Most of the people claiming that the war in Iraq is not winnable fall into two camps (many of them fall into both camps): 1) they’ve never been to Iraq (and definitely haven’t been to Iraq since 2003), and 2) have never served in the military, yet somehow still have a better understanding of military strategy and warfare management than our Nation’s top battle-proven Generals.
But, funny things can happen when those same skeptics and naysayers actually go to Iraq and see with their own eyes what is happening, and talk to the actual soldiers with boots on the ground.
And if they are honest about what they see, they write stuff like this:
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory†but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops.
Sounds like it’s right out of a Fox News talking point, doesn’t it?
The source? The New York Times, which I usually dub the al Qaeda Times of New Yorkâ„¢ for their willingness to denigrate our Soldiers or putting them at greater risk by encouraging our enemies.
Read the entire article by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, who should be commended for their honesty. Hopefully the DialyKos and MoveOn (are they one and the same now?) will not decide to have these two men fired for betraying the party’s defeatist platform.
They conclude the article with this:
How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
Which is a much more sensible approach than the “pull ‘em all out now” approach being yelled for by the majority of Democrats.
_________
For more honest reporting about what’s really happening in Iraq, make sure you read everything written by Michael Yon, Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio (at a minimum).
You understand this is an opinion piece by supporters of the initial invasion? Their attempt to pin the resulting death and destruction on Bush incompetence is a fig leaf to cover their own complicity.
Preston, what you just stated is one of the things that trouble me so much about the Left. You have just made an ad hominem attack on the authors of this article, instead of criticizing what they wrote.
It seems that if you’re on the Left, those who disagree with you are not just wrong, but they’re evil or corrupt.
War Critic Sees Tide Turning in Iraq: UPDATED & Bu…
Democratic politicians are so heavily invested in failure that any good news from Iraq is ignored or treated with disdain becauss they instinctively understand that Good News from Iraq is definitely bad news for them, as a party….
Nazar-
This sounds like an ad hominem to you? To me it’s just simple accountability.
I wouldn’t take advice from an auto mechanic that ruined my last car. Why would I take advice from an ‘expert’ who was so disastrously wrong in 2003?
As for my other point- I don’t know how you can look at Pollack’s writings from the last four years and not come to the conclusion that he is desperately attempting to prove that it was George Bush who screwed up his beautiful invasion. Well, in fact, we all knew that it was President Bush who would be running this war so this blame shifting really carries no currency with me.
Look, I was willing to be convinced that the war was necessary in 2002. But Colin Powell went in front of the UN and gave a presentation that fell apart upon any investigation. For me that was the point when it was clear that this administration actually didn’t have reason to conduct an invasion. Why should I listen to ‘experts’ who couldn’t figure the same thing out?
Why would I take advice from an ‘expert’ who was so disastrously wrong in 2003?
You mean like nearly the entirety of the Democratic party that voted to authorize the war?
Preston, you really need try and look at the world without the distorting view of a hyper-partisan.
You Kos Kids/DU’ers are just insane with hate, and you’re hurting the country. I’m 55, and I’ve followed politics since Nixon/Kennedy when I was in the second grade. I was in college in the early 70s.
It is terrifying to think that the once proud Democrat party is dancing to your hate crazed tune.
I can’t recall a time when so much of one party was so totally consumed with blinding hatred.
It sure seems like the mainstream Democrat party is consumed with an overwhelming hatred directed not only against the President, but also anyone who strays from their party line, and the country at large.
In your lucid moments you seem like a decent guy. Why are you lashing out with so much hate toward reporters who almost certainly agree with you on 99% of all political issues?
Surely if you calm down and take a deep breath you can find it in your heart to concede that maybe, just maybe, they are reporting what they are seeing on the ground?
Hey Preston, as usual, you give a thoughtful response that merits some consideration!
I’ll admit that I’m not aware of the authors’ writings over the last four years, but allow me to give you this proposition: Don’t you think it’s at least possible that the authors really saw good things happening in Iraq, and support the surge not to cover their tracks, but because they genuinely believe in the mission?
Also, the Iraq War didn’t go as horribly as you make it out to be. Yeah, I know I’ll catch a lot of flack for this, but a simple look at the history of our nation at war shows terrible mismanagement from both the civilian and military sides. Lincoln, for example, who I think we can both agree was a great man, was completely inept during most of the Civil War, firing and hiring generals like it was nothing. After D-Day, when we were fighting in France, our intelligence didn’t tell us anything about the 10 foot hedgerows that GIs would encounter, thus we didn’t prepare for them and our advance was slowed by months and we suffered thousands of unnecessary deaths. There are countless more examples like these that pale any mistake Bush and Rumsfeld have made about Iraq, and I only give you two.
It is important to remember that war rarely goes as planned, and that terrible mistakes will always be made.
