Topic: Iraq
No News, Good News from Iraq? Why aren't we hearing more about the progress in Iraq?by R.J. Moeller
(Conservative)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
"Iraqi troops welcomed in Sadr City," read the Washington Post headline this week, bringing with it yet even more ammunition for depressed Conservatives in this election year. The lead paragraph in the same devastatingly optimistic piece read as follows:
"Iraqi soldiers moved unhindered through Baghdad's vast Sadr City district on Wednesday as Shiite militiamen who have long controlled the area faded from view and schools and businesses began to reopen after weeks of strife."
From the beginning, I have been a staunch supporter of the mission President George W. Bush, our House of Representatives, and our Senate sanctioned and launched a little more than 5 years ago. At that time, the American people and their elected representatives in Washington D.C. decided the threat Saddam Hussein posed as an unremittingly defiant and genocidal dictator could no longer be tolerated. Regime change became compulsory after Saddam's 12 years of broken promises to weapons inspectors, brazen breaches of all 17 U.N. Resolutions and sanctions levied against him, and the realities of a post-9/11 world began to sink into the minds of the historically vigilant and discerning American people.
Amidst the undeniably cumbersome and clumsy prosecution of the war between 2004-2006 (after our initial ringing success in deposing Saddam's regime) what has been both lost and purposely confused in the minds of those same vigilant and discerning Americans is this: the mission to remove the threat Hussein posed, the mission to free more than 25 million human beings from tyranny, and to establish a beach-head of representative democracy (the kind of which no two nations that employ it have ever attacked one another) is not only still alive and well --- it's working.
"The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is pursuing an increasingly successful effort to contain the militias of his Shiite rivals and to exercise authority over areas where Iraqi forces were once unwelcome. The strategy has won Maliki admiration from Sunni politicians and from U.S. and British officials, who credit him with exerting some of the political will necessary to achieve reconciliation."
The Democrats' strategy in the 2006 mid-term elections was to focus their criticisms of the entire GOP on two things: corruption and the mess Iraq was turning out to be. On the corruption front, with the help of names such as Jack Abrahamoff, Mark Foley, Nancy Pelosi, and her merry band of equally-indicted Democrats effectively made the case that Republicans had to go and picked up seats in both Houses and momentum for 2008's presidential election.
The other crutch leaned on by liberals, really since 2004, and even by vocal, initial proponents of the war such as Senators John Edwards, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, has been that Iraq = Vietnam.
When the military "surge" implemented by President Bush began to succeed, and both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testified under oath that things continuing to get better in Iraq politically were directly dependent on the continued strides American and Iraqi forces were taking militarily. It was then that Democrats did what they always do: move the end-zone. Suddenly all anyone with a "D" in front of their name cared about was that an Iraqi parliament, under intense sectarian pressure and threat to their own lives, be forced to work quicker and with more success than our own governing bodies in America do.
Somehow Democrats found time from their busy schedule of raising our taxes and increasing their own salaries for doing so to learn, internalize, and understand the inner-workings of Iraqi politics better than Iraqi politicians and on-the-ground American commanders. Everyone on the Left, from Barack Obama to former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, has agreed: "There is no military solution in Iraq."
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2008 R.J. Moeller, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, May 22, 2008
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You are correct that the Democrats are probably using the war in Iraq as a means to win the Whitehouse. 2/3s of the public are done with this war. Obama will probably win about 60% of the popular vote but about 70% of the electoral college. And there was nothing the Republicans could have done about it.
Americans have a short attention span. They liked Grenada and Panama because those were quick wins. The key words are "quick" and "win". Iraq is neither. The surge was slow in coming. I'd be more enthusiastic if the surge was the first step in bringing our boys home. Unfortunately the surge is viewed as a step in a permanent presence, like in Germany and Korea.
The recent Strategic Force Agreement that the executive branch is negotiation with Iraq is tantemount to a weak treaty linking the USA to Iraq for the indefinite future. It's the arrogance of the administration which is causing independents to consider the Democrats.
