Mark Steyn for General!

This is what I admire about Steyn, his attitude and his ability to convey it in print:

I strongly dislike that veteran-foreign-correspondent look where you wander around like you've been sleeping round the back of the souk for a week. So I was wearing the same suit I'd wear in Washington or New York, from the Western Imperialist Aggressor line at Brooks Brothers. I had a sharp necktie I'd bought in London the week before. My cuff links were the most stylish in the room, and also the only ones in the room. I'm not a Sunni Triangulator, so there's no point pretending to be one. If you're an infidel and agent of colonialist decadence, you might as well dress the part.

I ordered the mixed grill, which turned out to be not that mixed. Just a tough old, stringy chicken. My tie would have been easier to chew. The locals watched me -- a few obviously surly and resentful, the rest wary and suspicious. But I've had worse welcomes in Berkeley, so I chewed on, and, washed down with a pitcher of coliform bacteria, it wasn't bad.

Why didn't they kill me? Because, as Osama gloated after 9/11, when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they go with the strong horse. And in May 2003, four weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition forces were indisputably the strong horse.

That last paragraph deserves repeating. As I've said before, we need to drill the logical conclusion into these people that we are not fated to be beaten by the likes of bin Laden and al-Sadr, and that they would do better for themselves to keep their heads down and try it our way. I personally believe that God's will is for them to be free and to take responsibility for their choices, which is probably why their apostate clerics keep telling them that there is no free will.

We can't argue with them, though. The thing we should pay attention to is this, also from Steyn, "The Iraqi people don't want to be on the American side, only on the winning side." The more ephatically we make that point, and the more we repeat it, the better. We're willing to help them rebuild their society, but not to let them turn it over to another Arab dictator.

And if the claim by one of Sadr's militia leaders, "'If they come for our leader, they will ignite all of Iraq," worries you. Remember that Arabs always exaggerate and boast, but they don't often follow up on their boasts. Contrary to the image we (and most Arabs) have of them, most Arabs don't have the energy to be persistent terrorists. As Steyn points out, "in the Arab world, the indifferent are the biggest demographic." They've been conquered and subjected to true oppression for so long, mostly by their fellow Muslims the Turks, that they have exchanged brave talk for truly brave actions. Mostly what is left is empty threats and crazy, suicide attacks with little or no planning for what comes after.