Andrew Sullivan responds to this excellent piece by John Burns in The New York Times. To quote Andrew: “One thing I wish were more insisted upon. It’s not just that we have no interest in seeing Iraq degenerate into a brutal civil and possibly regional war. By removing Saddam, we created this vacuum. We own it. We have a moral responsibility to see this through.” (OxBlog responds.)
I sympathize with those who are calling for U.S. forces to be withdrawn, from Cindy Sheehan to Jack Murtha, but the job must be finished first — that is, Iraq must be firmly stabilized, whether by the U.S. and its so-called “coalition of the willing” or by the U.S. in conjunction with the U.N. Simply put, the consequences of not finishing the job could turn out to be even worse than the gross injustices of this war.
Consider this something of an open discussion thread. What do you all think? Feel free to comment here at TMV or at The Reaction, where discussion is already underway.
(The graphic above is from the Times. Credits can be found at the John Burns piece linked above.)