How Goes the War?

How’s the war going? It all depends on who’s talking — or writing. Do you go with the doubters-at-a-distance who’ve been saying the war was lost even before it began? Or with the separate but equally sure experts who’ve been assuring us we’re on the verge of victory — for years now.

Do we finally admit all is lost when the next IED or car bomb takes its toll? Not just on the ground but in the spirit. It’s tempting. Enough has been more than enough. And yet not enough for Americans to accept defeat. We’ve been here before. In Korea. In Vietnam. Through unity and division, advance and retreat and stalemate. There are no guarantees in history, only the inescapable responsibility of making it, however much we might prefer not to.

We scan the headlines looking for hope. Should we take heart from the latest news out of Anbar, where Sunni chieftains have finally decided to team up with the Americans against the terrorists who’ve been horning in on their traditional territory? The change there has been the most dramatic — and most welcome — of the war’s various ups and downs and sidewayses.

Remember when Anbar was the Triangle of Death, and even the professional optimists were admitting it was lost? It hasn’t been too long — just last year — since the Marine Corps’ chief of intelligence was quoted in the Washington Post as having given up hope for that province. He was said to have concluded that the prospects of securing the Sunni heartland “are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the situation there.”

The absence of any effective government in that western province, according to his report, had created “a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, which has become the province’s most significant political force.”

But that was before David Petraeus had taken command of Coalition forces, and before the surge he’d planned — and the 30,000 additional troops he’d requested to carry it out — had begun to have their effect. It was also before it had become clear that al-Qaida had overplayed its hand, as fanatics always do, by trying to push around the local sheiks. Things now look as good in Anbar as they looked bad a year ago.

The pendulum has swung — but could swing back again. War is uncertain hell. As an American general named Eisenhower once noted, “Every war will surprise you.” This one certainly has. Again and again.

General Petraeus, who wrote the book on counter-insurgency warfare, or at least edited the latest manual on it, has overseen a shift in strategy that has begun to produce a shift in results. What had been one of the most dangerous place in Iraq for Americans — Anbar province — has become one of the most secure. As even the war’s critics, or at least those susceptible to being influenced by the facts, have acknowledged. Hillary Clinton, for instance.

Still, there is no shortage of bad news out of Iraq, either, even if number of terrorist incidents is said to have declined of late.

Predictions about the war’s outcome have been about as steady this year as the stock market. Which trends will pan out, which won’t? Which are the true indicators, which fleeting and false? Whom to believe? Is there no one simple way to discern which way things are going, no single index of progress in the field or lack thereof?

Yes, there is. Watch which way Hillary Clinton is going on the war. Through it all, from her vote in favor of this war to her latest vow to end it, her statements have been a reliable reflection of how the war seemed to be going at any given time:

She voted to confirm Gen. Petraeus for his new command and fourth star when he represented a hopeful change in American strategy in Iraq. Later, when hope had ebbed, and she had to compete with the likes of Barack Obama and John Edwards in anti-war fervor — the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is well under way — she would tell Gen. Petraeus it would require a “suspension of disbelief” to credit what he — and the chief American envoy in Iraq, too — were saying about the war.

Last month, with reports from the field showing some progress, Senator Clinton voted to vaguely condemn MoveOn.org’s attack on the general (“General Betray Us”) before declining to vote for another resolution that defended him specifically. And so she goes, like a political pendulum.

Her zigzag course would make John Kerry’s opposite but equal stands on the war four years ago look rock-solid. Remember how he voted for that $87 billion appropriation for the war before he voted against it?

You can tell how the war is going, or at least how Americans think it is going, by following Senator Clinton’s every twist and turn on the issue.

This much can be confidently predicted: Hillary Clinton will never abandon our troops in their hour of victory — any more than she’ll support the war when it looks like a losing cause. In that way, she’s been perfectly consistent.

Will the senator now from New York, and now the frontrunner in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, wind up supporting the war? It depends. On how well it seems to be going at the time. Which is why the thought of Hillary Clinton as wavering commander-in-chief of the armed forces after noon on January 20, 2008, does not assure.

