Haul Down Those White Flags!

The below was posted at the Patriots For Conservative Values



We're winning in Iraq.

Ok, I said it. It's crazy. Stupid. Naïve. Hopelessly optimistic. And true. Something has changed, and the cut-and-run crowd in Congress did not get the memo. They insist the war is lost and we
should get out yesterday. But the war has taken a turn for the better, like a patient making a sudden recovery after years on life support.

"Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms."

That's not from a Bush loyalist. It's from two analysts at the liberal Brookings Institution, who say they have "harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq." After an eight-day tour of the war zone, they wrote a New York Times op-ed that had to give an extra-strength Maalox heartburn to Sen. Harry "this war is lost" Reid.

In "A War We Just Might Win," Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack said they saw

"a potential to produce not necessarily 'victory,' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with."

They said morale is high under Gen. David Petraeus; civilian fatalities are down by a third since the "surge' of 30,000 additional troops began in mid-June; former allies of al-Qaida have turned against the terrorists; Iraqi military and police units are reliable and effective.

That good news was echoed by New York Times reporter John Burns on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

"I think there's no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference," Burns said.

He warned that a retreat would "lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we've seen to date."

"And the question then arises, catastrophic as the effect on Iraq and the region would be, you know, what would be the effect on American credibility in the world, American power in the world, and America's sense of itself?"

Michael Yon, a reporter embedded with Operation Arrowhead Ripper, says horrific cruelty by al-Qaida has driven Iraqis to our side. In one battle, he saw

"unexpected and overwhelming cooperation of ordinary Iraqi citizens, who pointed out the enemy and many of the bombs set to ambush troops."

"I sense there has been a fundamental shift in Iraq," Yon wrote. "One officer called it a 'change in the seas,' and I believe his words were accurate. Something has changed. The change is fundamental, and for once seems positive."

Success in Iraq could be one of those tectonic shifts that completely rearranges the landscape: It's a San Francisco earthquake for politicians who prematurely waved the white flag. Rep. James Clyburn admitted as much, saying that for Democrats, good news

"would be a really big problem for us, no question about that."

Some in the antiwar left would rather see America lose than see Bush succeed. But most Americans won't forgive losers who tried to snatch defeat from the hands of success.

Staunch supporters of the war and the troops, such as Sen. John McCain, would be vindicated. "Despite this progress," he said of the surge,

"Democrats today advocate a precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. They are wrong, and their approach portends catastrophe for both Iraq and the United States. To fail in Iraq risks creating a sanctuary for al-Qaida, sparking a full scale civil war, genocide and violence that could spread far beyond Iraq's borders. ... We cannot and must not lose this war."

President Bush's anemic popularity would improve. But even those of us who stuck by him wonder: What took so long? Why did it take four years to finally send Gen. "U.S. Grant" Petraeus to do the job right?

Ironically, recent success underlines the previous failure of Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - who begins to look like Bush's Gen. McClellan, whose incompetence was finally exposed by his replacement.

The war is hardly over. Iraq's politicians are nearly as contemptible as our own. The media will bang on their bad-news drum all day. But Bush should grab a megaphone and tell America we're finally winning.

About 3,600 soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Each one was someone's son, father, husband, brother or friend. Every one of them deserves better leadership.

"In a wider sense, the war is as most wars: an evolution from blunders to wisdom," says military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

As in the Civil War, World War I and World War II,

"the key is the support of a weary public for an ever improving military that must nevertheless endure a final storm before breaking the enemy."

For all the soldiers and their families who believe in the mission, the hasty exodus of Iraq-war political deserters has been as chilling as winter at Valley Forge.

But they said George Washington was crazy too.

The Enquirer, Cincinnati


Posted By The Thompson Gunners to A NEWT ONE at 8/05/2007 02:27:00 PM