Friday, January 12
Peggy Noonan: Neither Iraqis nor Democrats seem ready to do what's required of them
"The question that suddenly began to crop up in all the talk after the speech was: What will fill the vacuum if America simply says, 'We gave it our best, but the Iraqi people didn't seem to want to cooperate in their freedom, so we will have to leave'? The talk was grim and believable. Ethnic cleansing, religious warfare, geopolitical machinations potentially harmful -- almost certainly harmful, and deeply so -- to America and the West. One argument seems tired and not true. It is that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists of the world will have a safe place in which to gather, coalesce, plan and move. They already have such places, in the Mideast and outside it, and maybe here. Terrorists hide, and the world is full of hiding places..."
