The last helicopter: why the US must stay in Iraq

The Last Helicopter…

The Wall Street Journal had an excellent editorial today about the foreign perceptions of US Foreign policy. AMIR TAHERI, the article’s author, used the imagery of “the last helicopter” to set the scene.

(note: the link to the article doesn't work because it is for "subscribers only.")

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last helicopter." It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the bodies of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein's generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed (to) live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton's helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

I could not agree with this passage more. Every President since Ford has his “last helicopter” which pushed us out of a conflict. Bill Richardson, of the “Say No to Cut and Run”, a group opposed to the April 4th Referendum, said something similar at a panel last night. Each time we left a war zone in such a way, it has emboldened our enemies. It is time to end this cycle of running when the going gets tough.

The most interesting aspect of the piece was the fact that no foreign leader believes that the last helicopter will or could happen under Bush. But everyone in the middle east is preparing for 2008. Both allies and enemies are looking to the future and they see a President, be it Republican or a Democrat, who will leave the middle east. The new power broker is Iran in this world.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's (Iran’s President) defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as "waiting Bush out." "We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies," says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran's new Foreign Minister.

Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations with the Middle East as the main battlefield. In that clash Iran will lead the Muslim world against the "Crusader-Zionist camp" led by America. Mr. Bush might have led the U.S. into "a brief moment of triumph." But the U.S. is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while Iran is a sunrise (tolu'ee) one and, once Mr. Bush is gone, a future president would admit defeat and order a retreat as all of Mr. Bush's predecessors have done since Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Ahmadinejad also notes that Iran has just "reached the Mediterranean" thanks to its strong presence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He used that message to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to adopt a defiant position vis-à-vis the U.N. investigation of the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon. His argument was that once Mr. Bush is gone, the U.N., too, will revert to its traditional lethargy. "They can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face," Mr. Ahmadinejad told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran last month.

(Emphasis added)
It is a sad state of affairs when Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, the same fellow who called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, is waiting for Bush to leave office. He knows that Bush won’t bend to his tyranny, but he hopes that the next President will. This should be a lesson to every anti-war protestor out there. The truth is, and the dictators and tyrants of the middle east know it, is that George W. Bush is no match for them. Ahmadinejad even called the transformation in the middle east a “brief moment of triumph” for Bush. When his presidency is up, they expect that America will continue on its course of not caring about the rest of the world and retreat to our comfort zone.
This is why the anti-war movement in America is killing American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of our enemies are just “waiting Bush out.” They believe with every fiber of their essence that if they can wait just 2 more years, they will win. We as a nation must send the unequivocal message that we are in it for the long run, no matter who is President. Be them Democrat, Republican, or other, we, as a nation will not leave. This would kill the insurgency in a week, because all hope would be lost. The “last helicopter” would disappear from their dreams. But, instead, Madison is set to vote to pull out the troops, yet again, emboldening the insurgency.
We live in a dangerous world and our enemies, the ones that want to destroy America and kill Americans, are hoping that Bush leaves. It is disturbing when liberals and terrorists are on the same side of an issue: their hatred of Bush and his ideology. Well, this isn’t the first time liberals and terrorists have agreed on an issue, they both did want the patriot act defeated.