Still Trying to Call The Surge A Failure

I blogged here that, given the significant progress in Iraq as to both security gains and politcal reconciliation, that those committed to defeat were coming up with ever more surreal reasoning to justify their transparent partisan positions. I also wrote that it would difficult for the left to keep moving the goal posts. But Michael Kinsley shows today that where there is a will, there is a way.



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Today, far left pundit Michael Kinsley, wrting with the literary equivalent of an army of earth moving vehicles and tow trucks, is upending the goal posts marking success in Iraq and trying to move the posts out the far left side of the stadium:

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his gamble. The surge was a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.

Skepticism seems like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One is to admit that you were wrong, wrong wrong. The other is to sound as if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many opponents of the war have chosen option two.

But we needn't quarrel about all this, or deny the reality of the good news, to say that at the very least, the surge has not worked yet. The test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? And the answer is no.

Read the article. The surge is a failure despite the fact of tremendous security gains and despite the acts of reconciliation studiously ignored by Kinsley because of our troop levels. As I wrote in the linked post at the top, the left is becoming ever more surreal and transparent in their attempt to come up with ostensible justifications for legislating defeat. And the logic with which Kinsley attempts to make his argument could not be a better illustration of my point.

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What A Steaming Pile of Bull-Pelosi

Consider the title to be a Freudian slip. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday defended earmarks, then declared the surge in Iraq a failure and listed the justifications as to why we need to surrender immediately.




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Wolf Blitzer interviewed Speaker Pelosi on CNN today. You can find the complete transcript here. Blitzer first asked her about earmarks. Here is the exchange:

PELOSI: . . . Congress has a right, the power of the purse. And I'm not a big fan of earmarks, but they do have value, if done with transparency. It may be news to the president, but when the Democrats took control of the Congress, we had -- we instituted transparency. We've cut the earmarks in half and went back to the transparency. Every person who has an earmark has to identify himself with it, affirm that he has not -- doesn't have a financial benefit to him personally, or her personally.

Not a big fan of earmarks? She is number 4 on the list of House members who have put earmark requests into 2008 budget bills. Number 1 on the list is her right hand man, Jack Murtha. Between them, they lead the earmark pack, having submitted earmarks for nearly a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money. She's not just a fan of earmarks, she is the Queen of earmarks.

As to the claim to have cut earmarks in half, she is using some math with which I am not familiar. The numbers for 2008 show a four fold increase in earmarks over 2007.

The rules she is claiming she has put in place are the barest of reforms and, ultimately, only amount to partial transparency. They have done nothing to stem the corruption or the waste of the earmark process. Nor have those rules addressed the worst excesses. And indeed, Pelosi is balking at any bi-partisan substantive reform.

PELOSI: But this president is making that statement, in the State of the Union, a president who's signed more legislation, with more earmarks, than any president in the history of our country, didn't say "boo" until his last...

I concur. That is why the Republicans are known today as the minority party.

BLITZER: Why not just eliminate them all?

PELOSI: Well, I'm not averse to that, myself, personally. But when a president says to the Congress, I will decide every penny of spending, that's just not right. That's just not right.

So the reason she refuses to eliminate earmarks is because the President has written an Executive Order refusing to honor the most corrupt earmarking practice of Congress? In what universe can that be classified as either logic or an answer to Blitzer's question. Well, actually it was an answer. As shown in the links above, she is neck deep in earmarks herself and has no intention whatsoever of substanitvely addressing the earmark issue.

BLITZER: So let's talk about Iraq, which is another issue high on the agenda of the American public.

PELOSI: Right.

BLITZER: The president says, quote, "The surge is working. I know some don't want to admit that and I understand, but the terrorists understand the surge is working."

Is the surge working?

PELOSI: The president is wrong in several respects. First of all, the military aspect of the surge is working. And God bless our troops. They've performed excellently. And any time they engage in battle, we want them to succeed. The president knows that. He shouldn't say we don't want admit that that military aspect of the surge is working.

PELOSI: But the purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq. They have not done that.

BLITZER: But they've taken some steps...

BLITZER: ... on the Baathists being allowed to come back...

PELOSI: ... baby steps, very late -- . . .

