Posted on 03/22/2008 12:51:24 PM PDT by Clive
Five years later, the debate over the Iraq war rages as hot as when it began.
We have never ceased looking over our shoulders. We have attempted to fight our way forward with our eyes fixed backward.
Mired in these old arguments, it becomes impossible to see anything new.
Just last week for example, the Pentagon released a study of 600,000 captured Iraqi documents. These documents detailed Saddam Hussein’s long history of support for Islamic terrorist groups, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad — which merged into al-Qaeda in 1998.
Yet this study was almost universally shrugged off: The debate is frozen and cannot accept fresh evidence.
Likewise, it becomes impossible to absorb the success of the new American tactics in Iraq. Iraqi civilian casualties have fallen to the lowest level since the liberation of Baghdad, down by more than three-quarters since November, 2007. U.S. casualties are down, Iraqi police casualties are down, car bombings are down, the flow of refugees is down. Some 80,000 previously unemployed Iraqi men now draw salaries to serve in the pro-government militia. Iraq oil exports rose 9% in 2007 over 2006, and have risen in January and February over their levels in 2007.
We slight the improving internal politics of Iraq. Iraq’s Sunni parties have ended their boycott of the Parliament. Evidence accumulates that young Iraqis are turning away from religious extremism: The firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in particular draws much smaller crowds at his rallies.
Even direct statements by the Iraqi insurgents receive little attention. On February 12, 2008, a newspaper in Qatar published a lengthy interview with Abu-Turab al-Jaza’iri, the al-Qaeda commander in northern Iraq. As translated by Memri.org, al-Jaza’iri acknowledged: “It is true that we have lost several cities and have been forced to withdraw from others, after a large number of [Sunni] tribal leaders betrayed Islam and when their tribe members joined forces against us.” He described al-Qaeda’s position as “very difficult,” and acknowledged that in certain regions, there was even “paralysis.”
In Memri’s dry summation: “Asked about possible reasons for the decrease in al-Qaeda’s popularity, Al-Jaza’iri said that indiscriminately murdering civilians had been a mistake that had ‘harmed the organization’s reputation.’” You don’t say.
It is never safe to make predictions about Iraq. The optimistic early projections of those like me who supported the war have proven disastrously wrong: I admit that. But equally wrong have been the dire predictions of 2006 and 2007, before the surge, when not exactly impartial observers such as former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were damning the war as “the worst foreign policy disaster in American history.”
The Iraq war has been frustrating, protracted, costly and bloody. But it has also achieved large and important goals, of immense benefit both to the West and to the Arab Middle East:
1) The war removed from power an aggressive and dangerous dictator who did support terrorism on a very large scale, who did run nuclear and biological weapons programs in the 1980s and 1990s, who did use genocidal tactics against his country’s Kurdish minority and who did start two wars against his neighbors Iran and Kuwait.
2) The war has produced an elected government in Iraq, and put an Arab army into the field against an al-Qaeda insurgency. Television audiences across the Middle East have had to watch Islamic terrorism murder not just Westerners, Indians and Jews, but fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims.
3) The war has mobilized an Arab coalition against Iranian adventurism. Countries such as Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which had played a double game on extremism and terrorism in the 1990s, have been forced into a much less ambiguous alliance with the United States.
4) Al Qaeda is on the verge of suffering an emphatic and discrediting military defeat, brought on by its own fanaticism, incompetence and bloodthirstiness. Al-Qaeda gunmen have chopped the fingers off Iraqis caught smoking cigarettes, attacked the families of prominent tribal leaders — even on one occasion forbidden merchants to display cucumbers and tomatoes in the same vegetable stall. (Traditional Islam does not require the separation of vegetables, but the sex-obsessed Islamists regard cucumbers as too phallic and tomatoes as too breast-like to be allowed near one another.)
These are real gains, and they point the way to a very different verdict on Iraq from that most often heard.
Iraq remains of course a very unpopular war, inside the United States and around the world. Yet the politics of Iraq are nothing like those of America’s previous unpopular war, Vietnam. This week, antiwar groups called for giant demonstrations to protest the war’s anniversary. Only about 1,000 people showed up in Washington, with comparably small numbers in other major cities.
While millions of Americans regard Iraq as a mistake, only a fanatical few dare to suggest that it was somehow morally wrong to topple the murderous dictator Saddam. What offends Americans about Iraq is lack of success. The negative public judgment on the war is a judgment on the war’s management — and better management will lead to a more favorable public judgment.
No excuses can be made for the war’s bad management, and especially for the unconscionable delay in correcting early mistakes. It was plain by the summer of 2003 that things were going wrong — yet not until the summer of 2007 did President Bush change course.
The President has received harsh criticism for this stubbornness, and deservedly so. Yet at the same time, a less stubborn man would probably have folded up in Iraq in the dark days of 2006 and 2007. Had, for example, John Kerry won the 2004 election, the United States likely would have fled Iraq at the low point, accepting humiliating defeat for itself and bequeathing chaos and theocracy to Iraqis.
