Some Things Should Never Be Forgotten

It was two years ago yesterday that we approached a turning point in the Iraq War. The counterinsurgency plan, the initial phase of which had begun in February, was just coming to full implementation in April 2007. As we pushed into al Qaeda safe havens, al Qaeda pushed back with all the brutality they could muster.

In the days leading up to April 19, 2007, four members of al Qaeda did suicide bombing runs in Baghdad leading to tremendous loss of innocent civilian life. This was not an attack on our soldiers - it was directed at our political class, many of whom wanted nothing more than an American defeat in Iraq for their own purposes, irrespective of the tremendous damage such a loss would work on America's future, nor the galvanizing effect such a surrender would have had on al Qaeda and radical Islam.

It almost worked.

It was two years ago yesterday that Senator Harry Reid seized on these of acts of terrorism to proclaim the Iraq War lost and our military defeated.



As I noted at the time, this was a defining moment for the far left and "Give 'Em Surrender Harry". It was the moment all pretenses dropped to reveal in stark relief the far left's naked grab for political power at whatever cost to our nation. It is obscene that they have as yet paid no price for their craven and traitorous acts. To the contrary, they now hold all of the political power they desired.

That said, for all intents and purposes, we have won the Iraq war. Though V-I Day will await the pronouncement of historians, it clearly arrived some months ago - likely with the Iraqi Army's breaking of Sadr's strongholds in Basra. Iraq now has a nascent and functioning democracy. Normalcy has returned to much of the country as security continues to improve. There are still the major hurdles that Iraq must overcome - Kurdish seperatism and Iranian meddling top the lengthy list. But for today, those issues are not tearing the country apart.

History, if written with honesty, will note this hard won victory. History will note that we won because of the brilliance of our commanders, the quality of our soldiers, and the moral courage of President Bush to hold fast in the face of a massive push by the far left to declare the Iraq War a defeat for America. You'll never hear that from Obama, Reid or the radical left. They today are holding an eraser to the history books. But please don't forget it. History, if it is to teach us anything, must be honestly recorded. And there really must be a reckoning. For both of those reasons, please never forget.

[H/T Gateway Pundit]

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Maliki & Obama Have Something Common

It appears that Maliki and Obama have something in common, but despite what Obama has written in the NYT today, that something is not the desire for a precipitous withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq based on a negotiated timeline. Rather, the similarity begins and ends at having to correct "inartful" statements by their subordinates. Obama has made a cottage industry of disowning "inartful" comments by his campaign. Maliki apparently has now had to do the same - specifically, the claim by his office that he was seeking to negotiate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

I refrained from blogging over the past week on the claim that Maliki was seeking to negotiate a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq because it was out of character for Maliki, at least as I assessed his character over the past two years. I waited, expecting a clarification. The clarification has come. This from the BBC:

US presidential contender Barack Obama has repeatedly seized on statements attributed to Iraqi leaders to support his call for a troop withdrawal deadline.

The key statement cited by Mr Obama and others was made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last Monday in his address to Arab ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates.

The prime minister was widely quoted as saying that in the negotiations with the Americans on a Status of Forces Agreement to regulate the US troop presence from next year, "the direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on a timetable for their withdrawal".
That was the version of Mr Maliki's remarks put out in writing by his office in Baghdad.

It was widely circulated by the news media, and caught much attention, including that of Mr Obama.

There is only one problem. It is not what Mr Maliki actually said.

In an audio recording of his remarks, heard by the BBC, the prime minister did not use the word "withdrawal".

What he actually said was: "The direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on programming their presence."

Mr Maliki's own office had inserted the word "withdrawal" in the written version, replacing the word "presence".

Contacted by the BBC, the prime minister's office had no explanation for the apparent contradiction. An official suggested the written version remained the authoritative one, although it is not what Mr Maliki said.

The impression of a hardening Iraqi government line was reinforced the following day by comments from the National Security Adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

He was quoted as saying that Iraq would not accept any agreement which did not specify a deadline for a full withdrawal of US troops.

Significantly, Mr Rubaie was speaking immediately after a meeting with the senior Shiite clerical eminence, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

But in subsequent remarks, Mr Rubaie rode back from a straightforward demand for a withdrawal deadline.

He said the talks were focused on agreeing on "timeline horizons, not specific dates", and said that withdrawal timings would depend on the readiness of the Iraqi security forces.

Militant elements

The confusion reflects the dilemma facing Iraqi government leaders.
On the one hand, many of them - particularly among the Shia factions - face a public which regards the US presence as a problem rather than a solution.

With provincial elections coming up soon, they could be outflanked by more militant elements such as the supporters of cleric Moqtada Sadr, who wants American forces out now and opposes negotiations that would cover their continued presence.

Yet the government knows that its own forces are not yet in a position to stand on their own against the two major challenges they face - the Sunni radicals of al-Qaeda and related groups, and the militant Shia militias which were partly suppressed in fierce battles this spring in Basra and Baghdad.

Both groups could simply bide their time awaiting the American withdrawal before making a comeback drive.

. . . The indications are that the talks are now focusing not on deadlines for a complete withdrawal - but on phasing US troops out of Iraqi cities, and into a role providing logistical backing, firepower and air support, with a reduction of front-line troops.

"On substantive issues, there's not much daylight between the two sides," said a US official close to the troop talks with the Iraqi government.

