But They Support the Troops

Oh, really?

Message to Obama

This video really puts Obama on the defensive regarding his Iraq policy — but you have to watch the whole two-minute clip to understand why.

Herman, on the Iraq War

Historians, by definition, are students of history, not current events. Of course, today’s current events are tomorrow’s history, but we are usually too close to today’s news to view it in its larger context. It is up to the historians to sift through all the evidence, long after the fact, and make sense of the details.

That’s why Bush has not been too concerned about his negative polling numbers throughout his two terms. On the issue of the Iraq War, in particular, he knows that the whole story hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, history will be kinder to him than his contemporary critics.

That more measured study of the Iraq War is already underway. Historian Arthur Herman has a lengthy piece at Commentary that recounts the history leading up to the decision to invade Iraq. His conclusion: If Bush had not invaded Iraq, some American President eventually would have had to do it — ironically, probably either Al Gore or John Kerry.

Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq war, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster. If, after 9/11, Bush had then blinked in his turn, he might indeed have found himself out of office by January 2005, and someone else would have had to tackle the job under much more disadvantageous conditions.

To judge by his unequivocal pronouncements pre-2003, and as improbable as it sounds now, that someone might well have been Al Gore, the erstwhile hawkish Vice President who had championed the Iraq Liberation Act, or indeed John Kerry, who back in 1998 told Scott Ritter that containment of Saddam was not working and that the time had come to use force. If Bush had failed to act, either one of these two men might have come to office in January 2005 publicly prepared to deal with the “gathering threat” that his predecessor had unaccountably allowed to grow larger and closer and ever more virulent.

Obama and the Surge

USA Today finds Obama’s position on the surge to be inexplicable.

The great irony, of course, is that the success of the surge has made Obama’s plan to withdraw combat troops in 16 months far more plausible than when he proposed it. Another irony is that while Obama downplays the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq, he is urging a similar tactic now in Afghanistan.

In other words, Obama is for the surge at the same time he is against it.

UPDATE: Ray Robison sees another irony coming out of Obama’s trip to Iraq: The attention he has drawn to conditions there may work against him.

Many Americans genuinely did not know that we have essentially won in Iraq until now. They thought that Obama was delivering the straight truth to them on Iraq. But now they know he was being less than candid. The Independents and conservative Democrats now might see that he was not telling them the truth.

That MoveOn.Org Ad

Bill Kristol scratches under the surface to reveal the real message in that anti-McCain MoveOn.org ad:

The MoveOn ad is unapologetic in its selfishness, and barely disguised in its disdain for those who have chosen to serve — and its contempt for those parents who might be proud of sons and daughters who are serving. The ad boldly embraces a vision of a selfish and infantilized America, suggesting that military service and sacrifice are unnecessary and deplorable relics of the past.

Expect more of the same.

al Qaeda Defeated?

From The Guardian, via the Jawa Report:

Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical Islamists, says recent al-Qaida propaganda footage from Iraq is old and cannot mask the crisis it is facing. “They have not got new things to say about Iraq though they are trying to give the impression that they are still alive. The material isn’t convincing.” Nigel Inkster, former deputy head of MI6, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees: “Al-Qaida is starting to prepare their people for strategic failure in Iraq.”

So can George W. Bush now finally declare, “Mission accomplished!”?

Next Generation Generals

Victor Davis Hanson looks at the impact that the Iraq war is having on the next generation of leadership in the U. S. military.

The annual spring list of Army colonels promoted to brigadier generals will be shortly released. Already, rumors suggest that this year, unlike in the recent past, a number of maverick officers who have distinguished themselves fighting — and usually defeating — insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chosen.

These “maverick” officers have been the key to success in Iraq, although no one could have predicted it at the outset of hostilities.

The terrorist bands that sprung up during the occupation were at first dealt with through conventional tactics and weapons. Only as American and Iraqi losses mounted did a few gifted officers begin to work with the Iraqis, learn the elements of successful counterinsurgency doctrine and slowly win back the hearts and minds of the civilian population.

