My letter to the Senator

July 9, 2007

Senator John Sununu
111 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Sununu:

The check I have enclosed for your re-election campaign I offer to you with some misgivings. Last summer when Karl Rove spoke in Manchester he urged Republicans to campaign aggressively on the war in Iraq. He said the Democrats, by taking their anti-war stance, had ceded the issue to Republicans. The Democrats, he said, were content to lose the war. As we both know, Republicans did not make Iraq their campaign issue, apparently deciding that distancing themselves from an unpopular president was a safer strategy than trying to make the case for victory in Iraq. We are now the minority party.

There is no issue more important than the war against the terrorists that is now being fought in Iraq. The misgivings that I mentioned arise because I see no evidence that you agree on this point. The only mention of Iraq in the press release archive on your Senate web site is one that announces an endorsement by you and several other Senators from both parties of the Iraq Study Group. It strikes me as a pointless exercise.

As it now stands, Democratic leaders are no longer merely content to lose the war, they are intent upon it. Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi have rightly concluded that a disaster in Iraq is to their political advantage and so all efforts are under way to prevent the troop surge strategy from being perceived as being in any way successful. The September funding showdown that the Democrats have contrived is an invitation to al Qaeda and their declining number of insurgent allies to ramp up the violence between now and then in an effort to win in Iraq the only way that they are able – by persuading a largely misinformed American public that al Qaeda can’t be defeated and that we should pull the troops out of Iraq, abandoning the Iraqis.

But we are winning. It hasn’t been pretty and it hasn’t been quick but we’re winning. By reading the accounts of journalists who have actually been on the scene such as Bill Roggio whose work may be found at http://billroggio.com/, and Michael Yon whose work may be found at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/, and listening to what Generals Odierno and Petraeus actually say rather than to what passes for analysis at the Washington Post and the New York Times, we know that the surge is already showing signs of success.

What began in the Anbar province as the Anbar Awakening has spread to Diyala. Former insurgents are turning against al Qaeda in increasing numbers and joining with Iraqi and U.S. forces to fight them. Iraqi citizens are finally showing enough confidence in U.S. forces that they are providing useful intelligence on al Qaeda and insurgent whereabouts. In fact Iraqis are more trusting of Americans troops than their Iraqi counterparts. Consider this from the reporting of Michael Yon. Here is the link to his full report: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/baqubah-update-05-july-2007.htm.

…during one of the impromptu stops, an Iraqi man who might have been 30 years old came up and said that he’d been beaten up by soldiers from the 5th Iraqi Army. He had the marks on his face to lend initial credence. But most striking was that he hadn’t gone to the Iraqi leaders, nor did he come to the man with the camera and note pad. He did what I see Iraqis increasingly doing: he went to the local sheik of “al Ameriki tribe.” In this case, the sheik was LTC Fred Johnson. (Note: I have not heard anyone calling the American commanders sheiks, but during meetings around Iraq, American officers often preside like sheiks and with sheiks.)

More and more Iraqis put their trust in Americans as arbiters of justice. The man said he was afraid to complain to Iraqi officials because he might get killed, but he wanted to tell LTC Johnson, who listened carefully. When the man pleaded for anonymity, Johnson said he needed written statements from witnesses. The man pointed to some witnesses, and then disappeared and came back with statements, and I can say from my own eyes that Johnson was careful with those statements, guarding them until he could get alone with an Iraqi general later on 05 July.

To remind you how desperate al Qaeda has become and how hated they are by Iraqis I am including this short but shocking excerpt from the same report from Yon.

At a meeting today in Baqubah one Iraqi official I spoke with framed the al Qaeda infiltration and influence in the province. Although he spoke freely before a group of Iraqi and American commanders, including Staff Major General Abdul Kareem al Robai who commands Iraqi forces in Diyala, and LTC Fred Johnson, the deputy commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi official asked that I withhold his identity from publication. His opinion, shared by others present, is that al Qaeda came to Baqubah and united many of the otherwise independent criminal gangs.

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

For the Democratic leadership to share, even by accident, the same goal with al Qaeda – the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq – is a national disgrace. Senator, your voice must be heard. For America to capitulate to the criminals of al Qaeda is unthinkable. If you do not speak out you will effectively abandon the field to a leftist media element and to a Democratic party whose only interest is winning the next election. If you do not speak out you will allow them to shape the story coming out of Iraq to suit that purpose.

It is most unfortunate that at this particular point several vulnerable Republicans have concluded that an appearance of bipartisanship will give them a statesmanlike aura that will enhance their re-election prospects. They are delusional. It is my sincerest hope that you will not join them.

The stakes could not be higher. To hand al Qaeda such a victory will fuel Islamic terrorism for decades. To stop al Qaeda as we are stopping them in Iraq will hand them a defeat from which they will be hard pressed to recover. If we fail to win in Iraq, any real hope for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis will evaporate. Our withdrawal from Iraq will have demonstrated that we simply don’t have the will to fight and defeat al Qaeda and we will have validated the use of terrorism as an effective option for achieving political goals. Senator, your voice must be heard. Do we have the will, Senator?

With utmost sincerity,

Thomas D. Bowler

Comments

[Jim Wells]

Your letter is articulate and your points are well-formed. I truly believe, like you, that the American public is misinformed about current events in Iraq. I have a radically different perspective thanks to Bill Roggio and Michael Yon, and I encourage anyone who seeks to know the truth to read their reporting.

[MoneyGuy]

What about the Iraqi Doctor, who left Iraq and went to England to bomb the British. He is not 14 years old nor stupid nor foreign born.

We won in Iraq. We did what we said we would do, remove Hussein and give the Iraqis a new government. Now, they have to do the work to keep it. We can not sort it out for them. Just think, if the French had stayed after we beat the British in our war for independence and tried to tell us how to run the country we just fought for. We would have turned on them and beat them back to France!

[Tom Bowler]

What about al Qaeda, MoneyGuy?

And there is another thing you're overlooking. By the time the American Revolution rolled around, Americans had been practicing self-government for over 150 years. Our forefathers were already pretty good at it. In Iraq you're looking at a society that was utterly destroyed by Saddam Hussein, with no history of self-government to begin with. Let's cut 'em a little slack.