Octopodial Chrome

Jonah Goldberg demonstrates how progressivism and fascism were intertwined in the early twentieth century.

Here’s a truly disturbing picture: an Iraqi woman holding her slain six-year-old son in her arms. The family was headed home after enrolling the boy in school when terrorists fired on their car, killing one boy and wounding another. Different people have different reactions to it: some people want us to leave Iraq; others react with hatred towards Bush; but I have a different reaction entirely.

I believe this picture show why we must remain in Iraq. We’re there to prevent murders like this when we can and to punish them when we can’t. If we leave, we give men like those who slew this boy leave to do whatever they will to other sons and daughters.

Whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in the first place is immaterial now; whether our invasion caused more death and suffering than would otherwise be the case is also immaterial. We invaded; that’s a fact. Whatever death and suffering we have caused has already been caused. The question now is what the best course of action going forward is. If we stay, there will be some amount of death and suffering; if we leave, there will be some amount of death and suffering.

I hold that our staying is better than our leaving, that if we leave the misery will be greater than if we stay. We fight in order to hunt down and punish the men who killed this boy; we fight in order to stop men like them from killing others.

As a side-note, if your response to the photo is to want to leave Iraq, the you and people like you are part of why the boy was killed. One of the goals of his murderers is to drive us from Iraq; they believe they can do that by killing innocents.