"The troops will leave when the Iraqis are ready to take over. But they [Iraqi leaders] need to get what they need, and to get cover for it.

It is politics - how you package it, how you sell it to your people. They want our support, but they also want to show that there's progress towards sovereignty."
What the Iraqis see as issues of sovereignty have been a sticking-point in the talks, especially such items as a US demand for operational freedom and immunity from prosecution for US troops.

Officials admit that the negotiations are in a state of flux, and that the Status of Forces Agreement, which was to have been concluded this month, may end up being a simple protocol or memorandum of understanding giving some sort of legal basis for a continued US presence after the current UN mandate expires at the end of the year. . . .

Iraqi leaders will no doubt continue to make ambiguous statements. And US presidential contenders will no doubt continue to construe them to their own advantage.

But when Mr Obama visits Baghdad, as he is expected to later this month, he is unlikely to find that the Iraqi government is quite as set on demanding deadlines for US withdrawal as he would like to think.

Read the entire article.

(H/T Hot Air, Gateway Pundit)

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ABC Asks Some Of The Questions That Obama Should Have Asked

In April, during the hearings with Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker, Obama had an opportunity to raise and discuss his plans to order a withdraw from Iraq unrelated to conditions on the ground, beginning immediately and being completed within 16 months. This would have given the public a platform to evaluate Obama's insane plan. From a national security standpoint, from an Iraqi security standpoint, and from a U.S. force protection standpoint, the plan would deeply harm the U.S., play into the hands of Iran and al Qaeda, threaten all the security and political gains made in Iraq, and threaten the security of our withdrawing forces. Indeed, what Obama proposes would turn into a Dunkirk for U.S. forces. Obama studiously refrained from asking before the public any questions that would have raised these issues. But today, at least ABC News is asking some of them - those that concern logistics and force protection.
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This from ABC News:

Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."

It is a plan that, no doubt, helped Obama get his party's nomination, but one that may prove difficult if he is elected president.

Military personnel in Iraq are following the presidential race closely, especially when it comes to Iraq.

The soldiers and commanders we spoke to will not engage in political conversation or talk about any particular candidate, but they had some strong opinions about the military mission which they are trying to accomplish, and the dramatic security gains they have made in the past few months.

We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq.

"We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions.

"Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month.

Asked if he considered it dangerous to pull out if the withdrawal is not based on "conditions," Hammond said, "It's very dangerous. I'll speak for the coalition forces, men and women of character and moral courage; we have a mission, and it's not until the mission is done that I can look my leader in the eye and say, 'Sir, Ma'am, mission accomplished,' and I think it is dangerous to leave anything a little early."

That phrase, "sustainable security," is something you hear a lot in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who is the operational commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, says he has seen things improve significantly here.

As for Obama's stated plan to bring home the troops within 16 months, Austin said, "I'd have to see the entire plan. I'd have to understand the strategic objectives of the leadership, and based on those strategic objectives, come up with operational objectives. It's very difficult to comment on one way or the other, whether one plan would work or one plan wouldn't work. Right now, we are helping the Iraqis achieve sustainable security, and helping them to increase the capability of the Iraqi security forces, and we are making great progress along those lines."

On the streets of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber had struck just days before, Capt. Josh West told us he wants to finish the mission, and that any further drawdown has to be based on conditions on the ground.

"If we pull out of here too early, it's going to establish a vacuum of power that violent criminal groups will be able to fill once we leave," West said.

Capt. Jeremy Ussery, a West Point graduate on his third deployment, pointed to his heavy body armor as we walked in the 120-degree heat, saying, "The same people keep coming back because we want to see Iraq succeed, that's what we want. I don't want my kids, that hopefully will join the military, my notional children, to have to come back to Iraq 30 years from now and wear this."

But Ussery added, "You can't put a timetable on it -- it's events-based."

Success on the battlefield is not the only complication with Obama's plan.

Physically removing the combat brigades within that kind of time frame would be difficult, as well.

The military has been redeploying troops for years, and Maj. Gen. Charles Anderson, who would help with the withdrawal, told us as we toured Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, "We have the capacity to do a minimum of two-and-a-half brigade combat teams a month -- can we expand that capacity? Sure. Can we accelerate? It depends. It depends on the amount of equipment that we bring back. And it's going to depend on how fast we bring them out."

It is the equipment that is the real problem.

. . . While Anderson and his troops have a positive attitude, several commanders who looked at the Obama plan told ABC News, on background, that there was "no way" it could work logistically.

Read the entire article.

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McCain, Timetables and Timeframes

McCain gave a superb speech in Ohio today setting forth the goals that he wanted to accomplish as President over a four year term. One of the topics McCain discussed was Iraq and a timeframe in which he expected our nation to succeed in stabilizing Iraq and defeating the dual existential threats to both America and that nation's nascent democracy.

Barack Obama has posed a timetable for withdraw from Iraq with the last of our combat brigades fighting a rearguard action out of Iraq within 16 months, irrespective of conditions on the ground. John McCain said in his speech that he expected to win the war in Iraq and to have most of our combat troops withdrawn from Iraq by 2013. The difference between those two visions and those two plans is the difference between night and day. The former envisions declaring Iraq a defeat and leaving it to be "Lebanized" by Iran and reinfested by al Qaeda. The second envisions doing what is necessary to fully defeat these threats and stabilize Iraq - a nation where accomplishing those goals is becoming a more realistic possibility with each passing day. Nonetheless, here is how the NYT spun McCain's comments in the lead paragraph of its article reporting McCain's speech:

Senator John McCain declared on Thursday that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013 and that the nation would be a functioning democracy with only “spasmodic” episodes of violence. The comments were a striking departure from his usual refusal to set a date for American withdrawal.