On the floor of the House in February, 2007, Pelosi stated she was against the surge because, she predicted, it would only escalate the violence in Iraq. She and Harry Reid were adamant that we shouldn't be fighting in the midst of a civil war. Once it became clear that our soldiers have been largely successful in bringing peace to Iraq, the words "civil war" were dropped from the Pelosi-Reid vocabulary. On December 20, 2007, Pelosi told reporters: "I think you are going to see a good deal of focus be on why it is that even when you have some military success to establish a secure time when the government can act politically, they still do not act in a way to bring reconciliation in Iraq." Now that the Iraqi government has acted to bring about reconciliation, Pelosi moves the goal posts again.

Evidently, she had the Iraqi government on a double secret time limitation, whereby any reconciliation occurring after December 20, 2007 doesn't count. Pelosi does not bother to explain how the reconciliation is "too little." The Sunni's in the Iraqi government were quite happy with it.

The bottom line, of course, is the goal posts will continue to move as more success is achieved in Iraq. But under no circumstances can the surge or our efforts in Iraq be characterized as "winning" or "succeeding." This is, after all, about partisan political gain for the Democrats to, one, achieve power, and two, discredit conservatives. What is our national security mmatched up against that?

BLITZER: I spoke with General David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq. And he pointed to all the statistics showing that casualties are down; stability is coming to the Al Anbar province, elsewhere.

And the increased troops that they sent over for the surge -- they'll be back out by July or so. But he then said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, MULTINATIONAL FORCES, IRAQ: We will, though, need to have some time to let things settle a bit, if you will, after we complete the withdrawal. We think it would be prudent to do some period of assessment, then, to make decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He's basically suggesting there should be a pause, this summer, to assess where it stands, so that all of the gains will not have been lost, squandered. Are you open to that?

PELOSI: We will be entering the sixth year of this war in about another month, March 19. It will be five years that we've been in this war, over a year and a half longer than we were in World War II. . . .

In other words, "no" - we need to surrender and time is of the essence. What World War II has to do with this, I do not know. Hostilities in the one other insurgency we fought, the Philipines War, did not end for 14 years. There is a difference between war - fought with incredible violence by standing armies over a short period - and an insurgency where the opposing force tries to hide in the civilian population. That is a nuance Pelosi does not wish to ponder.

PELOSI: . . . Certainly, we have to leave a few people there to protect our embassy, for force protection, to fight the terrorists and that.

This is utter insanity. The Iraqi Defense Minister recently estimated it would take until 2012 until Iraq can achieve complete responsibility for internal security and 2018 until it could control its borders from foreign threat. The only stability that would come to Iraq if we were to leave now would be that imposed by al Qaeda in Sunni regions, by Iran in Baghdad and the Shia south, and by Turkey in the Kurdish north. It would come at the cost of countless lives and have nearly unimaginable ramifications for our foreign policy. We have nearly 150,000 soldiers in Iraq now "fighting terrorists." If she thinks that we can leave a small force in Iraq under the circumstances that would likely ensue, she's nuts. She would be inviting the massacre of our soldiers.

BLITZER: Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?

PELOSI: There haven't been gains, Wolf. The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure.

This is simply and utter and complete determination to lose in Iraq. I wish Blitzer had asked her to define "reconciliation" if she refuses to acknowledge the security gains, the number of people returning to Iraq, the real Pax Americana descending on Baghdad, the recent de-Baathification law, nor the recent law passed to allow Sunnis to collect pensions as evidence of reconciliation. So what would she accept?

PELOSI: . . . But [U.S. soldiers] deserve better than a policy of a war without end, a war that could be 20 years or longer. And Secretary Gates just testified, in the last 24 hours, to Congress, that this next year in Iraq and Afghanistan is going to cost $170 billion. . . .

There is no such thing as war without end. Wars end in one of three ways. You win (WWII). You convince the other side to stop fighting (WWI, Korea). You lose and leave, and to the victors go the spoils, sooner or later (Vietnam). Guess which option Pelosi is opting for.

