Pre-emptive war

Iraq the Model is all for it.

America too had her share of mistakes that made things go in the wrong direction instead of helping out. Perhaps America's biggest mistake was the hesitation in keeping up the strategy of preemptive war.

Yes, America used that strategy in Iraq but failed to go on, and instead of chasing terrorists, America stopped at Iraq and sat waiting for terrorists to come in.

Point or no point, I have to say it ticks me off. We're sitting there waiting for you people to get your shit together. You have sovereignty, try using it. Close borders, close bank accounts, get people involved, arrest Sadr.

Thank you Secretary Rice:

Rice said the U.S. role is "to support all the parties and indeed to press all the parties to work toward that resolution quickly because obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated and it is not one that is being helped by political inaction."

In a series of meetings with leaders representing most ethnic and religious factions, Rice delivered a blunt message about how Americans do not see the history behind ethnic and sectarian splits, said a senior State Department official present at the sessions.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were confidential, said Rice also said Americans need to see Iraqis working together rather than killing one another.

UPDATE: From an anonymous comment at Instapundit:

We're not losing momentum in Iraq. The Pentagon strategy is a very deliberate form of tough love that is forcing the Iraqis to defend their own country.

Arabs are culturally the most passive, fence-sitting people on the planet. By their own admission they follow the strongest leader out there. If we had sent 500,000 troops to Iraq and fought a Soviet-style counterinsurgency, the end result would have been an Iraq with no incentive to do the very hard work of creating viable fighting forces from scratch. We would've been their new masters in perpetuity.

We also can't attack Iran and Syria right now because the Iranians would then activate their Iraqi militias and send a million Basij into Iraq. Syria would do a Saddam and start firing WMD-tipped missiles at Israel. The entire region could go up in flames.

Don't let the media convince you that things are going badly in Iraq. The Anbar tribes are now fighting al Qaeda on their own initiative, and the Shi'ite-dominated government is slowly dismantling al Sadr's Mahdi Army. "Experts" predicted that neither of these things would ever happen because of secular loyalties, but they are happening, and only because we're forcing the Iraqis to stand up and fight for their country.

Finally, take a look at what happened when the French, Soviets, and Russians fought Muslim insurgencies with the kind of aggressive, "proactive" approach so many Americans claim to want.

The French lost 18,000 in Algeria, a KIA rate three and a half times ours. The Soviets lost 14,000 in Afghanistan, a KIA rate twice ours. The Russians officially lost 5500 in the First Chechen War of 1994-96, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia puts the actual number at 14,000, a KIA rate ten times ours. Nobody knows how many Russian troops have died in the Second Chechen War, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia had the number at 11,000 by 2003.

Our strategy in Iraq is sound. It's keeping our own casualties down, and it's forcing the Iraqis to defend themselves.

Don't despair. We're winning.