In early 2007 George W. Bush confounded his critics when he announced a change in the conduct of the Iraq War. He said that he would commit 20,000 more troops to the fight and that they would employ a new counterinsurgency strategy that made protecting the Iraqi population the highest priority. This, he said, was intended to "create space" that would allow political progress to move forward. Hopeful Democrats and their supporters in the mainstream press had been urging surrender.
2006 was a bad year in Iraq. An eruption of sectarian violence raised monthly death tolls to their highest since fighting began in 2003. By the end of 2005 the insurgents had recognized that they had no hope of defeating U.S. forces militarily. In 2006 insurgent stategy had shifted comletely -- away from confronting the Americans, to attacking Iraqi civilians instead. The insurgents went about demonstrating their ability to randomly inflict murder upon large numbers of Iraqi citizens.
This was described in the press and in Democratic political speeches as evidence of the coming U.S. defeat in the Iraq war. It was to be the signature failure of the Bush administration, although it would be a neat trick for the insurgents to win the war without winning any military battles. It meant they would have to win the war on the information front by convincing the American people that victory against them was impossible.
Murder was the insurgency's only vehicle for doing this -- the bloodier the better. As the U.S. set out to protect Iraqi civilians, the insurgents set out to prove it couldn't be done. In this the insurgent's natural ally was the media. "If it bleeds it leads," so goes the saying, and the worldwide press celebrated the spectacular misery visited on the Iraqis.
Democrats were aghast that President Bush failed to heed the opinion polls and instead set the surge in motion. Call it an accident if you wish, but Democrats had lined themselves up with the insurgency. As the insurgency endeavored to prove the impossibility of defeating them Iraq, the Democratic obliged by agreeing with them publicly and constantly.
2006 was a bad year for Republicans seeking re-election. While Democrats campaigned against the war Republicans tried to change the subject. Instead of standing with their President, Republicans stood by and watched the Democrats take control of both the Senate and the House. They felt they would hurt their chances if they appeared to be connected to George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.
The newly minted Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Harry Reid famously declared that the war was already lost. Time and again Democratic leaders in congress moved to cut off funding for the "failed" war, but each time they failed to win enough votes to do it. Unfortunately, by the time George W. Bush announced his intention to build up troop levels, 70% of Americans opposed the move believing Democratic and media pronouncements that it wouldn't do any good.
It did, though. When the additional troops finally reached Baghdad and the surrounding area, violence took a dramatic plunge. It took time, but eventually Democrats were forced to admit that the surge worked after all. Even Barack Obama, late in his presidential campaign, was forced to admit, "the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated." Nobody? Really?
After a while, even media luminaries who had opposed the war and opposed the surge had to admit it worked. Recently Peter Beinart writing in the Washington Post said it's no longer even a close call. The surge worked.
The fallback position is: So what? The new reality now being force fed to the news consuming public is,
'...even if the calm endures, that still doesn't justify the Bush administration's initial decision to go to war, which remains one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history.'
In Beinart's mind and in the minds of Democrats in congress it's a given. They casually throw it out there at every opportunity, confident that American support for the war has been decimated by the relentlessly negative reporting by the media and rhetoric of their Democratic clients. But it's a claim that gets its support almost solely on the media, which is virulently anti-war and anti-Bush, and on opinion polls which are media driven. What happens when this, too, turns out to be just another premature assessment?
In is recent interview with Jim Lehrer, Vice President Richard Cheney put things into perspective. It's what Beinart considers a blunder.
'MR. LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4500 Americans have died, at least a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think so.
MR. LEHRER: Why?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Because I believed at the time that what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state - so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers; he provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents.
He'd had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and he did have a relationship with al-Qaida. Now, we've had this debate, keeps people trying to conflate those arguments.
That's not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11; it is to say - as George Tenet, CIA director testified in open session in the Senate - that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years.
So this was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction and that's the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11: The next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn't be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent or maybe even a nuclear device.
So I think, given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing, I think the country's better off for it today, I think it's been part of the effort alongside Afghanistan to liberate 50 million people and establish a vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think those are major, major accomplishments.'
And this:
'MR. LEHRER: One more general scope here, Mr. Vice President. What do you make of a current suggestion that you have been in fact the most powerful vice president in history, but in one of the most failed presidencies in history?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don't buy that.