And as to the costs to stay, they are high. But what will be the long term costs that we will pay for leaving Iraq to become an Qaeda stronghold in the Sunni area and a sattelite of Iran in the Shia south. What costs will we pay to fight what would be an explosion of terrorism? Which Middle East country or radical religious movement will be deterred by the threat of U.S. force in the future - and what costs will we pay to fend off their conventional - or nuclear - adventursim? Which country will ally themselves with the U.S. against any foe? Nobody has asked yet about the costs of surrender and withdrawal from Iraq will be, yet they quite forseeably outweigh any cost we might pay to succeed there.

In summary, Pelosi has embraced the "culture of corruption" represented by earmarks that she had promised to reform. She didn't drain the swamp; rather, she personally has jumped in for a swim with Jack Murtha. As to the Iraq War, would it be possible for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the anti-war crowd to be any more transparent. The games Pelosi and Reid are playing on these critical issues with the American people are a travesty, perhaps approached in scale only by MSM whose complicity is necessary for Pelosi and Reid to pursue this travesty.

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Obama Disparages The Military & Gets A Pass On Iraq From Fox News

Whether to withdraw from Iraq has tremendous ramifications for our national security, given the effect such a withdrawal would have on Salafi terrorism and Khomeinist adventurism. Yet not a single Democrat has been seriously questioned on this by the MSM. The opportunity presented itself last night. After President Bush gave his State of the Union, Fox News reporter Major Garrett inteviewed Obama. A tenth grader interviewing Obama for the highschool newspaper could have done a better job.

Garrett asked Obama whether he thought that the surge had been a success, but Obama refused to characterize it as such. Obama acknowledged the security gains our soldiers have made in Iraq, but then termed what our soldiers are doing there to be an "occupation." Obama did not acknowledge any of the political progress by the Iraqi government towards reconciliation - that being the Iraqi Paliament's recent passage of the de-Baathification law and a law to allow former Baathists to collect government pensions. Instead, Obama stated that there has been insufficient political movement towards reconciliation to justify continuing our "occupation." Major Garrett let him get away with it without any followup.

As a threshold matter, calling our presence in Iraq an "occupation" is a slanderous mischaracterization. An occupation means that a hostile military force is exercising authority over enemy lands. There have been many "occupations" of foreign countries over the past century. One such was the Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe after WWII that only ended in the 80's when the Soviet Union imploded. And there is China's ongoing occupation of Tibet.

To characterize what we are doing in Iraq as an occupation dishonors our soldiers and their mission in Iraq. Our soldiers are fighting dying in Iraq to defeat terrorists that ultimately threaten our nation and to bring security and democracy to Iraq. We are fighting to win the peace from people who wish to turn Iraq into a medieval hell-hole and, in the case of Iran, a sattelite theocracy. We do so at the invitation of a democratically elected government. To claim otherwise is to equally slander and dishonor the millions of Iraqis that risked death by going to the polls to cast their ballots. To call our presence in Iraq an occupation is an Orwellian redefinition of the word.

There are of course, entities that do not want democracy to take hold in Iraq and who would welcome a defeat of the U.S. effort in Iraq, whether brought about on the battlefield or in Washington. It is no surprise that al Qaeda and Iran both call our presence and actions in Iraq an "occupation." Syria and al Jazzera call it that too. And now you can add Barack Obama to that list.

Garrett did not challenge Obama to explain the facts he was using to call our mission in Iraq an "occupation." That was some poor reporting. And it got worse.

Garrett did not challenge Obama on his refusal to acknowledge the reconciliation that has taken place in the Iraqi government. It was as if the recent actions of the Iraqi government were wished away because they would have conflicted with Obama's narrative. That was amazing.

But worst of all, Garrett did not ask Obama what the ramifications would be if Obama "ended the occupation" only to see our security gains lost and the reemergence in Iraq of al Qaeda on one hand and Iran on the other. That is the single most important question that needs to be asked and its answer should fully inform how we proceed in Iraq. The MSM refuses to ask that question, allowing Obama and the other Democratic nominees for President to simply ignore it while noting that an immediate withdraw from Iraq would move our soldiers out of the harm's way and stop the costs of war.

Put simply, the ramifications of allowing al Qaeda or Iran to succeed in Iraq are existential.