Read the entire article. Is there anyone in the MSM today who has a shred of intellectual honesty left?

Here is McCain's full speech today

Part 1




Part 2



Part 3

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The Democrats Go On The Offensive

Our partisan Dems were kind enough to instruct General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker about the objective reality in Iraq during hearings before the Senate committees today. And, in a few instances, our Dems even managed to work in a question or two. What became clear were the new Democratic talking points. And there were even two award winning performances. The most smacked down award goes to Evan Byah while Obama takes the Slick Willie award:

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I’ve spent the day watching and blogging the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker before Congress, including the three Presidential candidates. Here are my observations as to our partisan left.

1. The laugher of the day has to go to Biden who concluded his speech opening the hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee by saying that those who advocate leaving Iraq immediately are being being "unfairly" labled as "defeatists." In reality, they are "patriots." Right. If that is how we defined "patriots" since 1776, we would be singing God Save the Queen today and Washington, D.C. would be abutting the sovereign nation of the Confederate States of America.

2. Gone is any question that includes the words “bench marks.” That favored of all topics but a few short months ago has been vanished from Democratic vocabulary except for speeches to which neither Petraeus or Crocker are afforded an opportunity to respond. The answer of course would have been that 12 of the 18 benchmarks are substantively met and the other six are all on a forward trajectory.

3. Democrats have become fiscally conservative, seeing the money being spent in Iraq as breaking our nation’s economy. Of course, what was unsaid was that Obama and Clinton have both promised to use the money going to Iraq to fund their vast new experiments in socialism. I guess this would be called highly selective fiscal conservatism.

4. Several Senators tried the argument that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have been lying when they have repeatedly said, as recently as four months ago, that Iraq is the central focus of al Qaeda. According to these budding intel analysts, bin Laden is conducting a brilliant disinformation campaign designed to bankrupt America by keeping us fighting in Iraq. The fact that al Qaeda's defeat in the Iraq is having a very negative impact on the popularity of their cause apparently does not enter into Democratic calculus.

5. Many of the Senators claimed our forces are too stretched by the Iraq War so that we are unprepared to respond if our forces are needed elsewhere. The unspoken logical extension of that is let’s surrender in Iraq so that we can bring our troops home and they can prepare for a hypothetical war that no Democrat will committ ground forces to anyway. And that way, Congress will not have to waste money increasing the size of the military that is the smallest in our nation’s history since WWII. Its a far left two'fer.

6. Iran is an ally of the Shia in Iraq and in a close relationship with Maliki. Apparently, allowing Ahmendinejad to conduct a state visit to Iraq a month ago showed the Iraqi Shia led government to be in an anti-American alliance with Ahmedinejad – a bargain they sealed with a kiss. I thought that was a hanging offense in Iran. Perhaps Ahmedinejad is just letting his hair down outside of Tehran.

7. Iran is only conducting its malign proxy actions in Iraq, attempting to recreate Lebanon in Iraq, is only because the U.S. is in Iraq. If only the U.S. would leave Iraq, Iran would immediately stop their attempts at meddling and embrace Iraq. The fact that an Iraq with a real democracy and that honors the millenium old Shia tradition of a wall between mosque and state, if you will, presents a mortal threat to Iran by its very existance on Iranian borders is apparently merely ancillary to this argument.

8. The Basra offensive, with Shia on Shia violence, was proof positive that the surge had failed. The fact that the Basra offensive was the government seeking to stop criminal gangs who contol Iraq’s sole port and economic center were apparently not reasonable justifications for the offensive. Nor was the fact that the only militia to react is armed, funded and trained by Iran. That was not evidence of a civil war. It was evidence of an Iran Iraq war.

9. We have not conducted a "diplomatic surge." Other Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, are not assissting us enough in Iraq because of a failure of Bushian diplomacy. Apparently, the fact that Iraq, if we succeed, will be a shining democracy amongst a world of repressive police states – and will be a particular threat to Iran – simply does not explain the lack of concern amongst Middle Eastern countries with making Iraq a success. It must be Bush's fault. And as to Iran, we have tried to set up meetings with them for months to discuss Iraqi security. Unfortunately, they keep running into "unavoidable conflicts" with scheduling.

10. Multiple Senators strong armed Crocker to submit the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that we are negotiating with Iraq to Congress for approval. The fact that this will be an Executive Agreement within the President’s Article II powers to sign and that Crocker said will not in any way tie the hands of our next president is meaningless to the narrative that this is an end run around Congress. As is the fact that President’s have negotiated SOFA agreements without Congressional approval in 79 out of 79 other similar scenarios. Clearly, the Democrats would love to see our forces in Iraq with no authority under international law or by force of agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.

11. Most of the Democrats did not understand why we could not predict today a bright line set of conditions that would allow us leave as soon as we meet them. Particularly disingenuous was Obama, who was trying to portray those in favor of staying in Iraq as only planning to draw down when every last al Qaeda sympathizer is wiped out or jailed. No one has ever claimed that, though Obama stated it today as if its been part of the Republican platform since 2002.