However, Hanson sees an historical precedent for this changing of the guard among the military’s leaders.

Most wars are rarely fought as they were planned. During the fighting, those who adjust most quickly to the unexpected tend to be successful. And in almost all of America’s past conflicts, our top commanders on the eve of war were not those who finished it.

“Women and Children First”

That rule of civilized behavior takes on a whole new meaning in the hands of Islamofascists looking for ever more deadly ways to spread their message of misery and mayhem. Oliver North exposes the moral bankruptcy of an ideology that uses women and children as human bombs.

Apparently, al-Qaida is running short of mentally competent volunteers who want to murder fellow Muslims in the process of becoming “martyrs” for Allah.

You would think this barbaric behavior would be greeted with howls of condemnation from Islamic leaders. But other than the government of Iraq, Islam has been strangely silent on this misuse of women and children.

From Damascus, Riyadh, Amman, Ankara and Tehran, there was only silence. No Islamic leader or senior cleric rose to condemn the murder of God’s most vulnerable creatures, whom mankind is entrusted to protect.

Those in our nation who argue that no culture is superior to another are living in a fool’s dream, and had better wake up before this evil lands on their doorstep.

The Role of the Press in War

Historian Arthur Herman revisits the Tet Offensive in January 1968, and its role in shaping the media coverage of the Vietnam War. Although the Offensive proved to be a crushing military defeat for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, it ultimately led to the undoing of the U.S. presence in Vietnam, due primarily to the deeply negative reporting that dominated the American media during that period. We are still paying a price for that campaign of misinformation.

Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes — such as the Petraeus surge — minimized and glossed over.

Iraq and the Future of Our Military

It’s not getting any headlines, but several years of hard fighting in Iraq is going to shape the leadership of our military for years to come.

The large number of soldiers and marines who have seen combat, or at least been close, comprise a group of military leaders that will be changing the U.S. Army and Marine Force for the next two decades. The large number of combat experienced NCOs and officers creates a different leadership climate, and a different attitude towards combat, and getting ready for it.

The media has run stories in the last year or so about the alarming number of officers and NCOs who are leaving the military, the implication being that this stupid war is driving out our best and brightest. But there could be another explanation:

What the army did not publicize was the large number of officers and NCOs that were encouraged to leave, or get out of their combat job, to make way for people who wanted to fight and were willing to learn how.

Iraq: Setting the Record Straight

In October 2006, The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, published a shocking article claiming that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion. The article–curiously released just before midterm elections in the U.S.–helped fuel the public outcry against the war that hurt the Republicans in the election.

Now we learn it was all bogus.  Jeff Jacoby summarizes the details here. The statistical methodology used to gather and analyze the data was badly flawed, and the funding for the study carried serious doubts about it’s political objectivity. The authors clearly had a political agenda in view in conducting the study. Jacoby concludes:

The claim that the US-led invasion of Iraq had triggered a slaughter of almost Rwandan proportions was a gross and outlandish exaggeration; it should have been greeted with extreme skepticism.

But because it served the interests of those eager to discredit the war as a moral catastrophe, common-sense standards were ignored. “In our view, the Hopkins study stands until someone knocks it down,” editorialized the Baltimore Sun.

Now someone has, devastatingly. But will the debunking be trumpeted as loudly and clearly as the original report? Don’t hold your breath.

There was a day when journalists could get by with this kind of slanted reporting. But those days are gone now. The more this kind of shoddy research is offered as “news,” and exposed as fraudulent, the less confidence the public has in the media’s product.

Transformation of the U. S. Military in Iraq

Whatever else one might say about the U.S. experience in Iraq, the good news is that our military has learned some valuable lessons on how to wage asymmetrical warfare. That’s the evaluation of Erik Swabb in the WSJ.

The Iraq war is also dramatically improving the military’s understanding, training and capabilities in irregular warfare. Since this is the preferred method of Islamic extremists, the experience in Iraq is transforming the military into the force required to help win the Long War.

