Lower the White Flags - The Surge Is Working [Archive] - Debate Policy

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red states rule

08-06-2007, 05:02 AM

Sorry to break the news to the Defeatocrats, but the US is winning in Iraq

Wait, haul down the white flags - the surge in Iraq is working
BY PETER BRONSON

We're winning in Iraq.

Ok, I said it. It's crazy. Stupid. Naïve. Hopelessly optimistic. And true.

Something has changed, and the cut-and-run crowd in Congress did not get the memo. They insist the war is lost and we should get out yesterday. But the war has taken a turn for the better, like a patient making a sudden recovery after years on life support.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms."

That's not from a Bush loyalist. It's from two analysts at the liberal Brookings Institution, who say they have "harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq." After an eight-day tour of the war zone, they wrote a New York Times op-ed that had to give an extra-strength Maalox heartburn to Sen. Harry "this war is lost" Reid.

In "A War We Just Might Win," Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack said they saw "a potential to produce not necessarily 'victory,' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with."

They said morale is high under Gen. David Petraeus; civilian fatalities are down by a third since the "surge' of 30,000 additional troops began in mid-June; former allies of al-Qaida have turned against the terrorists; Iraqi military and police units are reliable and effective.

That good news was echoed by New York Times reporter John Burns on the Hugh Hewitt radio show. "I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference," Burns said. He warned that a retreat would "lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we've seen to date."

"And the question then arises, catastrophic as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the world, and America's sense of itself?"

Michael Yon, a reporter embedded with Operation Arrowhead Ripper, says horrific cruelty by al-Qaida has driven Iraqis to our side. In one battle, he saw "unexpected and overwhelming cooperation of ordinary Iraqi citizens, who pointed out the enemy and many of the bombs set to ambush troops."

"I sense there has been a fundamental shift in Iraq," Yon wrote. "One officer called it a 'change in the seas,' and I believe his words were accurate. Something has changed. The change is fundamental, and for once seems positive."

Success in Iraq could be one of those tectonic shifts that completely rearranges the landscape:

It's a San Francisco earthquake for politicians who prematurely waved the white flag. Rep. James Clyburn admitted as much, saying that for Democrats, good news "would be a really big problem for us, no question about that."

Some in the antiwar left would rather see America lose than see Bush succeed. But most Americans won't forgive losers who tried to snatch defeat from the hands of success.

Staunch supporters of the war and the troops, such as Sen. John McCain, would be vindicated. "Despite this progress," he said of the surge, "Democrats today advocate a precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. They are wrong, and their approach portends catastrophe for both Iraq and the United States. To fail in Iraq risks creating a sanctuary for al-Qaida, sparking a full scale civil war, genocide and violence that could spread far beyond Iraq's borders. ... We cannot and must not lose this war."

President Bush's anemic popularity would improve. But even those of us who stuck by him wonder: What took so long? Why did it take four years to finally send Gen. "U.S. Grant" Petraeus to do the job right?

Ironically, recent success underlines the previous failure of Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - who begins to look like Bush's Gen. McClellan, whose incompetence was finally exposed by his replacement.

The war is hardly over. Iraq's politicians are nearly as contemptible as our own. The media will bang on their bad-news drum all day. But Bush should grab a megaphone and tell America we're finally winning.

About 3,600 soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Each one was someone's son, father, husband, brother or friend. Every one of them deserves better leadership.

"In a wider sense, the war is as most wars: an evolution from blunders to wisdom," says military historian Victor Davis Hanson. As in the Civil War, World War I and World War II, "the key is the support of a weary public for an ever improving military that must nevertheless endure a final storm before breaking the enemy."

For all the soldiers and their families who believe in the mission, the hasty exodus of Iraq-war political deserters has been as chilling as winter at Valley Forge.

But they said George Washington was crazy too.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070805/COL05/708050332/1009/EDIT

red states rule

08-06-2007, 05:59 AM

Perceptions of Iraq War Are Starting to Shift
By Michael Barone

It's not often that an opinion article shakes up Washington and changes the way a major issue is viewed. But that happened last week, when The New York Times printed an opinion article by Brookings Institution analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack on the progress of the surge strategy in Iraq.

Yes, progress. O'Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- Pollack even wrote a book urging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- but they have sharply criticized military operations there in the ensuing years.

"As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq," they wrote, "we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory,' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with."

Their bottom line: "There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

That's not what almost all their fellow Democrats in Congress want to hear. Freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas, who unseated Republican Jim Ryun last fall, bolted from a hearing room when retired Gen. Jack Keane described positive developments in Iraq. When she came back, she explained: "But let me first just say that the description of Iraq as in some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation -- things are going so well -- those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country, instead of saying, here's the reality of the problem. And people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue."

But reality can change -- and in war it often does. For George W. Bush and his leading advisers, the reality of Iraq in June 2003 was that we had won a major military victory and that any postwar messiness was not a big problem. We'd put a proconsul in for a year, set up elections and install an Iraqi government, train Iraqi soldiers and police, and restrict our troops to a light footprint. But that reality changed, into full-fledged sectarian warfare, after al-Qaida bombed the Shiite mosque in Samarra in February 2006.

Bush and his military commanders acted as if that reality hadn't changed, until the voters weighed in last November. Then, Bush made changes, installing new commanders and ordering a surge -- an increase in troops, and a more forward strategy of confronting and cleaning out al-Qaida terrorists. And the reality apparently has once again changed.

It can be argued that the surge will prove insufficient to produce the "sustainable stability" that O'Hanlon and Pollack see as a possible result. Serious military experts have argued that we still don't have enough troops or that we won't be able to keep enough troops in place long enough -- current force rotations indicate a net drawdown of troops next spring. And certainly there is room to make the argument that Bush should have acted sooner, as the results of the Samarra bombing became apparent months before the voters' wakeup call.

