Foreign Policy As Politics - Following The Obama Example

Foreign policy, including the use of force, should always be based on national interests, not politics. Just a reminder, as we consider Obama's call to attack Syria because Assad violated Obama's redline and slaughtered over a thousand innocents, recall if you will how the left tried to legislate defeat of our nation during the Iraq War for purely political gain and irrespective of the consequences. This from James Taranto at WSJ:

In 2007 Obama asserted that American troops should be withdrawn from Iraq even if that would result in genocide:

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done," Mr. Obama told the AP. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."

These past statements indict the president for hypocrisy, but they do not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In his defense one might claim that his moral sensibility has matured over the past six years. Perhaps, that is, he has grown in office--though he has not grown nearly enough by other measures that one can say he is up to the job.

Unless in the next week or so he discovers a heretofore unrealized capacity to move public opinion on substantive matters of policy, the expedient thing for lawmakers of either party to do will be to vote "no" while smugly minimizing the moral stakes by noting that while Assad is of course "a bad guy," he poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, the Syrian economy is in shambles, there are lots of other mass-murdering dictators and we can't bomb 'em all, and so forth.

Any opportunistic lawmaker who takes that path will be following the example set by the man who is now president of the United States.

As I said in the post below, I would support attacking Syria if the attack was of sufficient strength to change the trajectory of the Syrian civil war because, that, in the long run, is in our national interest. It is in our national interest primarily because it would hurt Iran, and they are the true enemy in the Middle East that has to be defeated. But I will say, it is a bitter pill to swallow, to now give the traitorous left moral and political cover to use force.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Cut, Run & Dominoes

Aurthur Hermann, writing at the WSJ, gives us a retrospective on the laundry list of effects resulting from the America's legislated surrender in Viet Nam and then the complete refusal to further support the South Vietnamese government. As he says, America cannot afford another retreat.

___________________________________________________

This from Mr. Hermann in the WSJ:

Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.

Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.

Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.

The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.

But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.

Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.

Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.

In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.

After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?

With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.

At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).

That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.

Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.

The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.

Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.

In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene. . . .

Read the entire article. I've always found it interesting that it was Democrats who got us into the Vietnam War in the first place, starting with Truman and then major increases in involvement, first under JFK than under LBJ with the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to massive intervention. Yet, within a period of a few years, it was as if the Democrats absolved themselves of any responsiblity whatsoever and, indeed, by 1972 the war was being portrayed as a Republican albatros. That is a turn of events that still mystifies me.

Read More...

Summary only...

Acts of War by Iran, Acts of Perfidy by the Left

For many of us who are prior military or who have family in the military, little can be more maddening than watching our soldiers attacked in Iraq by neighboring Iran in a proxy war while we do nothing to force a halt to their actions. Possibly the only thing approaching that in frustration is the left wing media and State Dept. officials who spin for Iran, and the Democrats in Congress whose mantra of "taking care of our soldiers" is so bereft of any true substance as to be a mockery. As I posted here, we are finally seeing indications of preperation for the use of force against Iran. And that has sent the NYT others on the far left into a fierce rearguard action.

_______________________________________________________

The NYT leads today with an effort in agenda journalism - Questions Linger On Scope Of Iran's Threat To Iraq - aimed at undercutting the justification for the use of force against Iran.

The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.

Didn't we just hear our two top officials in Iraq say that Iran was the single greatest threat to Iraqi stability and U.S. troops in Iraq today? Apparently, the NYT has not willingly suspended its disbelief.

We have some two hundred soldiers dead just from Iranian supplied IEDS, and hundreds of others wounded and maimed. Our forces and the Iraqi Parliament in the Green Zone are coming under daily attack from Iranian rockets and mortars. We have captured numerous Qods force operatives and high level Hezbollah agents in Iraq, and have a very full picture of how they are training and directing forces against the U.S. Until two weeks ago, Basra, the economic center of Iraq, was more a part of Iran than Iraq. There seems no uncertainty of the threat Iran to the Iraqi Shia. More than 300,000 of them in southern Iraq petitioned their government in November to battle the Iranian scourge:

The Iranians, in fact, have taken over all of south Iraq," said a senior tribal leader from the south who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life. "Their influence is everywhere."

