Mark Kennedy: “This is the front line in the war on terrorism. We are up against people who kill men and women with no mercy and with…”

“This is the front line in the war on terrorism. We are up against people who kill men and women with no mercy and with no shame. One of the most vivid discussions I had was with the vice mayor of Mosul. He said, for you in America, this is a foreign policy issue. But for the jihadists that want to take the world back and have the women wearing veils, and have the men punished if they shave their beards, and have a few guys in beards making all of the decisions, and do what they have not been able to accomplish in so many other areas, if we succeed and have a democracy and freedom and an open economy in Iraq, they will fail and fail forever, because just as Iraq has been a very disrupting force in the region in the past, it has the potential to be a force that expands that freedom, expands that prosperity, expands that openness and that choice to their neighbors, to Iran, to Syria, to Saudi Arabia, and what better way to make Americans secure, to make sure that they are not going to have to be worrying about their security than to plant that freedom in Iraq in that neighborhood.”