And the Most Smacked-Down award goes to . . . . .

Senator Evan Byah. Senator Bayh sounded like a lawyer doing just an incredibly poor cross examination.

- Bayh tried to get Petraeus to say that reasonable people could disagree on how to go forward in Iraq – clearly implying that an immediate withdraw is within reason. Petraeus picked it up and responded that reasonable people could differ, but anyone who advocated a quick withdraw would "not be reasonable."

- Bayh was the brilliant mind that suggested it is possible that bin Laden and Zawahiri are both lying about Iraq still being al Qaeda’s central focus, merely trying to stretch our effort and break our piggy bank. Crocker indicated he rather believed bin Laden on this one.

- Bayh asked Crocker to agree that we needed to put more pressure on Iraq’s government by giving a time certain deadline for withdraw. Crocker responded that his experience was that political progress and concessions occur when there is less pressure on the Iraqi legislators, not more. Further, the pressure of a timeline for quick withdraw would end the political gains in their tracks as each side starts to look at what is to come after America pulls out.

- Finally, Petraus responds to Bayh’s suggestion that our effort in Iraq has caused an increase in jihadi recruitment. Petraeus disagrees and then goes on to state he believes bin Laden’s repeated assertions about the centrality of Iraq to al Qaeda and that removing troops cannot be on a date certain. It must be conditions based if it is to be done while sustaining the progress made to date.

The Slick Willie Award for prevarication and disingenuousness in the spirit of William Jefferson Clinton goes to . . .

Obama.

Obama had a perfect opportunity to let Petraeus and Crocker ponder the ramifications of his plan to get out of Iraq a brigade or two a month. True, in prior testimony, Petraeus and Crocker were both explicit that that a precipitous withdraw would be an incredible disaster – and that of course is what Obama has proposed. Instead of asking about the problems with his surrender plan, Obama spent his time asking rather innocuous questions that sounded sage but were of little substance. Only when his questioning was nearly done did he make a statement, not allowing Petraeus nor Crocker the opportunity to respond. To paraphrase, Obama stated his narrative:

“The decision to go into Iraq was a blunder and it is the cause of al Qaeda and Iran going into Iraq. The surge has not resulted in reconciliation. Basra was done for political purposes. We need a timetable for withdraw and a diplomatic surge that includes Iran. We need Iran as partners to assisst with stabilizing Iraq. The money we are spending is breaking our budget. We have finite resources.”

And for that very disingenuous performance, he of course earned copious praise from the MSNBC crowd.

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Cordesman Warns On Iraq & Afghanistan

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, writes in the Washington Post today to warn politicians that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can clearly be won and stable states formed, but both will require patience.





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This today from Anthony Cordesman:

No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.

These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.

The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.

Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south.

What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.

. . . The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.

Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.

Read the entire article.

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Krauthammer, Iraq, & And The Moving Target

Charles Krauthammer ponders the same question I raised last week. Given the very real gains in security Iraq and the Iraqi government's passage of several important laws for reconciliation, how can the partisan left still attempt to justify surrender and withdraw? Some on the left have in fact given their answers.

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I posted the other day on how surreal and transparent the partisans on the left were becoming in attempting to justify defeat in Iraq in light of clear progress towards peace and reconciliation. Charles Krauthammer weighs in today on the same issue and, not surprisingly - Krauthammer leads with the report of CSIS's Anthony Cordesman:

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. . . . If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government -- in security, governance, and development -- there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

-- Anthony Cordesman,

"The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing From the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008

This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006 Cordesman had written that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good." Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago.

Indeed, although Krauthammer does not point it out, Cordesman's prior criticisms were sufficiently harsh and pessimistic that the New York Times had them permanently linked at the bottom of their opinion page. To continue with Krauthammer:

Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq." Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

. . . After agonizing years of searching for the right strategy and the right general, we are winning. How do Democrats react? From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama, the talking point is the same: Sure, there is military progress. We could have predicted that. (They in fact had predicted the opposite, but no matter.) But it's all pointless unless you get national reconciliation.

"National" is a way to ignore what is taking place at the local and provincial level, such as Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, scion of the family that dominates the largest Shiite party in Iraq, traveling last October to Anbar in an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation with the Sunni sheiks.

Doesn't count, you see. Democrats demand nothing less than federal-level reconciliation, and it has to be expressed in actual legislation.

The objection was not only highly legalistic but also politically convenient: Very few (including me) thought this would be possible under the Maliki government. Then last week, indeed on the day Cordesman published his report, it happened. Mirabile dictu, the Iraqi parliament approved three very significant pieces of legislation.

First, a provincial powers law that turns Iraq into arguably the most federal state in the entire Arab world. The provinces get not only power but also elections by Oct. 1. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has long been calling this the most crucial step to political stability. It will allow, for example, the pro-American Anbar sheiks to become the legitimate rulers of their province, exercise regional autonomy and forge official relations with the Shiite-dominated central government.

Second, parliament passed a partial amnesty for prisoners, 80 percent of whom are Sunni. Finally, it approved a $48 billion national budget that allocates government revenue -- about 85 percent of which is from oil -- to the provinces. Kurdistan, for example, gets one-sixth.

What will the Democrats say now? . . .

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

Read the entire article.