. . . [T]he petition organizers said many citizens are fiercely opposed to Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs.

. . . "The most painful stab in the back of the Shiites in Iraq by the Iranian regime has been its shameful abuse of Shiite religion to achieve its ominous end," the sheiks said a statement. "The only solution and hopeful prospect for Iraq, and in particular the southern provinces, is the eviction of the Iranian regime from our homeland."

Read the entire article. The only uncertainty about the threat Iran poses seems to be among the far left and our MSM.

So how could the NYT justify this uncertainty? Why, with quotes from several anonymous sources - and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.

. . . Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who has called for opening talks with Iran, said that while she believed that there was evidence that Iran was aiding Shiite militias, she worried about the tenor of the administration’s latest warnings.

“This is not a new thing,” she said of Iran’s involvement. “Why all of a sudden do the sabers start to rattle?”

This is amazing. One, it conflicts with the clear statement of General Petraeus, who presumably is in the single best position to make this assessment. Two, after the highly politicized canard produced by our intelligence agencies in the December, the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons programs, I am not inclined to credit any weight to an anonymous intelligence source. Three, if you look at what the NYT has written and the position of Senator Feinstein, they are not contesting that Iran is conducting a proxy war in Iraq. Rather, they are suggesting that the murder and maiming of our soldiers at the current level, whatever that maybe, is acceptable. It leaves me near speechless.

Let me give the NYT and others on the left a big hint. Taking care of our soldiers doesn't mean putting them in permanent garrisons in the U.S. Keeping our soldiers out of war is not "taking car of our soldiers." That is their mission, though it is a decision that should only be taken with great caution. Rather, taking care of our soldiers means that when they are committed to a war, making damn sure that our government does everything possible to allow for force protection. That means that the only acceptable level of casualties from the acts of Iran are zero. And it means that if Iran is causing American casualties, they should be paying an impossibly high price for their actions.

To continue:

Iran . . . has shifted tactics to distance itself from a direct role in Iraq since the American military captured 20 Iranian operatives inside Iraq in December 2006 and January 2007. Ten of those Iranians remain in American custody.

Since then, Iran seems to have focused instead on training Iraqi Shiite fighters inside Iran, though the exact number remains unclear. . . .

Surely the NYT is not suggesting that Iran is not funding nor arming these proxy forces, in addition to training them. Apparently, the point the NYT is making is that the Iranians are simply not exercising direct control over the day to day targeting of these groups. To the NYT, that distinction without a difference is apparently important. One wonders if there is a single reporter or editor at the NYT with military experience or with relatives serving now in Iraq. If there were, I seriously doubt that agenda journalism like this would be tolerated.

I can see the reasons for not responding to Iran's provications in the past, given the unsettled problems in Iraq. Those problems are now resolving. And Iran needs to be next in our sights.

Read More...

Summary only...

Iraqi Progress & Blood On Iran's Hands

Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham write in the WSJ today on the situation in Iraq and provide a clear statement of Iran's proxy war against the U.S., noting that the "Iranians have American blood on their hands."


_______________________________________________________

This from the Lieberman and Graham write in today's WSJ, reviewing the progress in Iraq, Iranian acts of war, and spelling out why we have an absolute necessity to succeed in Iraq:

. . . No one can deny the dramatic improvements in security in Iraq achieved by Gen. Petraeus, the brave troops under his command, and the Iraqi Security Forces. From June 2007 through February 2008, deaths from ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad have fallen approximately 90%. American casualties have also fallen sharply, down by 70%.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been swept from its former strongholds in Anbar province and Baghdad. The liberation of these areas was made possible by the surge, which empowered Iraqi Muslims to reject the Islamist extremists who had previously terrorized them into submission. Any time Muslims take up arms against Osama bin Laden, his agents and sympathizers, the world is a safer place.

