Defeatism Defeated?

[The Reaper]

Good read.

TR

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

August 01, 2007
Defeatism Defeated?
By Thomas Sowell

If victory in Iraq was oversold at the outset, there are now signs that defeat is likewise being oversold today.

One of the earliest signs of this was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he could not wait for General David Petraeus' September report on conditions in Iraq but tried to get an immediate Congressional mandate to pull the troops out.

Having waited for years, why could he not wait until September for the report by the general who is actually on the ground in Iraq every day? Why was it necessary for politicians in Washington to declare the troop surge a failure from 8,000 miles away?

The most obvious answer is that Senator Reid feared that the surge would turn out not to be a failure -- and the Democrats had bet everything, including their chances in the 2008 elections, on an American defeat in Iraq.

Senator Reid had to pre-empt defeat before General Petraeus could report progress. The Majority Leader's failure to get the Senate to do that suggests that not enough others were convinced that declaring failure now was the right political strategy.

An optimist might even hope that some of the Senators thought it was wrong for the country.

Another revealing sign is that the solid front of the mainstream media in filtering out any positive news from Iraq and focussing only on American casualties -- in the name of "honoring the troops" -- is now starting to show cracks.

One of the most revealing cracks has appeared in, of all places, the New York Times, which has throughout the war used its news columns as well as its editorial pages to undermine the war in Iraq and paint the situation as hopeless.

But an op-ed piece in the July 30 New York Times by two scholars at the liberal Brookings Institution -- Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack -- now paints a very different picture, based on their actual investigation on the ground in Iraq after the American troop surge under General Petraeus.

It is not a rosy scenario by any means. There are few rosy scenarios in any war. But O'Hanlon and Pollack report some serious progress.

"Today," they report, "morale is high" among American troops and "civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began."

In two cities they visited in northern Iraq "American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate" in providing their own security.

"Today," they say, "in only a few places did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless -- something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005."

In the last six months, O'Hanlon and Pollack report, "Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists."

In Ramadi, where American Marines "were fighting for every yard" of territory just a few months ago, "last week we strolled down the streets without body armor."

Victory is not inevitable, any more than victory was inevitable when American and British troops landed at Normandy in 1945. General Eisenhower even kept in his pocket a written statement taking full responsibility in the event of failure.

But victory is not even defined the same way in Iraq as it was in World War II. American troops do not need to stay in Iraq until the last vestige of terrorism has been wiped out.

The point when it is safe to begin pulling out is the point when the Iraqi military and police forces are strong enough to continue the fight against the terrorists on their own.

That point depends on how much and how long the current progress continues, not on how much the Democrats or their media allies need an American defeat before the 2008 election.

O'Hanlon and Pollack warn that "the situation in Iraq remains grave" but conclude that "there is enough good happening in Iraq that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

But 2008 may have an entirely different significance for politicians than for these Brookings scholars.

[x-factor]

If victory in Iraq was oversold at the outset, there are now signs that defeat is likewise being oversold today.

Great first line.

[Gypsy]

Excellent article.

[HOLLiS]

Thank you for the article. Sadly the most appauling statement in the article is the fact of partisan politics here in the states,

"That point depends on how much and how long the current progress continues, not on how much the Democrats or their media allies need an American defeat before the 2008 election."


One would hope Americans would not tolerate a politician whose political career is more important to them than the lives of our People. That does not, at times, seems the case.

[The Reaper]

More in a similar vein.

TR

August 01, 2007
Do We Have Permission to Win in Iraq?
By David Warren

So far as I can make out -- I am not writing from Iraq, but I do make a splendid effort to follow the plot there -- the Americans are finally doing what they should have been doing all along. They are taking the battle to the Islamist enemy, or rather, enemies, both Shia and Sunni. They are enlisting the help of tribal lords and other local allies against these enemies, de-emphasizing the grand "Marshall Plan" giveaways, and re-emphasizing small, visible, unbureaucratic improvements on that local scale. They have become less timid about inspections and searches, and thus have taken bigger risks of offending people, in the knowledge that providing better security is the only thing that will get them loved. They not only have more men now in theatre, but are using more proportionally up front and fewer in the rear. They are patrolling frontiers more pro-actively, and turning no blind eyes to suspicious incursions. By using different techniques in different districts, they are also breaking the enemy's ability to camouflage.

