Iraq

Turkey and the United States are approaching a critical strategic crossroad that will determine both the shape and the content of their relationship for the foreseeable future. The pressures forcing change on this long-standing alliance -- which has endured since the Truman Doctrine in 1947 -- are powerful. Neither Turkish nor American policymakers seem to grasp the emerging reality that this important friendship is fast eroding; alternatively, they have concluded that the alliance has run its course and are prepared to let it go.

So who is an American? What’s the key to American identity? The answer can be hard, even brutal. But it’s ours -- we earned it with our own blood.

Whenever America travels around the world in a military adventure -- or misadventure -- the question needs to be answered anew. And whenever globalists and open-borderers want to bring the world here, without respect for American culture and tradition, that question needs to be answered yet again, even more emphatically.

Over two million Iraqi refugees have fled their country’s borders since the American-led invasion that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although the largest concentrations are in Syria and Jordan, up to 150,000 Iraqis have settled in Egypt. Wary of the massive influx experienced in Syria and Jordan, the Egyptian authorities have reportedly closed their door to new Iraqis and have not granted those Iraqis who have made it to Egypt any official status or access to social services.

Iraq’s internally displaced are in desperate need of assistance as the Public Distribution System (PDS) that they and other Iraqis depend on for food and fuel is broken. Poor management is to blame for its shortcomings, as well as terrible security and a general lack of political will on the part of the Government of Iraq to acknowledge the scope of the crisis. With the central government unable or at times unwilling to protect and assist Iraqi civilians, donor governments must step in to fill the gaps.

[JOHN] ROBERTS [CNN ANCHOR, THIS WEEK AT WAR]: Thursday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that there was a great reluctance to indulge in happy talk about the security situation in Iraq and that it could be months before any real progress is seen there. In military terms in political terms, can the administration wait that long?.. With me here in Washington in the studio, [is] Flynt Leverett. He's the former Middle East analyst on the national security council, now a senior fellow with the New America Foundation...

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration’s argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.

Edward Luttwak, an internationally recognized authority in the area of military strategy, recently contended in testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations that, "only with the United States’ disengagement can Iraqis find their own equilibrium." He underscores the futility of trying to micromanage an Iraqi reality which lacks sustainability and merely prolongs failure. Dr. Luttwak sees disengagement, not withdrawal, as the only reasonable plan that still safeguards Iraq’s borders and doesn’t needlessly abandon Iraq to chaos.

When I was in college, during Ronald Reagan’s "Morning in America," I had a classmate who is the person I always think of when I try to imagine the young George W. Bush. (Although the comparison is terribly unfair to this person, since unlike Bush, he has considerable accomplishment to show for his first 45 years on this planet.) This guy had a little motto, typical of the privileged-punk campus conservatism that was then just taking hold, and that would dominate the next two decades: "U.S.A!," he would declare, pumping a fist in the air, "We’re five and one in major wars!"

What do fifteen of the smartest people in the room-presidential scholars, best-selling biographers, and White House veterans of both parties--think history will say about the legacy of George W. Bush? And is there anything he can still do to change it?...

"Have you tried any of the new Iraqi restaurants over on Coldwater Canyon?"

That might sound odd today, but within a few years, Angelenos may very well come to learn more about Iraqi cuisine and culture than they ever could have imagined. There may develop a Little Mesopotamia -- possibly with its own marker on the freeway -- in the Valley, or maybe in the OC. You never know.