He offers the recent experience of his old Marine unit in Anbar Province as an example:

Soon after occupying its forward outpost, the company met heavy insurgent attacks. But it did not over-react with mass detentions and other alienating tactics. Instead, the Marines took a patient approach to win the support of the population and eject the extremists hiding among them. They partnered with Iraqi police, established a pervasive security presence throughout the city, and worked with local leaders to improve basic services, governance and the economy. Such tactics used to be rare, but are now increasingly the norm, thanks to Gen. David Petraeus’s dogged emphasis on seeing counterinsurgency conducted by all units.

The war in Iraq is not over, and could still be lost — if politicians in Washington force a precipitous pullout. But events of the last year prove that the U.S. military is still the most resilient, most capable fighting force in the world.

UPDATE: Sadly, as CNN’s Tom Foreman notes, this good news is being deliberately downplayed by the politicians in this election year.

On the whole, both parties are shelving the issue because it contains too many uncertainties that could upset their plans for political power.

Most Americans — and all the politicians — have insisted that no matter how we feel about the war, we should support our troops while they are there.

It is hard to imagine how ignoring something for political expedience translates into support.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Our fellow citizens are risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out a difficult scheme, which was approved by both Republicans and Democrats; yet our political leaders will not even risk even their careers to talk about it now.

Manipulating the News Out of Iraq

Neo-Neocon offers some cogent commentary on the muted good news coming out of Iraq these days. In response to the stunning turnaround in the war against al Qaeda, our major news organs have simply dropped Iraq as a news item.

Why is it that our own media is so reluctant to spread the word? In some ways, of course, that’s a rhetorical question. We know the answer, at least in part: hatred of George Bush, reluctance to print anything that would reflect poorly on the Democratic Party and its candidates, and even a sort of general press reluctance to print good news (”if it bleeds, it ledes”).

An even greater factor is that the MSM itself took a stand, and a strong one at that: this war is bad and by definition unwinnable. Whether this press position originated in its liberal politics and disdain for anything George Bush might do, a generalized pacifism, an adherence to a Europe-centric worldview, and/or use of the favored “narrative” (see, I can be postmodern, too) about Vietnam as the template for all conflicts involving the US and insurgencies, the fact is that once that position was taken and hammered home over many months and years, to turn back would require a massive course correction.

As I’ve said before, I’m not all that concerned that reporters and editors have a strong liberal Democratic bias. My beef is that they try to project a posture of “journalistic objectivity.” It’s a joke, and everyone can see it except themselves. If news bureaus really want to provide a valuable service to the public, let them hire reporters and editors from a wide spectrum of ideological convictions, and turn ’em loose to report however they want. The result would be chaotic, yes; but it would be a lot more informative than the spin we are currently served.

Why the Media Has No Credibility

With idiots like Helen Thomas asking the questions at White House briefings, it doesn’t take Americans long to figure out that they are not being served by objective journalists, but lectured by shrill political hacks.

White House press secretary Dana Perino does a masterful job of putting Thomas in her place.

UPDATE: Here is a detailed article on Perino’s background and credentials. Very impressive young lady.

Murtha Stumbles, Pelosi Squeezes

Rep. John Murtha, just back from Iraq, blurted out an honest impression about what he saw during his trip: “The surge is working.”

Naturally, that didn’t sit well with the Diva on the Hill, Nancy Pelosi, so she got to him, and Murtha hastily repaired the damage in a follow-up statement: “The fact remains that the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily, and that we must begin an orderly redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as practicable.”

So all is right with the world again: We are winning the war in Iraq, and the Democrats are digging themselves deeper into their defeatist hole. Gotta love it.