Salafi terrorism grew in the 1980's and 90's based on the belief among the Salafi jihadis that it was they who destroyed the Soviet Union. Futher, the jihadis believed that the West was so weak that it would, like the Soviet Union, crumble when pushed. And in accordance with that view, they attacked the West and America at the margins throughout the 1990's. The U.S. response to each provocation was seen by the jihadis as weak and ineffectual. Remember the Khobar Towers bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, Blackhawk Down and the bombing of the USS Cole. The 9-11 attacks were simply the natural evolution of the jihadi paradigm.

Every indication that we have is that al Qaeda did not expect the robust response that actually occurred. As to our invasion of Iraq, historians can argue whether we should have done that until the cows come home. It has no bearing whatsoever on what we should do tommorow - which is the only question that matters.

With that in mind, it is beyond dispute that our invasion of Iraq drew in al Qaeda like moths to the flame. Defeating the U.S. in Iraq became, as bin Laden and Zawahiri both noted, al Qaeda's main effort. They fully expected the U.S. to run from Iraq as we did from Vietnam, if only they could cause sufficient mayhem.

Through the bravery of our soldiers and the brilliance of our military leadership, we have now completely turned around the situation in Iraq. Al Qaeda is largely defeated there and, at best, has few strongholds left. There will be no formal declaration of surrender, but we have had the next best thing from bin Laden himself. In his November,2007 video, bin Laden despaired of al Qaeda losses in Iraq and summed up the situation by stating that the "the darkeness" in Iraq has become "pitch black." (See also here)

Note that in May, 2007, with the Democrats attempting to short circuit the nascent surge and withdraw our troops, our nation's premier Orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis, issued what can only be called a doomsday warning. Professor Lewis warned that if we withdrew from Iraq and al Qaeda was able to portray Iraq as a victory for jihad, the reprucussions of that for our nation, the West, and the entire Islamic world would be profound, long lasting and dire.

To leave now and allow Iraq to be reoccupied in the Sunni areas by al Qaeda and to allow Iran to create an Iraqi Hezbollah to dominate the south of Iraq would be a catastrophe. Regardless of how our Democrats would spin it to the American electorate, throughout the Muslim world, it would be portrayed as a victory delivered by the very hand of Allah in the face of certain defeat. It would be a messiancic sign of the eventual triumph of the radicalized Salafi and Khomeinist versions of Islam. That is not the politics of fear - its the acknowledgment of a deadly reality.

And as Professor Lewis implies, should the Muslim world ever come to see the U.S. as defeated in Iraq, we can expect jihadi attacks of all sorts on the West to rise exponentially. You can include in those probable jihadi attacks nuclear terrorism as the jihadists gain in strength and have access to nuclear weapons and the radioactive byproducts of the nuclear process.

If you any doubts about the ramifications of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, watch this video of Zarqawi and ponder the question some more.



While leaving Iraq may result in short term political gain, relieve the pressure on our military and save the future costs of the war, the question must be asked, what are the long term costs for withdrawing from Iraq. The realistic answer to that is that the costs of leaving Iraq and allowing al Qaeda and Iran to declare victory would be exponentialy greater in blood and gold than the costs to stop both in Iraq over the coming years.

Major Garrett did not ask Obama that last night. Someone has to in the future if we are to have any sort of reasoned debate on this issue.

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The Left's Arguments For Legislating Surrender In Iraq, Version 5

Two opinion pieces appeared in the Washington Post yesterday on the status of Iraq. One was a jointly written article by Fred Kagan of AEI, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, and retired General Jack Keane. Its a straightforward look at the successes we have had in Iraq, the many problems yet to overcome, and a warning against withdrawing troops too quickly as al Qaeda attempts to regroup and Iran continues its deadly meddling. You can find it here.

The second article is by Andrew Bacevich, a professor of International Relations at Boston University. Bacevich posits all of the arguments of the hard left for leaving Iraq immediately. And it is not surprising at all to find that the ostensible arguments he posits wholly sidestep the recent successes in Iraq.

