Why We Are Finally Winning in Iraq

Anbar's citizens needed protection from Democrat threats of premature withdrawal before they would give over their "hearts and minds."

Writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal, Frederick W. Kagan reflects that "Many politicians and pundits in Washington have ignored perhaps the most important point made by Gen. David Petraeus in his recent congressional testimony: The defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq requires a combination of conventional forces, special forces and local forces. This realization has profound implications not only for American strategy in Iraq, but also for the future of the war on terror."

Gen. Petraeus made clear, the adoption of a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in January 2007 has led to unprecedented progress in the struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq, by protecting Sunni Arabs who reject the terrorists among them from the vicious retribution of those terrorists.

[...]

Yet despite the undeniable successes the new strategy has achieved against al Qaeda in Iraq, many in Congress are still pushing to change the mission of U.S. forces back to a counterterrorism role relying on special forces and precision munitions to conduct targeted attacks on terrorist leaders. This change would bring us back to the traditional, consensus strategy for dealing with cellular terrorist groups like al Qaeda--a strategy that has consistently failed in Iraq.

Kagan asks what lessons does this example hold for future fights in the War on Terror?

He says defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires continuing an effective counterinsurgency strategy that involves American conventional forces helping Iraqi Security Forces to protect the population in conjunction with targeted strikes. Reverting to a strategy relying only on targeted raids will allow al Qaeda to re-establish itself in Iraq and begin once again to gain strength.

But 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.

Dem Candiates Backtrack on Iraq

Hillary did it Sunday. Now the rest of the major Democrat presidential contenders fall in line.

AP reports the leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013:

"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state.

"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

It's been the dirty little secret since they started campaigning: if they win the White House in 08', Democrats have no intention of leaving Iraq.

It's further proof that all of the politicking against the war has just been for the sake of politics. While it would be desirable to saddle Republicans with defeat in Iraq, there is no way Democrats want that dishonor for themselves.

And the nutroots? They just continue on their slimy backslide to netmoots irrelevance. Eh, by-the-way, where is Ned Lamont now?

Democrat Plan Uses Climate Change as Excuse to Raise Taxes

From AP via The Washington Post:

"I'm trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it's going to have a measure of pain that you're not going to like," Rep. John Dingell, who is marking his 52nd year in Congress, said Wednesday.

[...]

• A 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased in over five years, on top of existing taxes.


• A tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.


• Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.

A $.50 a gallon tax on gas?!?!

A $50 a ton tax on hot air (watch out Al Gore)!?!

Increased taxes for on larger houses, usually owned to house large families (like John Edwards')!?!

This tax plan is a perfect example of how Democrats use taxes to control citizens and not to fund the government.

Keep it in mind: tax cuts raise revenue for the government; tax increases raise the level of control the government has over the population.

Where Pundits Get it Wrong on GOP Candiates

Headline, The Politico:

Evangelicals turn on Thompson

Fred Thompson is failing to meet expectations that he would rally widespread support from Christian conservatives, and he almost certainly will not receive a joint endorsement from the loose coalition of "pro-family" organizations, according to leaders of the movement.

Here's the thing, Republican presidential candidates don't really have to concern themselves with punditry nitpicks about their moral platforms.

This is not to ignore the fact that the main difference between the GOP and the DNC is that Republicans actually have morals and Democrats do not. When Republicans fails to live up to their code, they are branded as hypocrites. When Democrats fail to live down their code, they are branded as acting like Republicans.

It is, in the end, simply this: attempts to show a GOP divide are mostly moot when the Democrat candidate is Hillary and a whole slew of Americans will probably vote for a Republican, nay any Republican, just so they won't have to endure four more years of Clinton foolishness.

Democrat Baird Trashed for Speaking the Truth

From The Politico:

A month after Baird, a Democrat from Washington state, switched his views on Iraq and embraced President Bush’s surge strategy, he remains persona non grata in many circles.

[...]

At home, he is besieged by angry protesters and hostile ads.

In the Capitol, many of his colleagues are still smarting over his turnaround, charging that it gave fodder to Republicans and undermined the Democrats’ momentum to force a troop withdrawal.

For the sake of the truth, Baird remains unapologetic.

Recently, Baird was quoted as saying:

"We are making real and tangible progress on the ground, for one," Baird said, "and if we withdraw, it could have a potentially catastrophic effect on the region."

[...]

"If you have some guarantee of support, you have working space to reach out and involve the other side. If you think we are going to withdraw and chaos and civil war might ensue, then the decision is different."