In the past seven months, the other main argument offered by critics of the Petraeus strategy has also begun to collapse: namely, the alleged lack of Iraqi political progress.

Antiwar forces last September latched onto the Iraqi government's failure to pass "benchmark" legislation, relentlessly hammering Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as hopelessly sectarian and unwilling to confront Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Here as well, however, the critics in Washington have been proven wrong.

In recent months, the Iraqi government, encouraged by our Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has passed benchmark legislation on such politically difficult issues as de-Baathification, amnesty, the budget and provincial elections. After boycotting the last round of elections, Sunnis now stand ready to vote by the millions in the provincial elections this autumn. The Iraqi economy is growing at a brisk 7% and inflation is down dramatically.

And, in launching the recent offensive in Basra, Mr. Maliki has demonstrated that he has the political will to take on the Shiite militias and criminal gangs, which he recently condemned as "worse than al Qaeda."

Of course, while the gains we have achieved in Iraq are meaningful and undeniable, so are the challenges ahead. Iraqi Security Forces have grown in number and shown significant improvement, but the Basra operation showed they still have a way to go. Al Qaeda has been badly weakened by the surge, but it still retains a significant foothold in the northern city of Mosul, where Iraqi and coalition forces are involved in a campaign to destroy it.

Most importantly, Iran also continues to wage a vicious and escalating proxy war against the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. The Iranians have American blood on their hands. They are responsible, through the extremist agents they have trained and equipped, for the deaths of hundreds of our men and women in uniform. Increasingly, our fight in Iraq cannot be separated from our larger struggle to prevent the emergence of an Iranian-dominated Middle East.

These continuing threats from Iran and al Qaeda underscore why we believe that decisions about the next steps in Iraq should be determined by the recommendations of Gen. Petraeus, based on conditions on the ground.

It is also why it is imperative to be cautious about the speed and scope of any troop withdrawals in the months ahead, rather than imposing a political timeline for troop withdrawal against the recommendation of our military.

Unable to make the case that the surge has failed, antiwar forces have adopted a new set of talking points, emphasizing the "costs" of our involvement in Iraq, hoping to exploit Americans' current economic anxieties.

Today's antiwar politicians have effectively turned John F. Kennedy's inaugural address on its head, urging Americans to refuse to pay any price, or bear any burden, to assure the survival of liberty. This is wrong. The fact is that America's prosperity at home and security abroad are bound together. We will not fare well in a world in which al Qaeda and Iran can claim that they have defeated us in Iraq and are ascendant.

There is no question the war in Iraq – like the Cold War, World War II and every other conflict we have fought in our history – costs money. But as great as the costs of this struggle have been, so too are the dividends to our national security from a successful outcome, with a functioning, representative Iraqi government and a stabilized Middle East. The costs of abandoning Iraq to our enemies, conversely, would be enormous, not only in dollars, but in human lives and in the security and freedom of our nation.

Indeed, had we followed the path proposed by antiwar groups and retreated in defeat, the war would have been lost, emboldening and empowering violent jihadists for generations to come.

The success we are now achieving also has consequences far beyond Iraq's borders in the larger, global struggle against Islamist extremism. Thanks to the surge, Iraq today is looking increasingly like Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare: an Arab country, in the heart of the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims – both Sunni and Shiite – are rising up and fighting, shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers, against al Qaeda and its hateful ideology.

It is unfortunate that so many opponents of the surge still refuse to acknowledge the gains we have achieved in Iraq. When Gen. Petraeus testifies this week, however, the American people will have a clear choice as we weigh the future of our fight there: between the general who is leading us to victory, and the critics who spent the past year predicting defeat.

Read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...

Arrogance, Entitlement & Obama's Anti-War Stance

The days of fawning press for Barack Obama may be waning. When the liberal AP starts tossing bombs, its time to start worrying in the Obama camp.




_______________________________________________________

This today from the AP:

[T]here's a line smart politicians don't cross — somewhere between "I'm qualified to be president" and "I'm born to be president." Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step.

He's bordering on arrogance.