When problems appeared in Iraq following al Qaeda's bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome in February 2006, the argument made forcefully by Harry Reid and company was that Iraq was in the middle of a civil war and thus, we needed to leave. At the start of the surge in January 2007, the left adopted the argument that the surge would be a failure. The left reached their nadir in April, 2007 when Harry Reid preemptively declared America defeated by four suicide al Qaeda bombers. Then, by September 2007, with the three month old "surge" clearly starting to have effect, we were treated to the odious Hillary Clinton accusing, in so many words, General Petraeus of lying before Congress. Once it became clear beyond dispute that Iraq was experiencing a giant stride forward in security, the argument became that the Iraqi government was not making any progress towards passage of the benchmarks - with the one central to the left's argument being political progress to bring Sunni's into the government through de-Baathification. And now with that bench mark in large measure met, the far left, represented in the pages of the Washington Post today by Mr. Bacevich, simply come up with new arguments - and as always, hiding the true justification, partisan political gain and establishing the dominance of the leftist foreign policy agenda.

Bacevich's main points are that we should not have invaded Iraq, that the surge is meaningless, and that continued "persistence" in Iraq will "only compound the blunder." As a threshold matter, whether to invade Iraq is a question with relevance today only to history professors. To any who still raise that argument, it is the penultimate red herring. Pulling out of Iraq precipitously in order to satisfy some nagging guilt rather than in consideration of our national security and other concerns would be irresponsible in the extreme. Yet such is the very first argument of the left.

Mr. Bacevich's criticism of the surge is particularly disingenuous. The purpose of the surge was to bring security to Iraq and quell what appeared to be a nascent civil war with foreign elements of al Qaeda and Iran being the driving forces. In that, it has been a success beyond the most optimistic projections but a year ago. Interestingly, Mr. Bacevich does not contest the gains in security, but takes the position that these improvement are meaningless.

". . . what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent.

The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstanding, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant.

The cynicism apparent in those statements is rather breathtaking. He refuses to credit the security gains of the surge, he takes no note of the normalcy that has returned to the majority of Iraq, and he quite disingenuously refuses to acknowledge either the economic growth that is taking place in Iraq or the political reconciliation that just took place at the Parliamentary level. The Sunni legislators themselves were quite happy with the law they helped pass. Evidently Mr. Bacevich knows more about this than the Sunni legislators themselves. And as to the economy of Iraq, we got a brief snapshot of that aspect of Iraq recently from Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution

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Inflation is within reasonable bounds. Oil revenues are up quite a bit due to the price of petroleum, even if production has increased only very gradually. Due largely to the improved security environment, electricity production and distribution finally took a substantial step forward in 2007, for the first time since the 2003 invasion. Without even counting the informal electricity sector, which has itself grown, official numbers have increased 10 percent to 20 percent. Cell phone ownership and usage have gone through the roof; national port capacity has increased substantially; the Internet is making real inroads.

You can read the hard numbers and view the graphs at the DOD's quarterly report on Iraq issued in December.

Mr. Bacevich sneeringly compares Iraq to the successful nation-building projects, such as post-war Germany and Japan. Such is an incredibly superficial comparison that does not even acknowledge the time frame's involved in Germany and Japan. In the case of Germany, it had started war in 1939, it surrendered in 1945 and remained under military rule for four years afterward. During the war, its military capacity was wholly destroyed. A similar situation of course occurred with Japan, and we did not end our military occupation of that country until 1952. In Iraq, we did not destroy their military in set battles in 2003; rather, their military and militias melted away only to start taking part in hostilities later. If Mr. Bacevich wishes to make comparisons to nation building in Germany and Japan, he needs to start from the intellectually honest position of the time frames involved. Further, he needs to acknowledge that neither Germany nor Japan faced the massive problems of an al Qaeda insurgency or an expansionist Iran on its border whose primary tool of statecraft is terrorism.

Mr. Bacevich even attempts to pose the Anbar Awakening and awakening movements throughout Iraq as a negative. As he puts it:

By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

This completely mischaracterizes the Sunni Awakening - a movement that had at its heart a rejection of al Qaeda. This is at least as intellectually dishonest as claiming that a Democratic electoral victory in 2006 was the cause of the Anbar Awakening. Further, those Sunnis fighting against al Qaeda are seeking to take a role in Iraqi politics. To claim that the Anbar Awakening somehow renders the central government irrelevant is nonsensical.

And Bacevich's next argument is equally incoherent. He posits:

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon.

I won't bother quoting the paragraphs that follow that argument. You can read it for yourself and see if you can make any sense of it. As near as I can tell, Bacevich is merely complaining that the success of the surge means that Democrats won't be able to muster the votes to legislate defeat in Iraq.