The Bush Legacy: Taking the Long View

Kathleen Parker recently interviewed President Bush aboard Air Force One. The conversation focused on Bush’s perception of his legacy, and how that perception has influenced his decisions. Excerpts:

Bush . . . says he’s trying to make the next president’s job easier by making the tough decisions now. “That’s why it’s very important for me to remind the American people that we’ve got to support these military commanders, support their decisions. … I think anybody who’s president will understand the strategic consequences of failure in Iraq.”

He also said that anyone who believes we’re not in a war against extremists and radicals will “learn differently when they get in there and hear the intelligence I hear.” . . .

“It’s real important for the president to not be making moves based upon political calendars,” he told me. “I really view this as a first chapter of a long struggle — not the only chapter, not the last chapter, but the first chapter.

“And I’ve told our people, we’re going to write it … so that the next president will have an easier task of dealing with the threats.

Bush’s war performance has not been perfect, but he stands head and shoulders above the rest of the politicians who are cravenly seeking his job. Someday, after all the shrill criticism dies down and historians have a chance to sift through the details of this era, I suspect Bush’s role in history will be viewed in a far more positive light.

Finally — A Realistic Iraq War Movie?

John at OPFOR reports that Hollywood is making a movie based on the book No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah, a gripping account of the Marine assault on Fallujah in 2004. Harrison Ford will star as a Marine general.

Can’t wait!

How Good is the News out of Iraq? And Why Isn’t It Getting Reported?

Dean Barnett wonders why this chart is not getting front page coverage on every newspaper in the country. It tracks American deaths in Iraq for every month since the war began. Look carefully at the numbers at the far right of the chart, from June until now. This covers the surge of Gen. Petraeus. Apparently this dramatic drop is not considered newsworthy.

Yet as Barnett notes,

What’s most frustrating about the press’s reporting about Iraq is that you just know the next time something goes wrong, be it a car bomb slipping through or a mishap involving American soldiers, that story will get above-the-fold treatment in America’s major dailies. The same old voices will begin shrieking “quagmire.”

A New Breed of Warrior

Victor Davis Hanson shares his impression of some of the middle echelon officers he encountered during his recent tour of Iraq. He is impressed by what he sees, and thinks it bodes well for the outcome of the war.

Something is going on in Iraq entirely missed by media. It’s not just that things are turning around, but rather Gen. Petraeus has assembled perhaps the most gifted group of Army officers seen in a generation—who feel they are going to snatch victory from the jaws of political defeat. I think they will pull it off and the entire political landscape here at home will have to readjust to it by early next year. The smarter Democrats will take credit by claiming their anti-Bush efforts forced needed change, the denser ones will just continue to deny, like Sens. Reid and Schumer, that any good is occurring at all.

Day of Reckoning for al Qaeda in Pakistan?

AJStrata summarizes some interesting details about the Pakistan military putting the squeeze on al Qaeda operatives in northwest Pakistan. It appears that Pakistan — deliberately or otherwise — is slowly pushing the terrorists back toward the Afghanistan border, and into the waiting arms of U. S. and NATO forces.

He also speculates that this may be a reason the Marines are itching to shift a brigade from Iraq to Afghanistan.

If we are surrounding the leadership I have no doubt everyone in the military (and many beyond) would line up to bring the masterminds of 9-11 to justice.

Bet You Didn’t Read This in the MSM

Call it Spook’s Inverse Law of Iraq War Reporting: if you don’t see a spate of stories on U.S. casualties at the end of the month, then there must be some good news the MSM is ignoring.

In this case, it’s the significantly lower numbers of U.S. casualties in the war: “a total of 59 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this month, compared to 79 in August–a 26% decline.”

The article analyzes data over the last six months to show that this is not a statistical blip. The surge is having its intended effect of destroying the enemy’s ability to wage war. Stating it another way: we’re winning in Iraq.

But, of course, that’s not newsworthy.

Lesson From the Surge

President Bush’s critics argue vociferously for a reduced American presence in Iraq, a smaller footprint that does not arouse the animosity of the locals.

Frederick Kagan points to the remarkable success brought about by the surge as sure evidence that that strategy will not work.

