There’s good news from Iraq, which has produced almost nothing but bad news since the 2003 invasion. The U.S. military surge, widely denounced as a last-ditch effort by an embattled, lame-duck president fighting an un-winnable civil war, is working. Even as vocal a war critic as Deputy Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has now acknowledged as much, telling CNN that the U.S. military is “making real progress.”Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multi-national force in Iraq and author of the counterinsurgency surge strategy now underway, told Talk Radio host Allen Colmes that during the past seven weeks, U.S. troops have inflicted “enormous damage” on al Qaeda forces in Iraq, causing three times the losses sustained by coalition forces. Petraeus added that al Qaeda in Iraq, which is responsible for most of the high-profile car bombings and suicide attacks, has been “clearly linked to the... al Qaeda senior leadership, located in the Pakistan Afghanistan border trial areas.” In other words, beating al Qaeda in Iraq is clearly a serious blow to Osama bin Laden wherever he is hiding.
The surge is also having a positive impact on Iraq’s political equation, according to Petraeus: “We’re also heartened by the number of Iraqi tribes and local citizens who have rejected al Qaeda. We cannot attribute that to the surge but the surge certainly enabled that to move much more rapidly, we believe, than it otherwise would have.”
Military and political progress is heartening but with it comes a critical decision for war critics, especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, who declared the war lost months ago, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last week pledged to continue seeking withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Public support for the war effort has been growing in recent weeks and the expected positive report from Petraeus to Congress in mid-September will likely generate additional support for giving victory a chance. In other words, the political ground on which Reid and Pelosi are standing is shifting beneath them. Do they now really want to bring our boys home just when they are poised to win?
This is not the time to let arm-chair generals on Capitol Hill second-guess Petraeus by demanding arbitrary withdrawal dates, abruptly cutting off funding for the counterinsurgency, or interfering with his military decisions. If true bipartisanship was ever needed in Washington, it’s now — while our nation is engaged in a military struggle with a dangerous, determined enemy. (Washington Examiner editorial, August 9)
