Retreat Caucus

The Retreat Caucus Didn’t Learn The Last Time

Bush: Will he stay the course as others run? “America good! Al Qaeda bad!” - A trader in the Qatana bazaar, Ramadi, Iraq

Rich Lowry…NY Post

THIS is a sentiment that the Iraqi trader felt safe to utter as a visiting U.S. gen eral passed by, according to John Burns of The New York Times, only after a furtive glance “up and down the narrow refuse-strewn street to check who might be listening.” In a microcosm, this is the reason why we’re finally making progress against al Qaeda in Iraq: The protection afforded by American combat power has made it possible for Iraqis in Sunni areas to turn against the terror group.

In a global struggle against Islamic extremism, it is an incontestably welcome development that ordinary Sunnis in the Arab heartland are spurning al Qaeda. The extremist group has been on a campaign of savagery in Iraq that has discredited its own cause. The grassroots revolt against it means that it is within our reach to deny al Qaeda its most important current geopolitical objective, which is plunging Iraq into a bloody chaos in which it can thrive.

But a group of Republican senators have picked precisely this moment to call for deconstructing the troop surge that has begun to give us the upper hand against al Qaeda. They thus reveal a key dishonesty in the debate over the war: Everyone professes to want to fight al Qaeda in Iraq - as opposed to policing the sectarian war - but the number of politicians willing to support the means to that end is ever-dwindling.