Continuing resolutions costing $200 billion per year fueled the rise of Ron Paul. You're seeing fiscal conservatives joining with the social liberals in stopping the insanity in the Middle East. This seven-year incursion in Iraq will be forgotten by history like the Spanish-American war a century ago. We're already forgetting the 4,000 dead Americans, and a few thousand more over the next five years. It's so sad.
The Democrats and Republicans are jockeying around, trying to get their candidates elected. The rest of us are trying to pay our bills, going to work every day.
When I'm paying $4 for a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas, I don't see terrorism. I see a weak dollar and I'll blame whoever is in charge. You're hearing anger and disappointment. I don't care to hear about another Shee-ite or Sunny or Cher.
I like Donald Trump's idea of giving our veterans a big parade: declare a victory and come home. Mission Accomplished!
I genuinely appreciate your comments and thoughtful insights. I hear what you are saying and must admit I dont disagree with much of what you had to say. My allegiance isn't to the GOP. I am a Christian-American-Conservative-Cubs Fan who happens to agree 6 or 7 out of 10 with the Republican Party on major issues as compared to 2 oe 3 out of 10 with Democrats (liberals, specifically). When it comes time to vote I will assess which candidate is most qualified, most aligned with my view of the world, and most willing to embrace (and succeed in) the role that is most important for a President: Commander-in-Chief.
We will not be forgetting this war any time soon. If we are forgetting the troops who have been wounded or killed in action it is no one's fault but our own. The selfishness and self-absorption of the typical American voter is staggering, and I myself am guilty of those things as well. The issue of Iraq is complicated. I believe in our mission (to depose Saddam and establish some semlance of a democracy in a part of the world that has known nothing of it). I know things arent as simple as either side in this debate can make it. There are real lives, real troops, and real families involved.
The costs in $ and human lives are a great burden to this society. Things have not been handled as well as they could have in Iraq. Then again, things weren't handled as well as they could have in any military conflict our nation has engaged in since the Boston Massacre. The point here and now must be this: our soldiers and our already disparaged reputation in the world are on the line half way around the world in a country that is in fact taking a turn for the better in terms of military and political stability. I care more about our soliders than our reputation, but if we leave now, if we abandon these Iraqis to whatever fate the insurgents would resign them to, if we encourage and further embolden renegade nations such as Iran, then we will be committing what I believe would be a catastrophic error in judgment that we might never overcome or live down. Bin Laden points to Viet Nam as a reason why his band of less-than-merry cave-dwelling men should carry on the good fight against our Paper Tiger of a country. Some might see that point as subtle and dismiss it readily, but I do not precisely because THEY DO NOT.
I dont claim to have the all the answers. What I do know is that neither of the Democrats running for the most important office in the land are qualified, nor are either of them serious about doing much else other than to raise my taxes, annex Big Oil and Pharmacuetical in to Big Brother's fold, nationalize health care, and cripple our economy further with Socialistic fiscal policies. Bush wasn't perfect, and neither will McCain be....but the answer is not to throw the baby out with the bath water by either refusing to vote or worse still voting for Obama or Clinton. The best way we can make a move back to the kind of country I want, and it sounds like you want, is to begin more and more grass-roots efforts in (for lack of a better term) indoctrinating our kids and young adults with the realities of American history, free market economics,constitutional scholarship,and the republican (small r) ideals of Jefferson that combined personal responsbility with civic duty.
Anyway, I dont mean to preach. I'd love to hear more from you on these matters. More than anything, I wrote this piece primarily to bring some light to the fact that there are striking improvements in Iraq, and even though the mainstream media will spin it as simply some heroic effort by the Iraqis that perservered despite in the blundering Americans....but we should all know and honor the sacrifice made by our troops and our people to enable the gains such as described in the article from the Washington POst i linked to.
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2008 R.J. Moeller, all rights reserved.