So far, four on the left have responded to the changes in Iraq, with Nancy Pelosi being the most completely ridiculous:

. . . [Y]ou can't get anymore surreal than Nancy Pelosi and her response to this de-Baathification law. She dismissed it during a CNN interview the other day on the grounds that it had occurred . . .

. . .

(wait for it)

. . ."

too late."

Yes. That's right. Reconciliation does not count in her alternate reality because it did not occur in time. The House Democrats apparently passed a double secret time limit. If only Maliki and Bush had known. Amazingly, Wolf Blitzer let her get away with that response without challenge - or at least no challenge I could hear over my laughter, but I digress.

Read the article here.

And Michael Kinsley has responded by not merely moving the goal posts, but moving them outside the bounds of any logic. According to Mr. Kinsley, neither the security gains nor the political progress matter in assessing whether the surge has succeeded or in judging how to proceed in Iraq. His incredibly sophmoric argument is that the surge can be labled a failure solely on the basis of how many troops we have in Iraq at the moment. But even he is not calling for withdraw now. Which sets him apart from the LA Times.

The Los Angeles Times has responded to the good news from Iraq. Captian's Quarters covers their bizarre justification for still legislating surrender, which they never quite come to grips with because they start arguing with themselves:

The Los Angeles Times editorial board not only contradicts its previous editorials on Iraq, today's editorial contradicts itself. After pushing for withdrawal from Iraq on the basis that the US and Iraqis had made no real political progress, today they argue that we should withdraw because political progress has undeniably begun. And in conclusion, they wind up arguing for exactly the opposite.

Read the post here.

And in what can only be called a major surprise, the only other far left entity to finally stop calling for withdraw after the latest legislation out of Iraq is the New York Times editorial board. Go figure.

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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

:

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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Obama On The March

Obama, in an interview today, is apparently trying to show that he is at least as vaccuous as John Edwards. His first order upon becoming President will be . . . "TO THE REAR, MARCH:"

Roland Martin: If you are elected what is the very first thing that you focus on as Commander in Chief of this country?

Barack Obama: Well, we will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will give them a new assignment and that is to bring our troops home in a careful, responsible way, but to end this occupation in Iraq. I will call in my Secretary of State and initiate the diplomacy that's needed to make sure that exit is accompanied by negotiations between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Gateway Pundit has the whole story. Thank God we have no strategic interests in the Middle East or I'd be worried by this.

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Hillary Clinton Asks Us For A Willing Suspension of Disbelief

The latest numbers on the violence in Iraq, showing drastic reductions across the board, are here, and you can find the latest assessment of the situation in Iraq by LTG (ret) Barry McCaffery here, in which he observes that there is "an unmistakable new reality" in the security situation. To borrow the phrasing of Hillary Clinton, one would have to engage in a willing suspension of disbelief in order to assess that Iraq is on anything other than an upward spiral, with the counterinsurgency strategy of General David Petraeus having worked beyond expectations to bring a Pax Americana to Iraq. And that is precisely that Hillary Clinton was asking us to do yesterday when she called the war in Iraq failed and reasserted her call for a legislated surrender:

“Last night, the Senate voted to add additional funding for Iraq to the Omnibus appropriations bill without any requirements to end the war,” Clinton said in a statement released by her Senate office. “As I have said before, I cannot and will not support continuing to fund a flawed and failed strategy in Iraq. I was proud to be a co-sponsor of an amendment offered by Sens. Russ Feingold and Harry Reid that would require the President to safely redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq within nine months after which funding for military operations in Iraq would be terminated.

Read the article here. One might suspect that she wants to insure we fail in Iraq purely for her own partisan political gain. And she wants to be our Commander in Chief? I struggle to think of any possible elected office at the federal, state or local level for which this incredibly un-principled woman is qualified.

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Mahmoud the Truth-Teller

Mahmoud Ahemedinejad, the Iranian theocracy's Mouth in Chief, hits the nail on the head today with his characterization of our intelligence communitiies' NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program issued last week. As he puts it, the NIE is Washington's "declaration of surrender" to Iran. And any objective reader of the NIE, which contains policy recommendations to talk with Iran and deligitimizes the use or threat of use of force, would have to agree. It is the penultimate proof that our intelligence agencies are out of control and now running their own foreign policy.

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Michael O'Hanlon's Suicide Hotline

The Democrats’ mantra of defeat in Iraq, their refusal to acknowledge the reality wrought by the surge, and their continued attempt to surrender legislatively has senior Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon trying to lead his Democrats back from the brink of Copperhead suicide. O’Hanlon long ago saw the changing reality in Iraq and understood why victory there was of great importance. Now he is trying to find some way for his Democrats to extricate themselves from their complete embrace of defeat. He suggests that the Dems adopt what seems more than a bit shameless historical revisionism.

Writing in the USA Today, O’Hanlon muses

Rarely in U.S. history has a political party diagnosed a major failure in the country's approach to a crucial issue of the day, led a national referendum on the failing policy, forced a change in that policy that led to major substantive benefits for the nation — and then categorically refused to take any credit whatsoever for doing so.

O’Hanlon posits the tenuous position that it was only the Democratic takeover of Congress that led Bush to adopt the surge strategy. He suggests the Democrats rely on his suggested narrative to now claim credit for the success in Iraq. Shameless? - you bet. Welcome? - very much so if they would now, as he also suggests, begin playing an affirmative role in making Iraq a success rather than their current course of "rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory" by attempting "to mandate an end" to operations in Iraq.