But it is also reasonably clear that Boyda's "reality of this issue" -- that our effort in Iraq has definitively and finally failed so clearly that there should be no further discussion -- may no longer be operative. That, instead of accepting defeat and inviting chaos, we may be able to achieve a significant measure of success.

Wars don't stand still. In June 1942, the House of Commons debated a resolution of no confidence in Winston Churchill's government. Four months later came the war-changing victory at El Alamein.

Gen. David Petraeus, the author of the Army's new counterinsurgency manual and the commander in Iraq, is scheduled to report on the surge in mid-September. The prospect of an even partially positive report has sent chills up the spines of Democratic leaders in Congress. That, says House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, would be "a real big problem for us."

The Democratic base has been furious that Democrats in Congress haven't pulled the plug on the war already, and Democratic strategists have been anticipating big electoral gains from military defeat. But if the course of the war can change, so can public opinion. A couple of recent polls showed increased support for the decision to go to war and belief that the surge is working. If opinion continues to shift that way, if others come to see things as O'Hanlon and Pollack have, Democrats could find themselves trapped between a base that wants retreat and defeat, and a majority that wants victory

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/perceptions_of_iraq_war_are_st.html

KarlMarx

08-06-2007, 06:11 AM

Oh pooh.... I was going to go to a protest march, pick up some skanky liberals chicks and get wasted afterwards (big beer blast, lots of sandwiches, munchies and so on after the march.... and the CPA (Communist Party of America) is picking up the tab!)

thanks to President Bush, I won't be getting any easy action tonight!

He should definitely be impeached for interfering with my sex life!

red states rule

08-06-2007, 06:15 AM

red states rule

08-06-2007, 08:06 AM

The Truth About What's Going On in Iraq
By Lt. Col. Oliver North

Washington, D.C. — “We’re in a generation-long battle against terrorism, against Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism, and this is a battle for which we can give no quarter. It’s a battle that’s got to be fought in military, diplomatic, intelligence, security, policing and ideological terms.”

That’s pretty strong stuff — and since those remarks were made this week at Camp David, one might think they were uttered by President Bush. However, they were spoken by Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, who the international media believe has reservations about the war in Iraq. But on the substance of the big question, it seems that the U.S./British “special relationship” is still solid. “He gets it,” President Bush said of the Prime Minister’s stance on terrorism. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the masters of the media.

For nearly two years, the potentates of the press have been slavishly following liberal dogma and telling us that the war in Iraq is all but lost; that the region will never embrace democracy and that young Americans serving there are dying needlessly. Even before the “troop surge” was underway, they were telling us that it wouldn’t work. And since the final contingent of 28,500 additional troops arrived in theater two months ago most members of the Fourth Estate have tried to convince us that it has failed. Some of them may even believe it, but that doesn’t make it true.

From my experience in eight trips to Iraq for FOX News since March 2003, reality in Iraq is rarely found on the front pages of our newspapers or in the lead stories in most broadcast news. There are but two principal reasons for the paucity of reality in what we’re seeing in print and on the air:

• First, there is enormous antipathy in U.S. and European press rooms toward George W. Bush and his administration. It’s been that way since his first term and it isn’t going to go away. This predisposition — and the media’s congenital animus toward the American military — colors reporting on everything the president does or says to include the war coverage. Opposition politicians have taken advantage of this bias and its effect on the polls to reap political advantage. They saw the efficacy of this stratagem in the last two congressional elections and they intend to pursue it to capture the White House regardless of the damage done to our national security.

• Second, despite the importance of the war to the American people, there are relatively few western — particularly American — journalists outside Baghdad’s “Green Zone.” Much of what we see on television is videotape bought from Arab cameramen, many of whom spend most of their time with their favorite Al Qaeda terror cell or Shia militia unit. My media “colleagues” then cut this tape — usually the aftermath of a heinous terror act — stand on the balcony of an air conditioned hotel room and tell us the “latest news” from the war. Lead stories rarely mention the courage and perseverance of American troops or their Iraqi counterparts, how many new schools, hospitals and police stations have been opened, or the clean water and sanitation that’s now available to the people of Mesopotamia.

Both of these factors have significantly altered Americans’ perceptions of what’s happening on the ground in Iraq. But that doesn’t change the fact that the “surge strategy” is working. The goals — announced by General Petraeus before he departed for Iraq, are being achieved:

• Add sufficient U.S. troops to give the Iraqi police and security forces time to recruit, train, arm and deploy;

• Seize and hold Al Qaeda and militia strongholds — and assure the people in those areas that the security forces are there to stay and prevent both acts of terror and sectarian violence;

• Begin the process of political reform so that the people of Iraq have an equitable distribution of the nation’s oil wealth and rule of law so that disputes can be resolved without resorting to bullets and IEDs.

Last December — even before the additional troops arrived in Iraq — I reported how the “awakening” in violent Al Anbar Province had created conditions where, for the first time, Sunni police, Shia soldiers and American troops were working together against Al Qaeda.

Now, even The New York Times has had to acknowledge that the surge strategy is working by running an op-ed this week by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the liberal Brookings Institution, in which they noted how strategic Al Anbar is now a model for the rest of the country. The authors noted that “many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the [Iraqi Army] have been removed,” and that the delivery of basic services, such as electricity and clean water, are underway. They point to challenges ahead — but it’s a step in the right direction.

This is the time for President Bush to seize the moment and go before the American people. He needs to go to Iraq — meet there with General Petraeus — and see for himself what magnificent young Americans are doing on the battlefield.

During World War II, Winston Churchill went to where his troops were fighting to encourage them and make a dramatic point. This is such a moment for President Bush. It may be his last chance to rally the American people to win a war we dare not lose.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291926,00.html