Lastly, Mr. Bacevich dusts off the old Democratic talking points and pulls out all of the anti-war arguments used to date. According to Mr. Bacevich, the war in Iraq has:

. . . boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

The anti-Americanism meme is the particularly ridiculous. Anti-Americanism did not arise because of the Iraq War, and if anything, we have seen an improvement in how America is perceived as we are seen as succeeding in Iraq. Name for me the last French President to be so openly pro-American as Sarkozy, or the last German President to be as openly pro-American as Merkel. Two, shall we base our foreign policy and national security decisions on public opinion polls in Europe? The anti-american argument is sheer sophisty.

As to his next argument, that Iraq has resulted in the recruitment of "untold numbers of jihadists," can Bacevich, who is applauding the war in Afghanistan, name a single jihadist who was recruited that would not have been so motivated had we only gone to war in Afghanistan? Further, can Bacevich even begin to imagine how robust jihadi recruitment would have been had we reacted ineffectually to 9-11? Or can Mr. Bacevich tell us what will happen to jihadi recruitment if we legislate a victory in Iraq for al Qaeda or Iran? We can pack up and leave Iraq tomorrow, and if it has any effect on jihadi recruitment, it will only be to send it through the roof as the radical clerics claim that only the hand of Allah could have delivered unto them this victory over the Great Satan who had the brave jihadists all but destroyed in Iraq.

Lastly, the tired meme that Afghanistan is more central to the fight of al Qaeda certainly conflicts with the statements of bin Laden and his no. 2, Zawahiri. But why give their open proclomations any weight in the matter when it would conflict with a far left talking point? As to Afghanistan, I defy Mr. Bacevich to tell us how, in any way, abandoning Iraq will assist with the war in Afghanistan. The problem in Afghanistan is really a problem of safe havens in Pakistan. And that is not, at the moment, something we can effect by taking troops out of Iraq.

Mr. Bacevich's arguments are notable for two points. One, they mark the latest evolution in ostensible arguments by the far left for surrendering Iraq as soon as possible. Two, Bacevich does not address the single most important question - what would be the long term ramifications for our nation if we legislatively surrender Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran? Mr. Bacevich I think is either intellectually dishonest or too blinded by partisanship to make valid arguments that consider the long term ramifications.

Lastly, Mr. Bacevich makes for an unusual member of the far left. True, he works in academia, but he is a retired Army Colonel, and a man whose son died fighting in Iraq. In that respect, and wholly apart from my significant disagreements with his arguments above, I wanted to acknowledge his service to our country and to express my sympathy for his loss.

You can find Mr. Bacevich's article here.

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The NYT and the Deadly Peril of Iraq to Democrats

If history is any guide, the Democrats who have invested so completely in defeat in Iraq will suffer a voter backlash if the electorate comes to see the Iraq war as a success. By transparently tying their hopes for partisan political gain to defeat in Iraq, our Democratic leadership is now in bind from which there is no way to retreat from retreat.

Thus, the left are reduced to ignoring the success of the surge in increasingly outlandish ways. Instead of acknowledging the success of the surge in reducing violence to its lowest level since the invasion of Iraq began, the common refrain among Democrats today is that Iraq was the deadliest year yet for American soldiers.

And on those rare occasions when you can get a Democrat to admit that the surge has worked, you get one of two "yes but’s." The first "yes but" is that the success of the surge really only occurred because Iraqis knew that Democrats intended to cut and run from Iraq once they were elected. Indeed, according to history as rewritten by Obama, the Anbar Awakening was a direct result of the 2006 election. That evinces nearly the same degree of intellectual honesty as attributing the continued rising and setting of the sun to a Democratic electoral victory.

The second response one gets is that, while the surge may have improved security, it is still a failure because its whole purpose was to give room for political gains as of yet unrealized. The centerpiece of these "hoped for" gains was de-Baathification to reunite the Sunni population. Thus it was the horror of horrors yesterday when the Iraqi government passed a de-Baathification law out of Parliament. One can only imagine the number of expletives resounding off the hallowed halls haunted by our modern left.