We now have a realistic chance, not of victory, but of what my fellow Brookings scholar Ken Pollack and I call sustainable stability. Violence rates have dropped by half to two-thirds in the course of 2007, the lowest level in years. Iraq is still very unstable, but it has a chance.

Despite this progress, many Democrats are inclined to provide Bush the roughly $12 billion a month he requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 only if the money is devoted narrowly to counterterrorism and bringing home U.S. troops. This is a mistake.

On strategic grounds, it appears that we now have an opportunity to salvage something significant in Iraq. Given sectarian tensions and brittle Iraqi institutions, this almost surely requires us to execute a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces there rather than an abrupt departure. In political terms, it would be rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory to mandate an end to an operation, however unpopular, just when it is showing its first signs of progress.

Democrats should change course. Rather than demand an end to the operation no matter what, they should continue to keep up the pressure for positive results in Iraq. They can retain their anti-war stance, emphasizing that their default position is that U.S. troops should soon come home absent continued major progress. . . .

Read the article here. O’Hanlon makes a series of recommendations for attaching strings to funding that would allow for the Democrats to maintain an anti-war patina while playing a positive role in making Iraq a success. It’s a reasonable argument and one certainly in the best interests of America's national security and foreign policy. But it is one with little, if any, chance of being implemented.

While O’Hanlon has grasped the reality of Iraq, he has not grasped the reality that he is fundamentally different from his neo-liberal compatriots. O’Hanlon is an anachronism – a classical liberal. His Democratic compatriots are almost entirely neo-liberals who have ejected classical liberalism’s defining quality – intellectual honesty - in favor of the calculus of partisan power. And they long seen defining Iraq as an abject failure a the key to that calculus. With intellectual honesty no longer at issue, facts, reality, and indeed, any interest beyond attainment of partisan power are of no importance.

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The History of the Surge Against the Surge . . .

And a sordid history it is. At the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery does an exceptional job of memorializing all of the low points, including among them these gems:

. . . As Harry Reid put it on July 9, "Democrats and military experts and the American people know the president's current strategy is not working and we cannot wait until September to act." As Dianne Feinstein put it, "Today, a majority of the Senate sees that the surge is not working. Do we change course now or do we wait until September? I believe the answer is clear." James Webb, sponsoring an amendment that would cripple the surge, made it clear that whatever Petraeus said wouldn't matter to him. "I don't care what the report says next week. I don't care what the report says in September."

. . . Fearful that Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker might report too much progress in their much-anticipated testimony to Congress in September, Democrats launched a preemptive assault on the duo. "Leading Democrats preemptively assailed the expected findings on Iraq due this week from Gen. David H. Petraeus as 'dead, flat wrong' and said President Bush's likely call for continued patience in the war would simply extend an 'unconscionable' and 'completely unacceptable' policy," reported the International Herald Tribune on September 9, two days before the hearing was scheduled. "The pointed comments from the Democrats seemed designed to undercut the impact of the much-awaited reports." Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts referred to the general's testimony as a "Petraeus village . . . a façade to hide from view the continuing failure of the Bush administration's strategy." Rahm Emanuel said, "We don't need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics, or the Pulitzer for fiction." The testimony required the "willing suspension of disbelief," said Hillary Clinton (a past master at the skill, as she had suspended it often enough in regard to her husband). "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing, and the surge is working," said Dick Durbin. In an unintentional echo of the New York Times's famous "fake but accurate" defense of Dan Rather's fictional documents about President Bush's presumed derelictions of duty in the Texas Air National Guard, Durbin said: "Even if the figures are right, the conclusion is wrong." In less than a year, the Democrats had gone from demanding a change in a policy that was failing, to demanding a change in a policy that hadn't been tried yet, to demanding a change in a policy that at the very least had forestalled disaster and was proving to have some success.

October 2006 was the worst month in Iraq since the war started, with violence spiking all over the country, and death numbers reaching new highs. In November 2006, the Democrats had their best midterm election in 20 years, winning back both the House and the Senate and gaining a large lead in the generic ballot heading into the election of 2008. The two incidents were not unrelated, and, as a result, the party laid down a huge bet on Iraq the Debacle, calculating that the disaster would drive swing voters into their column. "Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding," a gleeful Harry Reid said on April 12, 2007, to reporters. "We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war." . . .

. . . As they took control of Congress at the start of 2007, the Democrats vowed this would be a year of historic importance, and it seems they were prescient: Seldom before in the annals of governance have so many politicians fought so long and so hard to completely screw up a winning strategy being waged on their country's behalf. . . . It was the Stab in the Front, the Surge-against-the-Surge, the Pickett's Charge of the Great War on Terror. It was a year to remember, that will live in the annals of fecklessness. . . .

Read the entire article. And as to Emanuel's comment, referenced above, on handing out the Nobel prize for creative statistics, I do believe Al Gore and the UN shared that one this year.

Update: (H/T Instapundit)And in a similar vein, there is this today from Don Surber, explaining that "[v]ictory was never an option for Democrats."

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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."

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Denial or Dissimulation?

Charles Krauthammer believes that our Democrats are in a “state of denial” about Iraq. The Democrats, a year ago, justified their embrace of defeat on the meme that our soldiers in Iraq were in a “civil war” that “could not be won militarily.” Now that Iraq is well on its way to being pacified following the posting of a new U.S. commander with a different strategy, the Democrats are searching for any excuse to add a patina of legitimacy to their continued attempts to legislate defeat in Iraq.

