Ed Koch: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

To those who believe that when America leaves Iraq, Islamic terrorists will be satisfied and stop fighting, I say this: Wake up. The hard truth is that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists will continue their attacks on Americans everywhere, including our homeland. And they will use Iraq as a new base of operations.

In a May 28 article, The New York Times provided a chilling report. The article begins, “When Muhammad al-Darsi got out of prison in Libya last year after serving time for militant activities, he had one goal: killing Americans in Iraq. A recruiter…told him he was not needed in Iraq. Instead, he was drafted into the war that is seeping out of Iraq. A team of militants from Iraq had traveled to Jordan, where they were preparing attacks on Americans and Jews…”

In other words, the terrorist jihad will continue and many of the terrorists will be those who are now fighting in Iraq. It cannot be stated often enough that the goal of Islamic terrorists is the destruction of Western civilization and the restoration of the caliphate. The caliphate would unite all Muslims in one theocratic state, running from and including Spain to Indonesia, encompassing nearly 1.4 billion Muslims.

A May 27 Times article reported, “A bare majority of Iraq’s 275-member parliament recently signed a petition promoted by Mr. Sadr that called for a timetable for American troops to depart. Even so, the petition said the Americans should not leave until Iraqi security forces were ready to take over the job.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said recently, “I think that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it.” The “surge,” an increase of 30,000 American soldiers on the ground, will be over by then.

The radical Democratic left inside the Congress, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid and their supporters, believe that the U.S. should get out now and certainly no later than early next year. The Times reports in a May 26 article, “The Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, according to senior administration officials in the midst of the internal debate.”

Were it possible to remain in Iraq and accomplish the obvious goals of bringing true peace among the warring parties—Sunni, Shiite and Kurd—with a stable central government accepted by all, that would be ideal. But the Shiite majority does not want to forgive the Sunnis who oppressed them for so many years, and will not share government power or oil revenues with them. The Sunnis, who are 20 percent of the population, appear to be militarily more capable than the Shia and are primarily responsible for the car bombs and the improvised explosive devices that have killed American soldiers and Iraqis, both military personnel and civilians.

It is also devastating for American soldiers to learn that those serving in the Iraqi army, being trained by and fighting alongside American soldiers, cannot be trusted. A May 28 Times article reported on an incident in February “when [American] soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a Sergeant in the Iraqi army.” Kamber quotes an American soldier, “I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’...We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

The administration should demand the Iraqi government pass the power and oil-sharing changes immediately, and if it doesn’t, we should get out immediately. Further, we should give our regional Arab and NATO allies an ultimatum that if they don’t come in now with troops, we will leave immediately.

Waiting for the Iraqi army to be battle-ready is like waiting for Godot. They seem to know how to kill U.S. soldiers and terrorize innocent civilians, but are unable to keep the peace.

The Times reported in an article of May 26 on a convicted terrorist who “in February 2003…urg[ed] his followers to kill Hindus, Christians, Jews and American citizens…He was also heard to promise teenage Muslim boys that their reward in paradise would be 72 virgins if they died as religious martyrs.”

You can’t make this stuff up. The terrorists want to kill us and apparently, many Americans don’t believe it.