It is a little known fact -- at least, to the Western media -- that the vast majority of Iraqis cannot possibly want to live under the murderous tyranny of a relatively small number of Islamist psychopaths, of foreign inspiration, and will do everything except master the art of self-government to avoid it. What has changed, over the past few years, would seem to be the popular attitude towards the future, in Iraq. It contains more fear, and is therefore easier to harness towards such specific ends as finding Islamist terrorists and annihilating them.

A remarkable piece was published on the op-ed of the New York Times, on Monday. Remarkable not for its content (it told us what we should already know), but for who wrote it: Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, two non-friends of the Bush administration. Having just returned from Iraq, they said they were struck by a turnaround in morale, that could only be attributed to the recent arrival of Gen. David Petraeus, and the general offensive he was charged to oversee. "The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander; ... they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference." The authors also cited statistical indications that the tide is turning.

Contrast this with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, back in Washington: "This war is lost. There's simply no evidence that the escalation is working."

Sen. Reid has a long history of seeing no evidence where there is plenty of evidence, and plenty of evidence where there is no evidence, but that is beside the point. He represents the core, Democrat "defeatist" constituency. That constituency is not something recently formed. The idea that Iraq is "another Vietnam," and that any American enterprise (that doesn't involve the expansion of the welfare state) must necessarily be "another Vietnam," is, for these people, an article in a creed.

But it is important to remember the history. A previous generation of these Democrats first insisted on shoving their South Vietnamese allies aside, and trying to run the war for them; then of imposing all kinds of restraints on their battlefield commanders which, in aggregate, made victory impossible. And then, when they tired of the war, they abandoned the Vietnamese to their fate, with the additional Congressional touch of cutting off South Vietnam's supply of arms and ammunition. Finally, they just watched as the Communist guerrillas from the jungle were replaced by North Vietnamese regulars in tanks, driving openly down the American-built highways to receive the surrender of Saigon, while the U.S. Seventh Fleet was hovering offshore, with the equipment to "mow them down to marmalade."

It was a rout so ignominious, that it destroyed the credibility of the United States, probably adding ten years to the life of the Soviet Empire. It inspired Communist advances in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and elsewhere; and, little appreciated at the time, Islamist advances overtly in Iran, and covertly throughout the Muslim world.

Such Democrats -- not all Democrats, there were "Scoop Jackson Democrats" throughout the Cold War -- often complain that their Republican opponents "question their patriotism," when all they have done is advocate a policy of defeat and humiliation for the United States abroad. All I can add to Dr Johnson's famous remark that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," is the observation that traitors tend to be especially sensitive to the charge of treason.

There are background problems still not adequately confronted. The Iraqi political order is nearly dysfunctional, and there is little that can currently be done, politically or practically, about the sponsors of Islamist subversion in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

But given the hard geopolitical fact, that cutting and running from Iraq will be a catastrophe for the West, on a scale even bigger than cutting and running from Vietnam, let's just keep fighting until we win.

otiosus@sympatico.ca

[HOLLiS]

Another article by Chuck Coulson.

Remember Chuck Coulson? Yes, Nixon inner-circle, Watergate, prison, born again, straight arrow, good member of society. Here are his comments on a recent pronouncement by Sen Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader. Excellent reading.
Breakpoint with Chuck Colson

The Shame of the U.S. Senate by Chuck Coulson, 6/28/07

I have what some might consider the macabre habit of reading the casualty reports from Iraq every day in the New York Times. This may reflect the fact that I served in the military or that I worked in the White House during Vietnam.

But there's one name that hasn't yet appeared in the casualty reports: the name of General Peter Pace, the first Marine-and I say this with pride as a former Marine-to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Why am I looking for Pace's name on the casualty list? His distinguished military career was recently ended by the crudest kind of politics.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared Pace, a four-star Marine general with 48 military decorations on his chest, to be "incompetent."

What incredible effrontery. Reid-who never wore the uniform-could have said he didn't agree with Pace's decisions or with the politically
unpopular war in Iraq. He could have said he disliked the way Pace
executed his responsibilities in advising the President.

But incompetent?

This kind of public disparagement of a military hero is disgraceful.

But Pace's career didn't end merely because of Reid's shoddy remarks. Pace, a faithful Catholic, also offended the secular god of Tolerance. He had the audacity to say that he believed sex outside of marriage was wrong, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

The New York Times instantly declared him a bigot. The rest of the media pack followed suit; few defended him. We are in real trouble, folks, if America's number one military officer cannot defend the proposition that the military should exemplify high moral standards.

President Bush decided not to send Pace's nomination up for the customary second term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Why not? Not because Peter Pace is incompetent; he was, after all, roundly commended by the President and Defense Secretary Gates.