The dictionary defines the word as an "offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride." Obama may not be offensive or overbearing, but he can be a bit too cocky for his own good.

The freshman senator told reporters in July that he would overcome Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in the polls because "to know me is to love me."

A few months later, he said, "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."

True, there's a certain amount of tongue-in-cheekiness to such remarks — almost as if Obama doesn't want to take his adoring crowds and political ascent too seriously. He was surely kidding when he told supporters in January that by the time he was done speaking "a light will shine down from somewhere."

"It will light upon you," he continued. "You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack. I have to do it."

But both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.

"Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics," his wife said a few weeks ago, adding that Americans will get only one chance to elect him.

. . . If arrogance is a display of self-importance and superiority, Obama earns the pejorative every time he calls his pre-invasion opposition to the war in Iraq an act of courage.

While he deserves credit for forecasting the complications of war in 2002, Obama's opposition carried scant political risk because he was a little-known state lawmaker courting liberal voters in Illinois. In 2004, when denouncing the war and war-enabling Democrats would have jeopardized his prized speaking role at the Democratic National Convention, Obama ducked the issue.

. . . Voters won't cut Obama as much slack on the humility test because he's sold himself as something different. While rejecting the "me"-centric status quo and promising a new era of post-partisan reform, Obama has said the movement he has created is not about him; it's about what Americans can do together if their faith in government is restored.

The power of his message lies in its humility. As he told 7,000 supporters at a rally last month, "I am an imperfect vessel for your hopes and dreams."

Nobody expects Obama to be perfect. But he better never forget that he isn't.

Read the entire article.

(H/T Bookworm Room)

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama, War and Political Expediency

Michael Gerson documents how Obama has placed political expediency over principle on the issue of the Iraq War. This transcends the mere question of whether Obama is being less than honest with the American public and goes to the heart of whether we would want such an individual as Commander in Chief.


______________________________________________________

I am inclined to take candidates at their word. But that said, even if Obama has no intention of withdrawing our soldiers from Iraq were he to be elected president, would we not want such an individual as commander in chief of our soldiers during time of war? As I have written before:

[C]haracter matters in war, more so than in any other endeavor. By character I mean attempting to do what one perceives as right based on principles, even if doing so comes at great personal cost. It is the polar opposite of making decisions on the basis of expediency.

In that post, I go on to demonstrate why the character of a commander is so critical, and that a person willing to subordinate their principles on the scales of political expediency is not acceptable as a wartime commander in chief. They will be less likely to prosecute the war to successful conclusion and their decisions will be more likely to endanger our soldiers. Read the entire post.

Within that rubric, Obama clearly falls on the side of a person who has demonstrated that he places political expediency over principles. Michael Gerson, in an excellent article in today's Washington Post, examines Obama's changing positions on the Iraq war and compares them to McCain's steadfast adherence to his principles.

. . . If Barack Obama eventually wins the Democratic nomination, his extraordinary rise may be traced to a speech on Oct. 2, 2002, at an antiwar rally in downtown Chicago. That day, Obama, then an obscure state senator, said: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

For many Democrats, this prescience has given Obama the aura of a prophet. And this early opposition lends credibility to his current promise: to swiftly end the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

Recently, this pledge was called into question by Obama's now-former adviser, Samantha Power, who said: "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan -- an operational plan -- that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground."

. . . In a new article on Commentary magazine's Web site, Peter Wehner undertakes a thorough examination of Obama's record on Iraq. It is, shall we say, complex.

More than a year after the initial success of the invasion, Obama explained, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." And he was correct. In July 2004, he argued that America had an "absolute obligation" to stay in Iraq until the country stabilized. "The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died."

Two months later, Obama criticized Bush's conduct of the war but repeated that simply pulling out would further destabilize Iraq, making it an "extraordinary hotbed of terrorist activity." And he signaled his openness to the deployment of additional troops if this would make an eventual withdrawal more likely.

In June 2006, Obama still opposed "a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops." "I don't think it's appropriate for Congress," he said, "to make those decisions about what happens in the field."

