The war will be won
From William Shawcross
Sir: It is nonsense to suggest, as Michael Wolff tried last week (‘The nation wobbles’, 2 July), that the war in Iraq is almost lost.
Terrorists are certainly doing their best to destroy the hopes of Iraq. But the resistance to them is strong. Mr Wolff dismisses the fact that eight million people defied the terrorists in January to vote as merely a ‘high moment of triumphalism’. So much for the freest election ever held in the Arab world.
He claims that the Sunni 30 per cent of the country who did not vote are now ‘supporting an insurgency against both the occupiers and the rest of the nation’. That is untrue. The Sunnis are split. Some have sided with the Sunni terrorists who want to murder the Shia majority of Iraq. Mainstream Sunni leaders have regretted that they did not take part in the election and have asked for fatwas from their clerics instructing Sunnis to vote next time.
Mr Wolff claims that this is one man’s war — President Bush’s. Rubbish. It is a fight for the future of 25 million people. When it is won, that will be above all because of the courage and sacrifice of American soldiers and the determination of the vast majority of the 25 million Iraqis who do not want to be car-bombed back into tyranny. A little more sympathy and support for them would have been appropriate from Mr Wolff.
William Shawcross St Mawes, Cornwall
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