The de-Baathification is a great success for those who want to see Iraq succeed as a democracy. Thus, true to the rule that for every action there is a reaction, we have the enemy of that success, our mendacious left, led in the MSM by the NYT, reacting with all of the sputtering vitriol they can muster to attack the new law. The Sunni legislators in the Iraqi Parliament supported the new law. As described in a NYT article:

But members of the largest Sunni coalition in parliament agreed to the new measure. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the group's leader, said the legislation was fair to low-ranking former Baathists and allowed the higher-ranking Shubah members to receive pensions, "which I consider good and acceptable."

See here. But that is not good enough for the odious NYT editorial board. They use rank speculation to attack the new law. I will not go point by point through the editorial, you can read it here, and I have no doubt you will soon hear similar arguments made in Democratic talking points as time progresses. But one has to love the NYT conclusion. "Iraqis are going to have to do a lot better to make their country work. Withdrawing American troops may finally persuade them to do that."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Apparently, the only way to insure victory is to declare defeat in Iraq and leave it to reinfestation by al Qaeda and Iranian plans to create an Iraqi Hezbollah. If only we declare defeat and leave, then everyone will "live happily ever after." When will the MSM ever press these incredibly disingenuous people on this fantasy? When will the MSM ever ask them what the costs of their cut and run plan portend to be in terms of our national security, a revitalized al Qaeda, and a Middle East that no longer credibly respects U.S. military power?

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A Major Benchmark Met in Iraq

Iraqis have met one of the major political benchmarks today, substantively legislating de-Baathification. This is exceptionally good news - for everyone not invested in an American defeat in Iraq at least. This today from the Washington Post:

The Iraqi parliament passed a bill Saturday intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs and collect their pensions, a significant achievement for the divided legislature on an issue still regarded with raw emotion by many Iraqis.

The agreement marks the passage of the first of the legislative benchmarks, a series of goals the U.S. government had once championed but largely ceased advocating publicly after months of delay, frustration and inaction.

President Bush, in Bahrain on an eight-day trip through the Middle East, and some Iraqi officials described the agreement as an important boost for the prospects of reconciliation between the country's marginalized Sunni Muslim minority and its Shiite Muslim majority, which now dominates Iraqi politics.

The legislation seeks to redress the first order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, the controversial decision that drove thousands of Baath Party members from their jobs and alienated them from Iraq's political process. That decision, along with a move to disband the Iraqi army, is widely believed to have fueled the Sunni insurgency that proved so deadly in the following years.

Bush hailed the agreement as "an important sign that the leaders in that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people."

. . . "It's a good step for many reasons," said Falah Hassan Shanshal, who leads the parliamentary committee overseeing the legislation and is a member of the Shiite party loyal to influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "First, it condemns all the crimes carried out by the Baath Party and its bloody regime. And this law will allow us to search for and detect every single person who committed a crime against Iraqis."

Supporters of the measure say it is intended to ease the restrictions that prevented former Baathists from holding government jobs. Shanshal acknowledged that certain people joined the Baath Party not for ideological reasons but out of necessity, and for people who have not committed crimes, "it is possible for them to return to public life."

But members of the largest Sunni coalition in parliament agreed to the new measure. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the group's leader, said the legislation was fair to low-ranking former Baathists and allowed the higher-ranking Shubah members to receive pensions, "which I consider good and acceptable."

"The current rules, on the other hand, deprived a huge number of Iraqi people who didn't commit any crimes and didn't commit any action that violated the law and the constitution," he said.

Some Iraqi officials believe the new measure institutionalizes a punishment against people who acquiesced to Hussein at a time when publicly opposing him could have resulted in a death sentence.

"The problem is that the new leaders have gone in the direction of revenge and vengeance, rather than going into healing those wounds," said Izzat Shabender, a Shiite who is on the de-Baathification committee in parliament. "Even if this law is passed, it cannot achieve the goal -- which is opening a new chapter with the Baathists. . . . It's got nothing to do with reconciliation. The culture of reconciliation does not exist in the heads of the Iraqi leaders."

But with parliament nearly paralyzed by infighting, any agreement was something many Iraqis found heartening. As the prominent Shiite politician Humam Hamoudi said, "The most important thing about this new law is that it is an Iraqi law."

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