By late 2006, as public support for the Iraq war disintegrated and his own political ambitions quickened, Obama called for a "phased withdrawal." When Bush announced the surge, Obama saw nothing in the plan that would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that's taking place there" -- a lapse in his prophetic powers.

When Obama announced his presidential candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007, he stated, "I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008." Then in May and again in November, he voted against funding American forces in Iraq.

Wehner concludes that Obama is guilty of "problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst." And he notes that while McCain has been consistently right about Iraq in the years since the invasion -- highly critical of the early strategy and supportive of a successful surge -- Obama has been consistently wrong in supporting the early, failed strategy and opposing the surge, even as its success became evident.

. . . [T]here is little doubt that Obama has gained in political support among Democrats as his positions on Iraq have become progressively antiwar. His March 2008 withdrawal deadline -- which is up now -- would have undone the Anbar Awakening, massively strengthened al-Qaeda and increased civilian carnage. . . .

The Iraq war determined the paths for McCain and Obama. But there is a large difference between them. McCain eventually won his nomination because he showed political courage in the face of overwhelming pressure. Obama may eventually win his nomination because he surrendered to that pressure.

Read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...

A General Changes His Views: Success Is Our Only Option

Today, two very different voices weighed in together on the war in Iraq and the larger effort against radical Islam. One, Pete Hegseth, is a former military officer and the executive director of Vets for Freedom, an organization supportive of the effort in Iraq and President Bush’s conduct of the war on terror. Joining him was the former commander of the 1st Division, retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste. Batiste turned down a promotion and left the military because he believed the war in Iraq was being wrongly prosecuted. He was bitterly critical of Donald Rumsfeld and he appeared in an advertisement for VoteVet.org, in which he criticized the President. He now has changed views, seeing the surge as working.

Batiste and Hegseth write together today in the Washington Post, urging that Congress take a much more realistic view both of Iraq and the larger war against Islamic extremism, including the threat of Iran which did not change over the week, despite the NIE:

Congress has been entangled in a war-funding debate that pits war "supporters" against antiwar "defeatists." With all sides seemingly entrenched, a stalemate looms. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will soon begin stripping money from its training budget to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our military men and women deserve better than partisan politics; they deserve honest assessments of our nation's performance in fighting the Long War.

We are veterans of the Iraq war with vastly different experiences. Both of us commanded troops in Iraq. We, too, held seemingly entrenched, and incompatible, views upon our return. One of us spoke out against mismanagement of the war -- failed leadership, lack of strategy and misdirection. The other championed the cause of successfully completing our mission.

Our perspectives were different, yet not as stark as the "outspoken general" and "stay-the-course supporter" labels we received. Such labels are oversimplified and inaccurate, and we are united behind a greater purpose.

It's time to discuss the way forward rather than prosecute the past. Congress must do the same, for our nation and the troops.

Overall, this will require learning from our strategic blunders, acknowledging successes achieved by our courageous military and forging a bold path. We believe America can and must rally around five fundamental tenets:

First, the United States must be successful in the fight against worldwide Islamic extremism. We have seen this ruthless enemy firsthand, and its global ambitions are undeniable. This struggle, the Long War, will probably take decades to prosecute. Failure is not an option.

Second, whether or not we like it, Iraq is central to that fight. We cannot walk away from our strategic interests in the region. Iraq cannot become a staging ground for Islamic extremism or be dominated by other powers in the region, such as Iran and Syria. . .

Third, the counterinsurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus is the correct approach in Iraq. It is showing promise of success and, if continued, will provide the Iraqi government the opportunities it desperately needs to stabilize its country. . . .

Fourth, our strategy in fighting the Long War must address Iran. Much has been made this week of the intelligence judgments that Iran has stopped its weapons program. No matter what, Iran must not be permitted to become a nuclear power. All options should be exhausted before we use military force, but force, nonetheless, should never be off the table. Diplomatic efforts -- from a position of strength, both regionally and globally -- must be used to engage our friends and coerce our enemies to apply pressure on the Iranian regime.

