Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq

[BenGarrett]

Sorry for the cut-&-paste, but I thought this was good.

Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq

/December 4, 2005/

*BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST *
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Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, came out with a big statement on Iraq last week. Did you hear about it? Probably not. Everyone was still raving about his Democrat colleague, Rep. Jack Murtha, whose carefully nuanced position on Iraq is: We're all doomed unless we pull out by next Tuesday! (I quote from memory.)

Also, the United States Army is "broken," "worn out" and "living hand to mouth." If the reaction to Murtha's remarks by my military readers is anything to go by, he ought to be grateful they're still bogged down in Iraq and not in the congressional parking lot.

It's just about acceptable in polite society to disagree with Murtha, but only if you do it after a big 20-minute tongue bath about what "a fine man" he is (as Rumsfeld said) or what "a good man" he is (as Cheney called him) or what "a fine man, a good man" he is (as Bush phrased it). Nobody says that about Lieberman, especially on his own side. And, while the media were eager to promote Murtha as the most incisively insightful military expert on the planet, this guy Lieberman's evidently some nobody no one need pay any attention to.

Here's why. His big piece on Iraq was headlined "Our Troops Must Stay."

And who wants to hear that? Not the media and certainly not Lieberman's colleagues in the Defeaticrat Party. It must be awful lonely being Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party these days. Every time he switches on the news there's John Kerry sonorously droning out his latest pretzel of a position: Insofar as I understand it, he's not calling for a firm 100 percent fixed date of withdrawal -- like, say, Feb. 4, 2 p.m.; meet at Baghdad bus station with two pieces of carry-on. Don't worry, it's not like flying coach on TWA, you'd be able to change the date without paying a surcharge. But Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.

These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible achievement. Peter Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World War II and Korea, likes to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular won war. The Democrat-media alliance are determined to make Iraq an exception to that rule. In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous seven months.

Meanwhile, Iraq's experiment in Arab liberty has had ripple effects beyond its borders, pushing the Syrians most of the way out of Lebanon, and in Syria itself significantly weakening Baby Assad's regime. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who's spent years as a beleaguered democracy advocate in Egypt, told the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland the other day that, although he'd opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, he had to admit it had "unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be the midwives."

The Egyptians get it, so do the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Jordanians and the Syrians. The choice is never between a risky action and the status quo -- i.e., leaving Saddam in power, U.N. sanctions, U.S. forces sitting on his borders. The stability fetishists in the State Department and the European Union fail to understand that there is no status quo: things are always moving in some direction and, if you leave a dictator and his psychotic sons in business, and his Oil-for-Food scam up and running, and his nuclear R&D teams in places, chances are they're moving in his direction.

Toppling Saddam was worth doing in and of itself. Toppling Saddam and trying to "midwife" (in Ibrahim's word) a free society would be worth doing even if it failed. But, as it happens, I don't believe it will fail, not just because of Bush but because enough Iraqis -- Shia, Kurds and even significant numbers of Sunnis -- are determined not to let it fail.

And here's where the scale of the Bush gamble becomes clear. Islam and "the West" have a long history. And, without rehashing the last millennium and a half, the Muslim conquest of Europe and then the Crusades and the fall of Andalusia, if you take out a map of the world and look at the rise of the European empires you notice a curious thing: in conquering the world the imperial powers for the most part simply bypassed the Islamic world. They made Africa and South Asia and Latin America and everywhere else seats of European power, but they left the Middle East alone. And, even when they eventually got their hands on the region, after the First World War, they made no serious attempt to reform the neighborhood. We live with the consequences of that today.

So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again.

[underdog]

You notice they aren't talking about the Bush tax cuts or the Bush economy, either.

That ole chant of "Bush lied" is real stale. Looking more and more like there will be troop withdrawals early in the new year.

Too bad partisans can't recognize that progress in Iraq is good for America.

[tangozulu]

Is this the progress the US Military is paying to have published in Arab media???

[underdog]

When you ...Deleted by CalHunter...join the coalition in the war against terror, you'll be entitled to an opinion. Until then, you got no stake, you got no say.

[Strange Biller]

1. Aren't the Canadians fighting with us in Afghanistan in the War On Terror?

2. Is the Iraq War part of the War On Terror? Because it was a country that previously had no terrorists, and now is full of them. Is that progress? Because, frankly, the Canadians are doing more to fight terror in Iraq than we are, given that they haven't caused more to be created.

[underdog]

Heritage Foundation has a good answer that fits this post.