For Mr. Krauthammer to call that a "state of denial" suggests the Dems are using a psychological defense mechanism that prevents them from recognizing reality. Mr. Krauthammer is being far too tactful, suggesting an excuse for what is clearly conscious perfidy.

The Democrats, a year ago, saw an opportunity for partisan gain by exploiting problems in Iraq and they jumped on it without any regard to the long term costs to America. Now they are trapped in their total embrace of defeat, hoping to be saved by bad news out of Iraq before they have to provide funding for the war again. It is all a coldly calculated decision by intelligent and ambitious but unprincipled people. They are not in a state of denial. They are trapped in a corner and know that they will face the wrath of the electorate if they concede to success in Iraq. They are consciously dissimulating in an effort to find some means of escape. Their stranglehold on the concept of the formal “top down” benchmarks to justify surrender and their utter refusal to acknowledge the “bottom up” grassroots progress clearly occurring in Iraq and now reported by even the NYT is incredibly transparent dissimulation.

This today from Mr. Krauthammer:

It does not have the drama of the Inchon landing or the sweep of the Union comeback in the summer of 1864. But the turnabout of American fortunes in Iraq over the past several months is of equal moment -- a war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: "This is not working. . . . We must reverse it." A euphemism for "abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.

How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.

. . . But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?

Sure, there is no oil law. But the central government is nonetheless distributing oil revenue to the provinces, where the funds are being used for reconstruction.

Sure, the de-Baathification law has not been modified. But the whole purpose of modification was to entice Sunni insurgents to give up the insurgency and join the new order. This is already happening on a widening scale all over the country in the absence of a relaxed de-Baathification law.

. . . Why is top-down national reconciliation as yet unattainable? Because decades of Saddam Hussein's totalitarianism followed by the brutality of the post-invasion insurgency destroyed much of Iraq's political infrastructure, causing Iraqis to revert to the most basic political attachment -- tribe and locality. Gen. David Petraeus’s genius has been to adapt American strategy to capitalize on that development, encouraging the emergence of and allying ourselves with tribal and provincial leaders -- without waiting for cosmic national deliverance from the newly constructed and still dysfunctional constitutional apparatus in Baghdad.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?

. . . So, just as we have learned this hard lesson of the disconnect between political benchmarks and real stability [following elections and then the Samarra bombing], the critics now claim the reverse -- that benchmarks are what really count.

This is to fundamentally mistake ends and means. The benchmarks would be a wonderful shortcut to success in Iraq. But it is folly to abandon the pursuit of that success when a different route, more arduous but still doable, is at hand and demonstrably working.

Read the article here. Mr. Krauthammer describes realistically what is now obvious in Iraq. He does not do so as regards what is equally obvious in Washington. This is emblematic of the problem conservatives seem to have in responding truthfully and with appropriate disdain and volume to the partisan, conscious and traitorous acts of today's Democrats. To call what the Democrats are doing today anything else requires, as Senator Clinton put it, a "willing suspension of disbelief." And do remember the context of her remarks. She was attacking General Petraeus over his reports of success in pacifying Iraq.

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"We Shall Surrender In The Fields and in the Streets; We Shall Surrender In the Hills . . ."

That is the voice of our Democratic leadership channelling Churchill and the famous speech he gave to rally his country during the dark days that followed the 1940 British retreat from Dunkirk. Doesn't it make one proud to see our Democrats, refusing to concede against all odds, determined to achieve their version of "victory" at any cost. That is in the true spirit of Churchill.

Well, perhaps not the true spirit. There are a few minor differences between the spirit of Churchill and the things that animate our quartet of Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, and Obey of course - principles, ethics, intellectual honesty, a sense of reality and loyalty to country to name but a few.

And those differences were very much on display yesterday. If you did not see it, Congressional Democrats Jack Murtha and David Obey appeared at a news conference. The Washington Times has the report:

House Democrats' point man in the war-funding showdown with the White House today dismissed U.S. military gains in Iraq and vowed to tighten the purse strings until President Bush accepts a pullout plan.

"Look at all the people that have been displaced, all the [lost] oil production, unemployment, all those type of things," said Rep. John P. Murtha, chairman of House Appropriations defense subcommittee. "We can't win militarily

The Pennsylvania Democrat conceded violence was down dramatically and some normalcy was restored on Iraq's streets, but he said U.S. victory remains unattainable as long as Baghdad fails to pass national-reconciliation laws

"To change the political law, it doesn't seem to me you need the military stability," Mr. Murtha told reporters on Capitol Hill.

The non-sequiter of that last statement is near breathtaking, is it not? Murtha is saying that stability is unnecessary for Iraq to progress from this point. This man is such an idiotic menace, one has to, in the words of Hillary, "suspend disbelief" when listening to him. Likewise is his refusal to acknowledge the grass roots progress by Iraqis towards reconcilliation that has made this period of peace possible. And indeed, Murtha must willfully ignore it as, for all practical purposes, that grass roots progress largely renders moot the benchmarks upon which Murtha hangs his hopes for legislating surrender. Long gone are the days when he and all his colleagues were able to justify their clarion call to surrender on the assertion that Iraq was in a state of civil war.