One is reminded of her spouse’s stand, or rather his carefully crafted lack of one, on the first war against Saddam Hussein — the one fought over Kuwait in 1991. Bill Clinton’s stand on that war was so flexible that, whichever way it had come out, he could claim his views had been vindicated. And did. By now that political strategy has become a family tradition.

There is more involved here than the outcome of a presidential race or even of the campaigns in Anbar or Afghanistan. We now stand at the beginning of another generational struggle akin to the Cold War, which turned hot from time to time, too. Throughout that long struggle, decade after decade, there was only one sure guide that in the end saw freedom through: constancy of purpose. That is easy enough to say, it is bloody hard to maintain.

I would argue that this is the MOST successful war in the history of the United States.

We liberated 30 million people will less than 5,000 allied casualties. In WWII we ALONE lost over 400,000 soldiers.

In WWII, our enemies regularly bombed our civilians and we regularly bombed their’s back. Now if we have a stray bomb that kills a couple of dozen civilians, it makes the front page of the NYT. The collateral damage in this war is something never considered possible in previous wars.

The Dems and the MSM keep changing the standards because of our success in this war. We could never fight WWII today, we would just let the Nazis take over.

Today’s US military is the greatest military in the history of the world and is the greatest force for good (with the exception of Christ and his followers) in the history of the world.

“We liberated 30 million people will less than 5,000 allied casualties. In WWII we ALONE lost over 400,000 soldiers.”

That’s not to diminish the sacrifice of those that gave their lives for the Iraq War, but the far left with their “3,000 soldiers died is way too many” have no concept of what’s come before.

just horrified at the number of soldiers we would lose in a single battle as compared to all combat deaths in the entire Iraq campaign....it’s a real eye opener.

I had the same experience when I visited Chancellorsville battle field, a five hour battle, 17,000 casualties (dead and wounded). Of course it was Americans taking it on both sides there, but 1 per second for 5 straight hours.

In WWII we lost around 2,000 in a TRAINING exercise preparing for D-day (the weather turned bad). And, for the record, our press, which was aware of the accident, did not report it until after the war!

Can you imagine if that happened today.

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ “The War” and just horrified at the number of soldiers we would lose in a single battle as compared to all combat deaths in the entire Iraq campaign....it’s a real eye opener.

Checkout the number of casualties in the Battles in the Civil War . They were real tragedies .One out of every 4 American males between the age of 20-40 died in that war

Ask the liberals if we should have fought that war

“Ask the liberals if we should have fought that war”

Liberals are stupid by nature of their constitutions. They’re minds are stuck in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. They believe that everything in the World should be peace and love, and are traumatized when it isn’t.

“Ask the liberals if we should have fought that war”

Which is why the thought of Hillary Clinton as wavering commander-in-chief of the armed forces after noon on January 20, 2008, does not assure.

What, she is going to take over George W.'s last year of his second term? I guess this race got off to such an early start that Paul Greenberg is totally thrown off.

I would argue that this is the MOST successful war in the history of the United States....

It very well could turn out to be, it has certainly been the least expensive in terms of lives lost, as you point out.

I would add that this war may be the least expensive we ever fought, from a financial standpoint, also. Pre-war, Iraq was known to possess some 5% of world's petroleum reserves, only a couple percentage points behind Saudi Arabia, and over one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The crude oil extraction technology employed in Iraq is so out-dated, that experts estimate that a 30% gain in extraction can be had just from updating the extraction infrastructure. Couple this with the fact that oil exploration in Iraq has been non-existent for some 30 years, and new exploration techniques have essentially doubled the finds in other countries, and you have the makings of a significant event in the market should hostilities cease in Iraq.

The potential effect on world oil prices could save the world trillions of dollars, and the US economy could benefit far beyond the billions thus far spent, not to mention the elimination of a tyrant that sooner or later, would have cost us dearly, in both lives and finances.

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