The Banality of Victory...

Think about this: what is more banal than a dentist? The guy takes care of people's teeth, tut-tuts them when they haven't flossed, straightens crooked teeth and does the occasional root canal when something goes bad. If he's in Germany, he might pull it instead, and dentists' techniques vary in many ways little. There are some new-fangled developments, like laser drills, better ways of dealing with problems, but ultimately being a dentist is a very banal job, helping his fellow and occasionally making a very decent living while doing so. I've known a few dentists, and not all make tons of money.

So why pay attention when a dentists writes an op-ed? Is it about some aspect of health care or health insurance?

Only indirectly.

This is an op-ed by a dentist (hat tip: Michael J. Totten).

It's one of the best I've seen on the fundamental topics of the Iraq war, written by an Iraqi dentist. He cuts to the core of the problem: wanting the US out means nothing less than abandoning Iraqis to whoever kills off his rivals first.

This is the greatest failure of the anti-war left, the Democratic Party and those whose BDS is so far advanced that they are willing to kill and fundamentally enslave Iraqis to ensure that Iraq turns into failure at the brink of success.

Let me quote:

The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.

They understand only power. It is with power they took over their countries and held their peoples hostage. Everything they accomplished was through absolute control over the assets of their nations through murder, torture, repression and intimidation.

Those who prefer to bury their heads in the dirt today, and withdraw from this difficult fight, will be cursed forever for abandoning their duty when they were most capable. I don't understand why someone who has all the tools for victory would refuse to fight an enemy that reminds us every day that it is evil - with all the daily beheadings, torture and violations of all humane laws and values.

With America's help - and only with its help - the decent people of Iraq can still prevail.

This is what is at stake: if the Democrats in Congress push through their solution to Iraq, then they are condemning the decent people of Iraq to a return to exactly "politics as usual."

And what the Democrats don't understand is that politics as usual - a "stable" Middle East that is about as stable as the Yellowstone caldera and just as potentially deadly - is one of the leading reasons why Al-Quaeda has been so successful. Sure, bin Laden and his cohort hate the Great Satan and the Little Satan, but their goal is to re-establish a caliphate, of muslims united. Their reason?

Because the existing states in the Middle East are almost invariably severely corrupt and repressive, and the existing states in the Middle East are a fundamental part of the problem: the exception, as always, is Israel, with some of the Emirates coming closer. The other states in the Middle East exist to serve the politicians in power, resulting in nominal democracies like Egypt having their leaders not elected fair and square, but via dynastic succession.

Mohammed Fahil, dentist in Baghdad, has a better understanding of the stakes than the entire Democratic Party summed up together, and then some.

And I, too, do not understand why the fight against evil is so incomprehensible to the Democratic Party and the anti-war left. You can't negotiate with evil: just think of the idiot in the first Die Hard movie who thought he could finess the bad guys and had absolutely no idea of who he was dealing with and ended up dead for his stupidity.

That's who the Democrats of today remind me of.