Actually, my favorite part of the news conference was when Murtha dismissed the pax Americana now descending on Iraq as a "lull" in hostilities. I believe it was Mort Kondracke that commented to the effect that "yes, its a lull in the fighting, just like there was a lull in the fighting after Sherman burned Atlanta." And Krauthammer pointed out that it is not like this "lull" is the result of al Qaeda having gone on a short vacation.

It is not hard to read between the lines here. The Democratic leadership's refusal to fund the Iraq War and their determination to continue treating it as a lost cause is a desparate bid to buy time in the hopes that something major will go wrong in Iraq between now and the end of January, when military funding runs out. They bet the farm on defeat in Iraq, with the high water mark of their charge being Harry Reid’s declaration of defeat and capitulation in response to four suicide bombings by al Qaeda in April. Now, rather than do the right thing in response to changed circumstance, they have chosen to double down their wager on defeat. Their perfidy is despicable - and criminal. How many lives are they willing to sacrifice for political power?

Imagine for a second the ramifications to our national security that would emenate from a legislated defeat in January, even as America has brought a significant measure of peace to Iraq and, in so doing, largely destroyed the radical Islamists of al Qaeda. Indeed, al Qaeda has been beaten to the point that Osama bin Laden was himself moved to declare, just two weeks ago, that the "the darkeness" in Iraq has become "pitch black."

If we left Iraq now, forced to withdraw by legislation, the radical Islamists would certainly claim it as a victory that would take on mythical proportions. Never forget that it was the belief that Islam had defeated the "super power" of the Soviet Union that drove the growth of radical Islam through the 1980's and 90's. Now with their defeat assured on the ground, to be granted a victory over the American super power could only come - as the story will go - from the direct intervention of Allah. God help us all if that occurs. Radical Islam will take on a new life not heretofore imagined. And, as the world's premier Orientalist, Bernard Lewis has stated, speaking of the immeasurable consequences of a withdraw from Iraq last year - before we had largely destroyed al Qaeda - "the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting."

At any rate, the two front war against the mortal enemies of our nation continues. And its most dangerous enemies are inside of our borders.

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News From Around the Web

According to Senate Democratic Majority Leader, Baghdad Harry, "Every place you go you hear about no progress being made in Iraq." Obviously the one place he has not gone to is Iraq.

Charles Krauthammer notes that the Democratic meme that Bush has destroyed our credibility overseas is demonstrably false. All of Europe has moved much closer to the US over the past few months, and pro-US leaders have been elected in most EU countries. Krauthammer sees the shift towards the US arising directly from our military success in Iraq.

Maliki has approved the prosecution for two prominent Shiite members of the Sadr controlled health ministry to be put on trial for mass murder. This is an important step in showing the law applies to all in Iraq.

Right Truth has the picture of the week. Lol . . .

Here is a rollup of 19 known terrorist plots targeting the US that have been broken up since 9-11. (Hattip: Instapundit)

A Dem debate play by play from Vegas. At least Hillary has given up on the gender card for the moment. Now any criticism of her is not ganging up, its "mudslinging straight out of the Republican playbook." As Clinton said in another non-answer, "I think the American people know where I've stood for 35 years . . ." If the polls are accurate, the American people think she is doing a balancing act on the fence willing to say anything that will win the election.

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Baghdad Harry Reid Joins Pelosi & Murtha in Call To Legislate Defeat In Iraq

With news out of Iraq - though not found in the MSM - getting better and better each day, the neo-liberal left still refuse to loosen their embrace of surrender and the narrative of defeat. Last week it was Spearker Pelosi & Rep. Murtha threatening not to fund the war unless a date certain was set for withdrawal and the complete end to all combat operations in Iraq. Enter Sen. Majority Ldr Harry Reid, continuing his impression of Baghdad Bob, a role he first auditioned for in April when he declared that the U.S. military had been defeated in Iraq as a result of four suicide bombs by al Qaeda. He continues to compeletely ignore reality in what is so obviously an attempt for partisan gain, irrespective of the impact on our national security or, for that matter, the operation of the Defense Department in time of war:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won't approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home.

By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008.

If Bush vetoes the bill, "then the president won't get his $50 billion," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

. . . But their [Reid, Pelosi & Murtha's] remarks reflect an emerging Democratic strategy on the war: Force congressional Republicans and Bush to accept a timetable for troop withdrawals, or turn Pentagon accounting processes into a bureaucratic nightmare.

If Democrats refuse to send Bush the $50 billion, the military would have to drain its annual budget to keep the wars afloat. Last week, Congress approved a $471 billion budget for the military that pays mostly for non-war related projects, such as depot maintenance and weapons development.

. . . In a recent letter to Congress, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England warned that the Army was on track to run out of money by February.

England also said that without more money the military would eventually have to close facilities, layoff civilian workers and defer contracts. Also, the budget delay could disrupt training efforts of Iraqi security forces and efforts to protect troops against roadside bombs, he said.

"The successes they (the troops ) have achieved in recent months will be short lived without appropriate resources to continue their good work," England wrote in a Nov. 8 letter.

. . . The House was expected to vote as early as Wednesday, with the Senate following suit by the end of the week.

Read the article. What will the Democrats do when the MSM begins reporting the news? There will be a price to pay for their perfidy. One gets the impression that they think by closing their eyes and putting their fingers in their ears, they think that they can ignore reality until it goes away and leaves them alone in their fantasy world. Reality won't - but the independent voters who will decide the next election likely will.

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