Gates recommended against Pace's re-nomination, and the President agreed, because his confirmation would have been subjected to Senate hearings-hearings that would have been grossly politicized.

Can you see the general sitting before a battery of senators
cross-examining him, in front of the cameras, on whether he discriminated against homosexuals? Imagine the members of the Armed Services Committee-most of whom never served in the military-grilling Pace on whether his Catholic faith influenced his standards of prudery. At least two presidential candidates serve on this committee. The hearings would have been a political circus.

It would also have been open season on second-guessing the war at the very moment our troops are in an offensive posture, chasing al Qaeda. The television reports, which our troops in the field see online, would have shown our so-called leaders berating the military and calling the cause in Iraq futile. They would have been demoralizing, to say the least.

But to our Senate leaders, the welfare of our soldiers is secondary to
worshipping the secular god of Tolerance and raw politics; thus they have in effect drummed out of the military one of the most honorable public
servants I've ever known.

We should mourn the fact that we have lost the services of this decorated and principled man. And we should mourn the loss of honor, duty, and common decency among our nation's leaders.

P.S. Pardon my vulgarity, but Harry Reid wouldn't make a pimple on a good Marine's ass!

Political Correctness:

"Political correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical,
liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

[The Reaper]

Yet another.

If you are betting your political career on the U.S. to lose, how can you be trusted to help the troops win?

TR

http://thehill.com/byron-york/dems-real-big-problem-2007-08-03.html

Dems’ 'Real Big Problem'
By Byron York
August 03, 2007
The Iraq debate that we’ve been watching this year has been about two bets.

After false starts and misplaced hopes in 2004, and 2005, and 2006, George W. Bush is betting his surge strategy will facilitate the political progress that could bring a semblance of stability to Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are betting the surge will fail.

It’s as simple as that. If Bush wins his bet, Iraq will be a better place, the Middle East will be a better place, and America will be a safer place.

But Reid and Pelosi lose if Bush wins. Given the position they have staked out for themselves, the best possible outcome is for Gen. David Petraeus to give a downbeat report on the surge when he comes before Congress in September.
That would give tremendous momentum to those who want the quickest possible U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

It’s the dilemma of being in the opposition in wartime. By betting so much of their political capital on the issue, Reid and Pelosi have become invested in U.S. failure. A U.S. success would throw a wrench in their plans.

That sounds harsh. But just read what Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told The Washington Post.

This week the paper reported that many Democrats “have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad.” But now, the Post continued, “there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive.”

And that, Clyburn told the paper, would be “a real big problem for us.”

Clyburn’s comments are the flip side of what Reid said in April when he declared, “We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Sen. [Charles] Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.”

Schumer (D-N.Y.) also said, “Look at the poll numbers of Republican senators, and the war in Iraq is a lead weight attached to their ankle.” As a result, Schumer predicted, some Republicans face “extinction” while Democrats pick up more seats.

American success in Iraq could mess all of that up.

It’s a terrible position for Democrats to be in, one they could have avoided if they had given the surge time to succeed or fail. But they put all their chips on failure before it even began.

That’s why we have seen such frenzied criticism of what is probably the most debated op-ed of the year, this week’s article in The New York Times entitled “A War We Just Might Win,” by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack.

The authors, both with the Brookings Institution, were early proponents of the war and later critics of Bush’s handling of it. Now, they write, “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms,” and they see the possibility of “a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

They might be wrong; in the fifth year of this war, anyone who is not deeply skeptical about reports of progress just isn’t being realistic. And even if the surge is working, war supporters can be rightly furious at Bush for not doing it years ago.

But at least they aren’t betting on — haven’t staked their hopes on — American failure.

Who would want to do that?

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.

[echoes]

Yet another.

If you are betting your political career on the U.S. to lose, how can you be trusted to help the troops win?

TR

Schumer (D-N.Y.) also said, “Look at the poll numbers of Republican senators, and the war in Iraq is a lead weight attached to their ankle.” As a result, Schumer predicted, some Republicans face “extinction” while Democrats pick up more seats.

American success in Iraq could mess all of that up.

Just saw this, and Be Damned you ungrateful, selfish, cowardly Dim politicians!!!:mad: Who are you to play yo-yo with Our Brave Military, to further your political agendas?

Schumer and Reid, and come to think of it, Pelosi, should all be air-lifted to the un-safest DZ in Iraq, and dropped IMHO.