MR. LEHRER: You don't buy that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I think the argument that this is a failed presidency is just dead wrong. I think we'll hear that from some of our critics, but when I look back at what we've been able to do - we dealt with big issues.
We didn't deal with school uniforms, we dealt with the fact that we brought down two of the worst regimes in the 20th century: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We were forced when we arrived - shortly after we arrived - to have to deal with the global war on terror, which had not been managed properly before that.
We ended up inheriting a situation that has been very challenging, but we've been very successful at it. And when you look at what we've been able to do, both in terms of our activities overseas as well as our operations that allowed us to block any further attack against the United States here at home, I think those are great successes and I think there aren't many administrations that can point to successes on that scale.'
If Democrats were aghast at Bush's refusal to quit and accept defeat, they and their media cronies were enraged as his determination has led to the victory that can now be declared in Iraq with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1859. Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model celebrated its passage.
'Iraq has started to reap the benefits of the status of forces agreement with the United States. The United Nations Security Council voted to set the ground for relieving Iraq from the restrictions of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter.
In fact, the remaining effects of previous resolutions will from now on serve only to protect Iraq’s assets from claims by other parties, not to impose anything on the people of Iraq. Sovereignty, which was lost two decades ago under Saddam Hussein’s capricious and belligerent reign, is being restored to the nation.
The Security Council resolution 1859 states, among other things, that Iraq is no longer a threat to its neighbors, region, or the world. The United States has succeeded in transforming a bellicose, autocratic state into a friendly one that is making steady progress towards becoming a self-sustaining democracy — the international community is finally coming to recognize this transformation.
This resolution is bound to make a positive impact on the domestic and regional levels. First and foremost it is a testimony to the United States’ true desire to help Iraq get on its feet and relieve it from restrictions that belong to a past era — the United States is indisputably a friendly protector of Iraq, not an occupier as many like to claim.
However, this achievement did not receive as much attention in the Arab media as did the shoes of a disturbed young journalist...'
It's an achievement that received no attention in any media, not just Arab media. Was anyone even aware of Resolution 1859? A Google search came up with only three news items about it. Here is the screen shot, as of January 23rd.
It's hard for me to think of our Democratic leadership and our journalistic elites as anything but treasonous, after having done everything in their power to hand victory to a terrorist insurgency over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, . They gave air time and credibility to the insurgents' message, they fought their legislative battles hoping to end the American struggle to beat them, and they waged a relentless public relations campaign against anything and everything the Bush administration hoped to achieve. But still, they failed. Now they say that they would like to prosecute George Bush. For what? Winning a war they said couldn't be won?
By claiming that Iraq was a foreign policy blunder Democrats absolve themselves of their faithlessness. Over the next four years liberal pundits, especially the ones masquerading as journalists, will cling to the fiction that deposing Saddam Hussein was a foreign policy blunder. Fighting the War on Terror was a foreign policy blunder. Winning the war in Iraq was a foreign policy blunder. Conversion of two enemy countries to allied countries was a foreign policy blunder. The spread of democracy in the Middle East was a foreign policy blunder.
The question now, is what happens when it becomes apparent that this "foreign policy blunder" has laid the groundwork for lasting peace to the Middle East? Will our Democratic leadership sabotage the peace in order to correct the foriegn policy blunder? If an election hangs in the balance I think we can count on it. Maybe then the Republicans will finally find the stomache to fight them on it.
And no surprise that Israelis, apparently with longer memories of historically liberal/Democrat integrity when push comes to shove,
have withdrawn a fair part of their assets from downtown Gaza, lest they suffer the same fate of those stranded, and abandoned, by the "bold" executive "policy" showcased in The Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Chamberlain would be proud. Montgomery would stop for tea.
Reid and Pelosi will be at the "secret" luxury bunker in Virginia.
NY "Senator" Kennedy-Slossberg (are we ALLOWED to use that name?)? Oh PLEASE!
Biden will be shouting "Women and children first" as Obama must
stand at the ready- to give his more extreme party members yet ANOTHER little tap on the elbow whenever they get near cameras and microphones without those "special" filters, perhaps while berating his critics with "Be reasonable, let's meet in the middle and just appease the Socialist Fascist puppetmasters."
But, that's just my opinion.
Posted by: CaptDMO | January 24, 2009 at 09:59 AM