Madam, - Your Editorial of September 17th rightly drew attention to the fact that the agreement to reduce the extra US troops deployed for the surge in Iraq over the next nine months is "a clever exercise in the art of domestic politics" that "will change little on the ground in Iraq".
What is needed is more, not fewer, boots on the ground. Is the West awake?
Everyone knows that mistakes were made in the invasion of Iraq - the chief one being that not enough troops were sent due to over-confident planning by Donald Rumsfeld, who rejected the Army Chief of Staff's estimate of 500,000 troops necessary for the post-war operation. This was aggravated by the short-sighted disbanding of the Iraqi army.
Wrong decisions are taken by all commanders in all wars, but this must be the first time in the history of the world that everybody seems to think mistakes cannot be rectified. Is the West awake? Faced with a war of annihilation we ignore even the open boasting of the arch-virus himself, Osama bin Laden, on the anniversary of 9/11.
Nazism was faced down in the second World War. Expansionist Communism was faced down in the Cold War. The third World War will be unlike anything for which we have ever trained. It has already started with casualties in European and American cities. The enemy is political Islam, aiming at an international Caliphate. Its soldiers speak many languages and do not even know each other. But they know and are fanatically committed to their ideology and their hate.
There is no massing of troops on Western borders, but the advance guard has already arrived, ranging from a malcontent immigrant underclass to members of the medical profession. There is no recognisable government we can threaten, no central command, no citadel we can bomb. The vast weight of Western firepower is useless because there are no suitable targets.
There is only one possible defence and that is boots on the ground.
We have had a new European dawn with Sarkozy and Merkel. There is no Chirac suffering from anti-Americanism and delusions of grandeur. There is no reason why the EU cannot take long overdue action. Success, which means security for the people of Iraq that will allow them to solve their own political problems and get rid of the extremists, is essential for the security of the West. Failure will recruit thousands of fanatics to the banner of al-Qaeda.
The recent briefing by Gen David Petreaus was a model of clarity, brevity and vigour. The main problem faced by the West is the lack of clear logical thinking. Political discourse has been almost irretrievably polluted by the anti-Bush media agenda.
The West is asleep.
- Yours, etc,
P.D. GOGGIN, Glenageary Woods, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.