QUOTE: "œI'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all, and I've been complaining for two years that there's an overly optimistic"”an illusionary process going on here."� "“Rep. John Murtha on "œMeet the Press,"� November 20, 2005

REALITY: The U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have made substantial progress in eliminating insurgent strongholds in Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf, Samara, and Tal Afar, and in many smaller towns in the western Anbar province along the Syrian border. Most of Iraq is secure from major guerrilla attacks, particularly the predominantly Shiite south and the predominantly Kurdish north, which actively support the Iraqi government. Most insurgent attacks are mounted in the heavily Sunni Arab central and western portions of Iraq, although small numbers of insurgents continue to launch terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings at soft targets, throughout the country. Outside of Iraq"™s Sunni heartland, which benefited the most from Saddam Hussein"™s Sunni-dominated regime, the insurgents lack popular support. Their terrorist strategy has failed to intimidate Iraqi Shiites, Kurds, Turcomans, and Assyrians, who altogether comprise more than 80 percent of Iraq"™s population.

The Iraqi army and police forces are growing larger, better-trained, and more effective. The Iraqi Army and security forces grew from just 1 operational battalion in July 2004 to more than 120 today. Over 200,000 trained and equipped Iraqis are now playing an increasingly active role in rooting out insurgents. While only one battalion is rated at the U.S. Army category "Level One," about 40 are at "œLevel Two."� Level 2 battalions are capable of fighting "with some support""”usually just logistics and air/artillery support"”from American forces. These units patrol their own areas of operations, relieving U.S. troops to perform other duties. The cities of Najaf and Mosul are now patrolled exclusively by Iraqi security forces, as are large portions of Baghdad.

There are now six police academies in Iraq and one in Jordan training 3,500 Iraqi police every ten weeks. Today the vast majority of Iraqi police and army recruits are trained by Iraqis, not Americans, the result of systematic efforts to "œtrain the trainers."� Since the January 30th elections, no Iraqi police stations have been abandoned under attack, as once happened frequently, because police have fiercely resisted attacks even when outnumbered and outgunned, confident that help would come from 13 provincial SWAT teams and coalition forces.

Unlike during several military offensives in 2004, Iraqi security forces now are strong enough to garrison and control cleared areas, making the Bush Administration"™s recent adoption of a "œclear, hold, and build"� security strategy possible. Iraqi forces were able to take a leading role in the successful September 2005 offensive at Tal Afar, which involved 11 Iraqi and 5 Coalition battalions.

The increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces has inspired optimism among the Iraqi people. This is reflected in the growing number of intelligence tips from Iraqi civilians. In March 2005, Iraqi and coalition forces received 483 intelligence tips from Iraqi citizens. This figure rose to 3,300 in August, and to more than 4,700 in September. According to a survey from early November, 71 percent of respondents believed that the Iraqi security forces are winning the war against the insurgents, while only 9 percent believed they are losing. The data was gathered from Iraqi callers who were passing intelligence tips to the Iraqi National Tips Line, which was created to provide Iraqis with a safe and anonymous means of passing on information about insurgent activity to their own government.

[DougMD]

true

[burniegoeasily]

I really liked Dens statment last night. " WE CAN NOT WIN THE WAR IN IRAQ."[:'(]
The likes of Den, Kerry, and Pelosi are what is killing the Demo party. I hate being forced to vote republican due to a lack of decent representation on the Demo side. What ever happened to the sensible members of the Demo party?

[underdog]

There are millions like you and me that have switched their party affiliations because of the direction of the DNC. Still there are millions of sensible honest Dems left in the party, but the leadership has been hijacked by the ultra-left.

I still vote for some Dems on the state and local level. The Dems in my state still believe in God, family, guns and fiscal responsibility. But, no way I'd vote for a Dem for U.S. Congress. Their anti-gun, anti-God, almost anti-American positions are just out of sync with my beliefs.

[burniegoeasily]

ORIGINAL: underdog

There are millions like you and me that have switched their party affiliations because of the direction of the DNC. Still there are millions of sensible honest Dems left in the party, but the leadership has been hijacked by the ultra-left.

I still vote for some Dems on the state and local level. The Dems in my state still believe in God, family, guns and fiscal responsibility. But, no way I'd vote for a Dem for U.S. Congress. Their anti-gun, anti-God, almost anti-American positions are just out of sync with my beliefs.

Ditto that remark. Sounds like I wrote that. Im in the very same boat. I cant say im either Demo or Rep but latley you would think im a card holding member of the Rep. party with the exception of local issues.