Fifth, our military capabilities need to match our national strategy. Our military is stretched thin and will be hard-pressed to maintain its current cycle of deployments. At this critical juncture, we cannot afford to be weak. Numbers and capacity matter.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, America was not mobilized for the Long War. This was an opportunity lost, but it is not too late. . . . We need a regional and global strategy to defeat worldwide Islamic extremism to ensure a safer world today and for future generations.

. . . Americans must mobilize for the Long War -- bolster our strained military, galvanize industry to supply troops with what they need right now and fund the strategy with long-term solutions. We have no doubt that Americans will rally behind a call to arms.

America's veterans -- young and old -- are resolved to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. This commitment, and nothing less, should compel us to stand together, in and out of uniform. Would that Congress finds the courage to bury its pride and do the same.

Read the entire article. The Weekly Standard comments: "The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today, and it will be interesting to see whether they turn on one of their own, or come around to the view, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the surge is working." And Instapundit wonders "if this will get the attention it deserves.

Read More...

Summary only...

Have Our Copperheads Found Their McClellan in Retired LTG General Sanchez?

Several commentators have noted the similarity between our modern day Democrats and the Copperheads of the Civil War. The Copperheads were the virulently anti-war wing that took control of the Democratic party in the 1860’s. Their rhetoric of the day reads like a modern press release from our Democratic Party leadership. Their central meme was that the Civil War was unwinnable and should be concluded. At their nominating convention of 1864, they adopted the plank:

this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored . . .

At the convention, the Democrats nominated retired General George B. McClellan for President. Lincoln had chosen McClellan to command the Union Army in 1861 and then assigned him to command the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln subsuqently relieved McClellan of command in 1862 for his less than stellar performance on the battlefield. McClellan became a bitter and vocal opponent of Lincoln, harshly critical of Lincoln's prosecution of the war. McClellan and the Copperheads maintained that meme even as the facts on the ground changed drastically with victories by General Sherman in Atlanta and General Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley.

Thus it is not hard to see in McClellan many parallels to retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the one time top commander in Iraq. Sanchez held the top military position in Iraq during the year after the fall of the Hussein regime, when the insurgency took root and the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light. His was not a successful command and his remarks since show a bitter man. According to an the Huffington Post, "In October, the three-star general told a group of reporters that the U.S. mission in Iraq was a "nightmare with no end in sight." He also called Bush's decision to deploy 30,000 extra forces to Iraq earlier this year a "desperate attempt" to make up for years of misguided policies in Iraq." While the Democrats have no intention of nominating him as President, Sanchez's bitter screed and refusal to acknowledge changing conditions on the ground make him the darling of our own Copperheads.

The same HufPo piece tells us that Sanchez supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year. Sanchez's recorded remarks will be heard on the weekly Democratic radio address this Saturday, including:

. . . The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country.

There is no evidence that the Iraqis will choose to do so in the near future or that we have an ability to force that result . . .

. . . [the House legislation to force withdrawal from Iraq] makes the proper preparation of our deploying troops a priority and requires the type of shift in their mission that will allow their numbers to be reduced substantially."

While the Democrats of today may be enamored of General Sanchez and his message, history should provide them a cautionary note. Despite McClellan’s outspoken criticism of Lincoln for his poor prosecution of the war, the rhetoric failed once it became apparent that Union forces were succeeding and that victory was possible. In the end, the American electorate punished the Democrats for their anti-war stance in the 1864 election and for several decades afterward. And now we have a very bitter General Sanchez appearing on the scene to support our own Copperhead’s attempt to legislate surrender. It is a surrender being sought even as the facts on the ground in Iraq have changed completely from the black days when General Sanchez commanded our forces.

We will see if history, in fact, does repeat itself. It certainly seems to be doing so at the moment.

Update: The Washington Post sees the cooperation of General Sanchez with the far left Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi as a "strange alliance." It is obviously not if one only looks for the historical antecedents.

