Truth 1, Propaganda 0

THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.

Which I’m sure will come as a surprise to the “sophisticates” reacting the America the way they react to anything else they can’t fathom – by pot-banging in the street at any sort of change to the world, and attaching any sort of consequences to brutality and injustice are being done.

As usual, the home-truths of the peace-through-tyrant-appeasement left are wrong and failed, just as they have been historically:

Similarly, it seems clear that US standing in Japan declined most recently when it softened its position on North Korea, something international liberal opinion universally demanded. However, some other facts are incontrovertible. Japan in 2003 sent 600 troops to Iraq to help the Americans. The Japanese leader who did this, Junichiro Koizumi, was subsequently re-elected in a landslide.

South Korea is even more instructive. Some of the strategic dinosaurs at the Australian National University write as if the US-South Korea alliance is finished and that the day is both inevitable and soon when China will be the dominant power in South Korea. This was always a silly bit of analysis that had a brief vogue six or seven years ago. To hold it now, it is necessary that you never look at what is actually happening in South Korea.