their sacred duty. Wake up, America.