Update: James Taranto of WSJ and I share a similar opinion: "With Sanchez having embraced the role of Democratic spokesman, he comes to look increasingly like the George McClellan of the war on terror."

Update: The swing in public perception has begun. MSNBC is reporting: "Some 48 per cent of Americans now believe that the US ­military effort in Iraq is going well, compared with 30 per cent in February, according to the latest poll by the Pew Research Center."

Read More...

Summary only...

Pelosi & Murtha Still Seeking To Declare Defeat in Iraq

This is difficult to believe, but Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has scheduled a vote on a bill to force U.S. to cease combat operations by December and begin a withdrawal from Iraq. Jack Murtha has stated that the only way he will allow a funding bill for the Iraq War out of his committee is if the President agrees to begin withdrawing troops per this new bill. And to top it off, in an apparent burst of what passes for patriotism among the neo-liberals of today’s Democratic Party, Pelosi has scheduled the vote for Veteran’s Day.

The Democratic leadership lacks any semblance of principal and is motivated by nothing more than the desire for power. Iraq is of course still problematic and its future uncertain, yet the news coming out of Iraq now is very positive. Al Qaeda, who chose to make their central stand against the US in Iraq, has been all but defeated. The casualty figures are dropping significantly, displaced Iraqis are returning to Baghdad, and there is a return to normalcy in many parts of Iraq. This is not to minimize the problems Iraq still faces, but the Democrats’ ostensible justifications for leaving Iraq – that Iraq is a “quagmire” and a “civil war” – have clearly been invalidated.

But that does not stop the leadership of the Democratic Party from trying to snatch a defeat from what is looking more and more like the jaws of victory. They are fully invested in defeat.

As Alan Dershowitz wrote in the WSJ a few days ago, that could be a major problem for his party:

. . . Most of the Democratic presidential candidates are seeking partisan advantage from what many Americans see as the Bush failures in the war against terrorism and especially its extension to Iraq and possibly, in the future, to Iran.

This pacifistic stance appeals to the left wing of the democratic electorate, which may have some influence on the outcome of democratic primaries, but which is far less likely to determine the outcome of the general election. Most Americans--Democrats, Republicans, independents or undecided--want a president who will be strong, as well as smart, on national security, and who will do everything in his or her lawful power to prevent further acts of terrorism.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans may watch Michael Moore's movies or cheer Cindy Sheehan's demonstrations, but tens of millions want the Moores and Sheehans of our nation as far away as possible from influencing national security policy . . ..

. . . Unless the Democratic Party--and particularly their eventual candidate for president--is perceived as strong and smart on national defense and prevention of terrorism, the Bush White House may be proved to have made a clever partisan decision by refusing to make the war against terrorism a bipartisan issue. The Democrats may lose the presidency if they are seen as the party of MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich and those senators who voted against Judge Mukasey because he refused to posture on a difficult issue relating to national security.

Update: There is a good article on the absurdity of the Pelosi / Murtha surge towards defeat against all odds in the NY Post.

Read More...

Summary only...

Hollywood's Iraq Blues

The wave of recent films set against the backdrop of war in Iraq and post-9/11 security has failed to win over film-goers keen to escape grim news headlines when they go to the movies, analysts say.

In a break with past convention, when films based on real conflicts were made only years after the last shots were fired, several politically-charged films have gone on release while America remains embroiled in Iraq.

Almost without exception, however, the crop of movies have struggled to turn a profit at the box-office and in many cases have received a mauling from unimpressed critics as well.

It couldn't happen to a nicer group of people. And hopefully this reflects both the reality that we are "winning" in Iraq and that the public at large understands it. Hollywood prides themselves on pushing the envelope and being out in front on social issues. But this war is far more important than a social issue and embracing defeat does not play well in Peoria. The Hollywood elite does not seemed to have grasped either of those facts, as you can see in the blurb above. According to them, the reason these anti-war, anti-counterterrorism movies are failing is because the actual war news is so grim. Perhaps they might try making a true movie about some of the heroes of Iraq and see if that might sell a little better. Read the entire story.

Read More...

Summary only...