One thing is clear from the Iraqi experience. It is not enough to persuade a Muslim population to reject al Qaeda’s ideology and practice. Someone must also be willing and able to protect that population against the terrorists they had been harboring, something that special forces and long-range missiles alone can’t do.

It’s 1933 Again

Historian Arthur Herman notes the parallels between Columbia University’s invitation to Iranian thug-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a resolution of neutrality passed by Oxford University’s Debating Union as war clouds loomed over Europe in 1933. Winston Churchill called the resolution “abject, squalid, shameless.”

Adolf Hitler got the clear message of the 1933 Oxford Union debate: We will not oppose you. Regardless of Bollinger’s “tough questions” yesterday, Ahmadinejad the Iranian president is bound to use his speech to a hall of “open-minded” Americans as a major public-relations victory – and to see it as a clear sign that his enemy is divided at its heart.

As Churchill said, “There is no place for compromise in war. That invaluable process only means that soldiers are shot because their leaders in council and camp are unable to resolve.”

He added, “In war the clouds never blow over; they gather unceasingly and fall in thunderbolts.” It was the falling thunderbolts of Nazi bombs that finally convinced the appeasers of the ’30s that they had been wrong. New York City has already gone through its Blitz. What more will it take before Bollinger and his cohorts admit their squalid mistake?

How to Undermine the U.S.–From One Who’s Done It

Ion Mihai Pacepa was a two-star general in Romania’s foreign intelligence service until 1978, when he defected to the U. S. Eventually he became an American citizen. When the Soviet bloc collapsed in the late ’80’s, Pacepa played an indirect role in the overthrow of Ceauşescu in Romania. A prolific writer, he has exposed a great deal of the plotting and intrigue that the Eastern Bloc countries engaged in during the Cold War to destroy the credibility of the U. S. across the globe.

Which is to say, the man knows a thing or two about how to undermine America.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Pacepa compares the efforts of his former comrades in the Soviet Bloc with the political enemies of our current President–enemies right here in America. He is appalled at the reckless manner in which these leftists attack the leader of the free world.

As someone who escaped from communist Romania–with two death sentences on his head–in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a “liar,” a “deceiver” and a “fraud.”

Pacepa does not pretend to be an expert on the war in Iraq, but he knows a strategy for defeat when he sees one.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America’s commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O’Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a “deserter.” And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, “Give Bush the Boot.”

He appeals to an unlikely source–fellow immigrants–for support in turning out these loons and electing leaders, of whatever party, who are proud of America and are willing to work together for the common good.

If America’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win.

UPDATE:  One of Pacepa’s earlier pieces in National Review Online documents numerous examples of the dirty tricks that were so effective in smearing America during the Cold War. I found this quote especially timely:

KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and “news reports” about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.

Nothing has changed much, has it?

Iraq: A Tipping Point Approaching?

Michael Yon is a former special forces soldier who has spent the last few years—mostly on his own dime—embedded as a journalist with American and British forces in various regions of Iraq. He has witnessed the Iraq war in a way that no other journalist has: out in the fields of battle, among the towns and villages of the ordinary Iraqis. His reporting on the war far surpasses that of the MSM.

Consequently, when Yon speaks to the current state of affairs in Iraq, his comments deserve a close listen. He notes three key areas in which Iraq today has changed from Iraq in the past:

1. Iraqis are uniting across sectarian lines to drive Al Qaeda in all its disguises out of Iraq, and they are empowered by the success they are having, each one creating a ripple effect of active citizenship.

2. The Iraqi Army is much more capable now than it was in 2005. It is not ready to go it alone, but if we keep working, that day will come.

3. Gen. Petraeus is running the show. Petraeus may well prove to be to counterinsurgency warfare what Patton was to tank battles with Rommel, or what Churchill was to the Nazis.

The MSM prefers to concentrate on the latest suicide bombings and assassinations. But if Yon is correct in his assessment, we’re approaching a tipping point in Iraq that bodes well for the future.