When I talk about ad hominem attacks, here’s what I mean. When you criticize the authors of the article, not their opinion. You could have just as easily stated that they were wrong about the invasion, so why should you trust them now. Instead, you say that they’re guilty of death and destruction unleashed by the invasion. There’s a big difference between being wrong about something and being implicated in death and destruction.
On the other hand, your criticism of Colin Powell at the UN is very well-founded and reasonable. Not an ad hominem attack in the least.
Nazar
You mean like nearly the entirety of the Democratic party that voted to authorize the war?
You could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion considering that the most “articulate” anti-war advocates that cable news could find was Janeane Garofalo and Sean Penn. Yet 126 Democrats voted against the resolution in the House and 21 voted against in the Senate.
Jim:
Why not accept that my views are sincere and independent of my feelings about partisan politics? Why is a commitment to a political course considered ‘hate’? Are anti-abortion advocates hateful? Tax cut proponents? Education advocates?
I don’t have any ‘hate’ for Kevin Pollack but it is typical of the media to trot him out as a “war critic” when he (and Tony Blair) was among the most forceful of the ‘liberal hawks’ for the last 4 years. (This Sunday, count how many people are invited onto the news shows who opposed the invasion and remember that we’re talking about a position that’s shared by 60% of the American people.)
Sure, maybe Pollack and O’Hanlon are simply reporting what they see on the ground. But haven’t we heard this before? From ‘Mission Accomplished’ to this National Review cover story over two years ago to Joe Lieberman telling us that the surge is ‘working’ even before Petraeus says the surge had even started. I don’t want this to sound sarcastic or simply rhetorical but, really, when will it be ok to begin to be skeptical of these claims.
Believe me- even though I opposed the invasion I supported the occupation: until it grew too obvious that it was counter productive to our goals of national security and regional stability. (Is that hateful too?) After the first Golden Dome Mosque bombing in February 2006 how is it possible to believe that we are not in a civil war? What can we ask our soldiers and Marines to do in such a condition; the Iraqi and American people want our troops out- it is only the governments that want us to stay.
Eventually, it would be refreshing to listen to people who accurately predicted events in Iraq- I would suggest they are either lucky or wise- I’ll take either at this point.
Nazar- I’ll take your points about the unpredictability of war and how war often looks bleak even after the tide has turned. Yet this isn’t the type of war that will be won by American factories- I simply think it is out of our hands at this point.
You could have just as easily stated that they were wrong about the invasion, so why should you trust them now. Instead, you say that they’re guilty of death and destruction unleashed by the invasion.
That’s true that would have been more polite. But I still don’t see my comments as ad hominem but simply attributing responsibility of which these men surely own some small portion.
Mission Accomplished…
Il mondo è tornato ad essere un posto normale. Ricordate, qualche settimana fa, l’editoriale del New York Times (la password per leggerlo cercatela qui) che invocava il ritiro statunitense dall’Iraq? Il giorno dopo, giornali e telegiornali italiani …
Preston, you are right about one thing-this war won’t be won by factories and tanks. It will be won by willpower.
Consider this for a moment. If the public showed 75 to 90% support for the war, and if your fellow Democrats in Congress didn’t continually make defeatist statement that our enemies use for propaganda, what do you think would happen in Iraq? The war would end. The terrorists would give up because they would see its pointless.
We’re fully capable of changing the facts on the ground. All that’s needed is time and support for the troops.
You should keep in mind that in the foreseeable future, all our wars are going to be like Iraq because no one can stand up to the conventional US military. If you’re prepared to lose Iraq, I hope you’re prepared to lose all future American conflicts and see the world taken over by our enemies, piece by piece, country by country.
If the public showed 75 to 90% support for the war, and if your fellow Democrats in Congress didn’t continually make defeatist statement that our enemies use for propaganda, what do you think would happen in Iraq? The war would end. The terrorists would give up because they would see its pointless.
With all due respect- this is madness!
Whether the American occupation has 90% approval or 20% approval it makes ZERO difference on whether, say, the Sadr faction decides to participate in the Iraqi government.
It’s kind of like thinking that if I don’t change my lucky shirt until November, the Cubs will finally win a World Series.
i think he may be saying (& correct me if i’m wrong nazar) that from the beginning there have been similarities between this war and others in recent history. radical islam doesn’t have to defeat us militarily. it just has to promote killing innocent people long enough to wait out the american public; it’s a rather plausible strategy. “civilized” people like pressy just can’t take all of this blood. the strategy all along has been to wear down public support for the occupation. when america is outraged, the military goes home and those with the biggest guns can go back to holding the rest of the oil consuming world hostage.
does the iraq government need the sadr faction in order to function? it would be nice in terms of creating representative government but it’s not essential.