Instead, at this five year anniversary we see better grounds for hope than at any time in a long time. The surge will end this summer. U.S. troops will begin to withdraw. If Iraq remains stable, more troops will soon follow, and the U.S. and Coalition role inside Iraq can then shrink.
In the end, the struggle in Iraq is the Iraqis’ struggle. But the West can provide decisive aid. Thanks to the heroic sacrifices of American service men and women — and also, I should add, to a new battle-plan devised in large part by my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute — that aid has achieved more and better results in the past few months than at any time since the war began.
Does this mean success is at last in sight in Iraq? No — but it means that for the first time in a long time, success looks like a realistic goal. If anything deserves commemoration this week, it is not some arbitrary anniversary, but instead that astonishing turnaround, rich with hope for Iraq and the wider world.
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I think we have a good chance at winning the WOT as long as the clowns and buffoons in the MSM continue to be distracted by the on-going, four year fiasco some call “the U.S. presidential election.”
In which David Frum, lets the Left set the agenda for “success”.
It was just a question of whether the American public would hold on, and how fast certain politicians break ranks and opportunistically exploit the war, thereby damaging the effort.
You see, in 1991 the Democrats lost heavily because of their stance on Desert Storm, years later they were not going to repeat this mistake. Furthermore, the preponderance of evidence was that Iraq was meddling with terrorism, developing WMD, longer range missiles etc., and in the wake of 911 they were not going to miss the boat on a national security issue. When it was favorable to be tough they spoke the words, but when things became tough, they shrank. As a minority party and not in the Presidency they had the opportunity to “turn coat” in 2004 during the Kerry elections when the party officially went anti-war. It was actually a very abrupt turn of events where within a few days the party message went from pro-war to complete opposition. The 180 degree turn was made possible by arguing they had been deceived, the party line that is repeated by Hillary, Kerry, and all others who voted for the war, before they decided they were actually against it. Furthermore, newer politicians joining the ranks after the fact, like Obama are not tied down to the commitments made by their predecessors, so they will be quick to dodge the bullet and reap all the benefits of playing “I told you so” armed with hind sight 20-20 knowledge when bad images from Iraq roll in.
The problem most pundits even for the war didn't really seem to grasp is that no matter what, success is only possible over a lengthy span of time measured in years. Like bread, turning up the heat won't make the yeast rise any faster, the bread will just burn. Things take time and even though Iraq is now turning to the better, it's not over. I hope that this success builds more success and buys time. Time is the critical aspect. The war will be won or lost by the political maneuvering in Washington, not the war fighter, all they need is our political support, resources, and TIME.
Isn't there a gardening book called "Carrots Love Tomatoes" ? Maybe those crazy 7th-century nutbags are on to something ...
Extremely lucid and insightful post.
Success?? After 4,000 dead young Americans and over a trillion dollars in a war started by Bush to cover the first recession of his presidency, a war based on lies? A successful war is when you’ve defeated the enemy. The enemy will never be defeated as there are more of them than there are our troops and the fact that we are the Invaders trying to fight insurgents of all kinds (al Qaeda, Sunni, Shia).
McLame wants to keep the war going for 100 years. He’s off his nut. I can tell you that there are plenty of (mostly silent) conservatives on the Iraq war issue. Not every Republican is for the war, either. After 5 years, it’s time to get the frick out and leave that toilet bowl to its own people. We haven’t benefited from one barrel of Iraqi oil, the oil Bush promised would pay for the war. Right.
Those in favor of McNasty and in favor of continuing this insance conflict remind me of the character John Bagtry played by John Dall in the 1948 Lillien Hellman play-turned-movie, “Another Part Of The Forest”. The story is based on the fact that years after the Civil War had eneded, about 20,000 former Confederate soldiers (whose ranks have lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers) decided to travel to Brazil to fight in a conflict there. This is the same sind of utter insanity of the War Lobby. Create a war somewhere in the third world, bog down our military there, stretch them to the breaking point, refuse to start up the draft to make up for the lives lost and bodies broken making the Red Chinese and other enemies stronger...This is the Bush and McCain legacy and I want no part of it. Unfortunately, the pro-war conservatives who were running for President like Hunter wanted to continue the war, as well. They were no better than McLame, and for that reason alone, they never gained traction.
Hate her as you may, and she’s certainly wrong on many issues, Hillary Clinton wants to end the war and she’s 100% right. We can still fight al Qaeda all over the world. We don’t need our Army bogged down in a civil war. The Iraqi people must decide what they want to do with their own country. We must stop being the policemen of the world. We haven’t the money or the numbers of troops for it besides the fact that it is unconstitutional. We aren’t “protecting America” by being in Iraq—we’re propping up a government that we created, another extra-constitutional act. Give Bush a rifle and stick him over in Fallujah and let him “prosecute” his war from the ground, not from the safety of The White House.
This war has been going on for 1400 years, and will continue until the Second Coming. Lillian Hellman was a red. Yeah, we “created” this war. Just like Rove invented Wahabi Islam. Sounds like you oughta enlist.
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