The informed thinking on the ground in Iraq was best summed up by New York Times' Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent John Burns:

"[The] threats from Washington about a withdrawal, which we might have hoped would have brought about greater political cooperation in face of the threat that would ensue from that to the entire political establishment here, has had, as best we can gauge it, much more the opposite effect, of an effect that persuading people well, if the Americans are going [to leave Iraq], there’s absolutely no…and we’re going to have to settle this by a civil war, why should we make concessions on that matter right now?"

Media Buffoons Sup With Terrorist

Effete elitism took yet another weary turn when so many self-absorbed media types "to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly."

From Time.com:

There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

It would be interesting to interject at this point that out of the 50 academics and journalists in attendance, I'll venture not one of them has recently broken bread with a non-family member of the military.

But then again, these self-important media types, along with Congressional Democrats and their puppet-master nut-root, net-moots have more Bush hating talking-points in common with Ahmadinejad than they do with responsible Americans.

CBS Anchor-hag Busts on Iraq and Hops on Dan

If we are to measure Katie Couric's authority by her Nielsen ratings we would have a very low measure indeed.

From the examiner.com:

Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather.

“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, adding that it is “pretty much accepted” that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

[...]

Couric referenced comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday’s “The Charlie Rose Show,” and said she actually agreed with Ahmadinejad on one point. “Oftentimes Westerners don’t really understand fully the values of this particular culture.”

So, when Katie busts on the U.S. mission in Iraq, agrees with a tyrant, and hops on Dan's Rathergate bus what are we to think?

We think of her opinions the same way millions of other Americans have when they decided a morning talk show host simply didn't have the credentials or authority needed to anchor the evening news.

The Surge Succedes

Writing at The American Thinker, J.R. Dunn says of the benefits of Petreaus-Crocker hearings is the way they've cleared up the poisonous defeatism and futility that settled over the topic of Iraq since the beginning of this year.

Much of this was produced by MoveOn, the media, and advantage-hunting Democratic pols, but it was also implicit in a lot of commentary from the war's supporters as well. (e.g., the habit of ending each announcement of good news with some line such as, "of course, there's a long way to go" or "we've still got a hard road ahead". This solecism is common among everyone from W on down, and amounts to jabbing a nail in your own tire.)

Dunn continues, saying the danger with chronic pessimism is that it often acts as self-fulfilling prophecy. Where optimism, be it justified or not, may carry you though despite the facts of a situation, an overly bleak assessment by its very nature induces hesitation, second thoughts, and timidity. The war's opponents, both political and journalistic are well aware of this.

The critics of surge looked at it as an end-game, something of a last-ditch effort. No one ever considered that it might represent a new beginning. The ball is now in our court. We have one more chance to shake the Middle East out of its medievalism into something more acceptable to 21st century global civilization.

Read it.

Nut Roots or Net Moots, Blogger Files Complaint Over Giuliani Ad

The Politico is reporting that a liberal blogger has filed a complaint against Rudy Giuliani, claiming he broke election laws by accepting a discounted ad rate from The New York Times.

Lane Hudson, who in recent weeks has sought to carve out a niche as something of election law vigilante, alleges in a complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission that the Giuliani campaign broke election laws by accepting a discounted ad rate from The New York Times.

It seems Hudson has ignored one little detail: The Times charges one rate for customers seeking a guarantee their ads will run on a specific date, and a lower rate for customers whose ads run “standby,” meaning they can request a certain date, but aren’t promised it.

Rudy's ad was on "standby." Thus, Giuliani paid the going rate for the ad.

I guess there's no election law against being an idiot blogger (yet).

Ken Burns' "The War"

With "The War," Ken Burns wanted to tell the story of World War II through the eyes of soldiers and their families from four American towns.

Reuters reports the premiere of Ken Burns' new documentary series "The War" brought in 7.3 million viewers Sunday night, PBS said.

"We met a guy from Laverne, Minnesota... whose first day of work was June 6, 1944... for the next 10 months, he dealt out death, nearly lost his own life... lost good friends, who still haunt his dreams every single night, who came close to despair... because we're not distracted by other stuff that gets in the way, you sort of feel like the experience that they had, you're having - we put you, because of our research, with the still photographic and newsreel research that we've done - sort of in the midst of 20 or 30 battles, that I think you experience uncomfortably."

The PBS Web site for The War.

Related medai sources: CNN Entertainment.