I don't like McCain, but he is obviously right.
Why is Muqtada al-Sadr still walking around? Why did we not kill him in Najaf when we had the opportunity? Why did we ever allow Falluja to become a terrorist stronghold, allowing the "insurgency" to gain significant strength? Why are Sunni populations that obviously oppose our goals in Iraq allowed to harbor and support "insurgents" with virtually no penalty?
Not that I support creating "Islamic democracy" anyway, but if it had any chance of success it required actually fighting to win. Note to President Bush - win first, the hearts and minds stuff can come later.
Because the Iraqi people support him, an insurgency only gets as far, as popular support.
Memo to you and McCain:
Saddam Hussein is in jail waiting to be executed. His socialist Baathist Party is dead. Iraq has a new Constitution, free elections and a new government. Iraq has a huge natural resource (oil) which it can use to build a strong, free-market economy. The enemy has been reduced to making terrorist attacks against civilians, and planting bombs on roads.
But I agree with McCain that more troops are needed: to finally put the lid on all the terrorists' coffins in Iraq.
In 1864 you would have been asking Lincoln why the war wasn't yet over. In 1790 similiar questions predicated on the negatives would have been directed at Washington. Hamilton would have been asked why we didn't have a complete public finance system. Roosevelt would have been asked in 1944 why Japan had not surrendered.
We are looking at a short time frame and expecting gigantic changes to occur within it. Changes of the magnitude we are working for will take decades, if not centuries.
BS. Let's review what has happened since we entered Iraq in March 2003: The Baathist Iraqi government was deposed, Saddam jailed and on trial, and his sons dead. This was the same government that invaded two of its neighbors, was on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, and used WMD on the Kurds and Iranians. Iraq no longer poses such a danger to its neighbors nor do we have to continue to enforce the no-fly zones, which cost us $8-$12 billion a year with no end in sight.
We have had three democatic elections, which elected a unified government and approved a constitution. We have trained over 200,000 police and military. We have eliminated the Oil for Food Program, which was funneling billions into Saddam's coffers.
Iraqi security forces are fighting and dying for their country at a rate twice ours with more than 5100 killed. Iraqi oil production is at pre-war levels, three-quarters of Iraq gets twice as much electricity today as they did before the war, and the country’s gross domestic product rose to almost $90 billion in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), more than double the output for 2003, and its real growth rate, as estimated by the IMF, was 52.3 per cent. In that same period, exports increased by more than $3 billion, while the inflation rate fell to 25.4 percent, down from 70 percent in 2002. The unemployment rate was halved, from 60 percent to 30 percent.
A General Fed Up With The MSM - Jed Babbin
I believe we are winning.