Even NY Times Reporter Says Surge Is Working

[red states rule]

Here is yet another source saying the surge in Iraq is showing results. The offfical publisher of the DNC talking points, the NY Times, must really be pissed to have this guy on the payroll


NYT's Baghdad Bureau Chief: 'No Doubt' Surge Making Life Better in Iraq
By Clay Waters | August 8, 2007 - 10:52 ET
The August 7 edition of National Public Radio's afternoon news show "Day to Day" featured John Burns, the respected Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times. Burns, who had his life threatened by the Hussein regime while covering Iraq, is leaving the country to head the London bureau of the Times. Host Lex Chadwick introduced Burns as "Perhaps the most respected war reporter of our time."

Burns thinks that in retrospect invading Iraq may have been a "mission impossible," given what Saddam Hussein had done to the psychology of his subjects. But Burns also thinks "there's no doubt" things are better in Iraq since the troop surge and that a withdrawal would make life "very much worse" there.

Burns: "…I think if we had our time over again, considering what has happened, we -- or to speak for myself -- I would have spent more of my energies trying to write about what lay beneath, if you will, a carapace of terror here, the deeply fissured sectarian society that was just below the surface and into which the United States was stepping. Five years on from when I arrived here in Iraq, I have a much better sense of that history.

"And it leads me now to the conclusion that this probably was a mission impossible from the start because of the fissured society and because of the deeply wounded psyche of that society. They had been bludgeoned, mercilessly bludgeoned, for -- we say 24 years of Saddam Hussein, but under the Baath Party for 30 years. And this was not a normal place the United States stepped into it in 2003 and it was certainly not for that reason, as well as many others, fertile ground in which to implant Western democratic ideals."

Chadwick: "If you view the mission in Iraq as doomed from the beginning because of the society that Iraq has become; what do you see now for a possibility for Iraq and for the American presence there?

Burns: "I've been pondering this a lot as I prepare to leave here. And I think I can say that I have in common with many of my Western colleagues here a reluctance to conclude that this is completely lost. And that is partly something, if you will, a cry from the heart. The head tells us that this situation is close to, if not irretrievable, the heart tells us that once America makes that judgment and inevitably, if it does, decides to come home, the trauma of the Iraqi people is going to become very much worse.

"It's in the face of that that we find it so hard to believe that there is no salvation here. We have been hopeful. The alternative to some kind of limited success here is so ghastly that it's very hard to give up on the idea that there might be -- even now there might be a turning of the tide, improbable as it seems."

Chadwick: "In your view, is the military surge over the last eight or nine months, has this accomplished anything? Do you think Iraq is any better off now than it was in, say, November or December of last year?"

Burns: "Oh, yes. I think there's no doubt about that. The American troops, in general, but particularly the surge troops, the 30,000 surge troops, in the last five or six months have definitely had an effect in the areas in which they are deployed. The problem is that 30,000 troops, however painfully it was for the U.S. military to find those 30,000 extra troops, is simply not enough. It's still a shell game here. You move them into one neighborhood, they achieve some degree of stability. They hope that the Iraqis will this time move in behind them, Iraqi military. And after the Americans clear the areas and hold the areas, it's not at all clear that that is happening this time anymore than it did last time with any great success."


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2007/08/08/nyts-baghdad-bureau-chief-no-doubt-surge-making-life-better-iraq

[red states rule]

Why are the Dems ignoring all the good results from Iraq? Are they scared they will be on the wrong end of a US win over the terrorists?

Surging Politics
By Victor Davis Hanson

Critics of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, called for by President George Bush in January, early on cited American losses and then announced the plan's failure. Supporters, on the other hand, have seen progress from new tactics (which, many argue, should have been adopted far earlier).

Such wide disagreement over a military campaign in progress is not that unusual. Sixty years after World War II, historians, even with the benefits of hindsight, still argue over the cost-benefit ratios and strategic results of diverse battles from Operation Market Garden to Okinawa.

The U.S. military reports that the surge in Iraq has helped reduce violence and defeat terrorists. But its officers also warn of manpower shortages, as well as commitments in Europe, Japan, the Balkans, Korea and elsewhere in the Middle East. We can't maintain the surge at present manpower levels in Iraq indefinitely.

So how do we know whether the surge is working -- especially whether its apparent present tactical success will translate into long-term strategic advantage?

In September, Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, will issue a status report on the war to Congress. Experts then will study quality-of-life issues in Iraq, such as the status of water, power and sewage services. American casualty figures will be weighed against a sense of improving or worsening security. And we will again examine the Iraqi government's ability to provide effective anti-terrorist forces and relieve some of our responsibilities.

But in the meantime, the American public can look to more subtle indicators to get some sense of Gen. Petraeus' current progress or failure.

Do Democratic opposition leaders keep blaming each other for voting for the Iraq war? Or are they now talking about expanding military operations to other countries? Sen. Hillary Clinton once was damned for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. But her even more liberal rival Sen. Barrack Obama, D-Ill., now expresses his own willingness to invade nuclear Islamic Pakistan.

Do anti-war politicians frequently proclaim our defeat in Iraq -- or instead worry that the war might be won? In the spring, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced Iraq was lost, the surge a failure and Gen. Petraeus not "in touch." We haven't seen Sen. Reid much lately.

But we have heard from the House's majority whip, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. He's worried that Gen. Petraeus' good news about the surge might be "a real problem for us" -- "us" being anti-war Democrats. And at a congressional briefing, when Gen. Jack Keane reviewed the positive signs from the surge, Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., walked out on the testimony. She complained that there was "only so much that you could take . . . after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to."

What do we hear from those who cited our success in the initial war but then wrote of the chaos of the occupation? Democratic analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack recently returned from Iraq to co-author a New York Times op-ed entitled "A War We Just Might Win." Respected veteran New York Times reporter John Burns believes that the surge has markedly improved security in Iraq.

Has furor over President Bush's Iraq war and larger anti-terror campaign resulted in concrete Democratic action -- or remained largely rhetorical? Well, so far, there has been no legislation passed that would bring home the troops right now, close down Guantanamo or repeal the Patriot Act. Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus, there have been no more Democratic forays into Middle East foreign policy to seek an alternative to present administration policies.

Constantly changing positions on the war should not be surprising when we remember that a vast majority of American people -- and most Democrats in Congress -- were in favor of invading Iraq just four years ago. And current polls show that over the past few weeks, Americans are not as pessimistic that the surge won't work.

Of course, we all have political biases and innately different views about what brings about war and peace, making disagreement inevitable. And there is always a fog of war that makes it hard to determine the pulse of any ongoing battle.

Yet the universal human desire to be associated in the here and now with the assumed winning side -- and to shun perceived defeat -- trumps them all. Throughout this war, that natural urge explains most of the volatile and shifting views of our politicians, pundits and media as they scramble to readjust to the up-and-down daily news from Iraq.

And so it is with the latest positioning about the surge that to a variety of observers seems successful -- at least for now.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

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