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 hile
the diplomats gather in Bonn to negotiate the makeup of the new
government of Afghanistan, the Middle East tyrants sit poised atop
a precipice, awaiting the arrival of the American armies to send
them to their doom. We are now in a position similar to that of
General George S. Patton in the summer of 1944. Having swept across
France in a month and routed the Wehrmacht with the unexpectedly
irresistible speed and power of his 3rd Army, Patton intuited that
the German army had become a hollow shell, and that he could destroy
it in a matter of weeks or even days. But fuel was in short supply,
and the Allied invasion plans called for a frontal assault along
a broad front, not a lightning strike. Patton begged for fuel for
his tanks, but he did not get it. The Germans reorganized, toughened
their morale, and fought again, producing the horrendous Battle
of the Bulge with their last desperate assault.
As then, it
is hard for us to appreciate how profoundly we have changed the
"facts on the ground," and yet how fragile is that transformation.
Patton was right about the Wehrmacht, and yet within a couple of
weeks the moment of supreme opportunity had passed. Today the entire
Middle East has seen a new American will combined with irresistible
armed forces. If we strike quickly against the terror states, we
have every reason to believe they will collapse like a house of
cards. If we delay, they may yet convince themselves that a successful
resistance is possible, dragging out the war, adding casualties
on both sides, and opening the door to meddlesome outsiders, from
the United Nations and the European Parliament to China.
Just look inside
the Middle Eastern tyrannies that support the terror network to
see the forces of freedom at work. The Iranian people demonstrate
repeatedly, demanding an end to the oppressive Islamic Republic.
On November 18th, Nicola Byrne wrote in the British Guardian
about her experiences at the Iran-Ireland soccer game in Tehran.
"It soon became obvious that the source of their anger was
not just the mediocre performance of their national team. Watched
by the country's senior clerics from the VIP stand...Under an enormous
mural of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranians ripped out and set
fire to seats, tore down banners depicting images of the country's
senior mullahs and trashed the windscreens of several hundred cars
outside." And she went on to describe the efforts of the regime
to halt "the beginnings of the social revolution which becomes
so evident every time they play."
A few days
later, a large crowd demonstrated at a ceremony to commemorate the
assassination of Dariush Foruhar and his wife three years ago. Foruhar
was the leader of the Iranian People's Party, which was subsequently
suppressed. The crowd chanted "Death to the Taliban, in Kabul
or Tehran," and "Referendum, referendum, this is the people's
battle cry," demanding a plebiscite on the abolition of the
Islamic Republic. They denounced Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
and called for freedom and democracy, despite a massive turnout
by state security police.
Repeated demonstrations
of such explicit intensity are undoubtedly the result of 22 years
of misery under the mullahs, but they are also fueled by the knowledge
that the American army is on the borders of Iran. Like Tom Hanks
shipwrecked on a desert island, the Iranians are trying desperately
to get the attention of our passing rescuers, hoping we will take
notice and liberate Iran. The mullahs and ayatollahs are well aware
of their peril, and have slyly been trying to present themselves
as opponents of the very terrorism they have done so much to fester,
train and equip. At the U.N. last week, and during a shockingly
soft interview on CNN, Iranian President Khatami feigned friendship
for the United States, lamenting some of our policies while shedding
crocodile tears for our murdered innocents.
Iran is ready
to blow sky-high. The Iranian people need only a bright spark of
courage from the United States to ignite the flames of democratic
revolution.
Similarly in
Iraq, opposition groups have exposed glaring weaknesses in Saddam's
oft-celebrated security apparatus. Over the past month, Iraqi opposition
groups have carried out numerous acts of sabotage, striking at oil
refineries, pipelines, and police headquarters. During the Thanksgiving
weekend, a Shiite resistance organization claimed to have hit one
of Saddam's palaces in Baghdad with a mortar shell.
Actions of
this sort cannot be carried out without considerable popular support,
and their many successes thus disprove the claim — recited
with misguided monotony at the highest levels of the State Department
and the Central Intelligence Agency — that it is hopeless for
the United States to support the Iraqi democratic opposition forces.
Quite the opposite is true: we are obliged to support them.
As in Afghanistan,
we need to create a zone of freedom, to which Saddam's enemies can
run to find safety and normalcy. We have long proclaimed a "no
fly" zone in the north of Iraq; now is the time to declare
it a "no trespassing" zone for the regime, a haven for
Saddam's enemies, and a staging ground for democratic revolution.
If Saddam dares challenge our control, we should deliver a crushing
blow.
Years ago,
a besieged leader of the Lebanese Christians, overwhelmed by Syrian-supported
Muslim fighters, cried out, "the Western world should either
support us, or change its name." If the freedom-craving Iranian
and Iraqi peoples could cry out to us today, they would echo his
words. They are willing to risk their lives for our common ideals
of freedom and democracy. They see the greatest instrument of democratic
revolution — the American Army — so close they can almost
touch it. They have heard President Bush promise to carry the war
to all countries that support and harbor terrorists, and they know
their own countries are in the forefront of the ranks of the terror
states.
They are ready
to roll, and their hated regimes are vulnerable as never before.
We do not have to invade, because we already have allied forces
on the ground. We will surely have to support them once the fighting
starts, but, just as the Taliban collapsed once our seriousness
was manifest, and we delivered on our promises to the Afghan people,
Saddam and the mullahs will follow suit.
It would be
shameful to lose this opportunity to reshape the Middle East, extend
the zone of freedom, and deliver a terrible blow to the terror network.
Now.
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