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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory


I tried Googling the words, “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”. I got lots of references for, “snatch victory from the jaws of defeat”, but very few for the former. I guess, if we let the Democrats do it in Iraq, it will be one of the few times in history that a nation will, in fact, “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.

If you think that that is impossible, think back to the mid 1970’s when we were close to negotiating an honorable treaty with the North Vietnamese, and a Democrat Congress pulled the rug out from American negotiators and the South Vietnamese forces by shutting off all funds.

From the memoirs of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military leader of North Vietnam:

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!"

February 22, 2008 RealClearPolitics
Democrats Dug In For Retreat
By Charles Krauthammer

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. ... If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government -- in security, governance, and development -- there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state." -- Anthony Cordesman, "The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing from the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008

WASHINGTON -- This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006 Cordesman had written that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good." Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago.

Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq." Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

We get news of the Anbar Awakening, which has now spread to other Sunni areas and Baghdad. The sectarian civil strife that the Democrats insisted was the reason for us to leave dwindles to the point of near disappearance. Much of Baghdad is returning to normal. There are 90,000 neighborhood volunteers -- ordinary citizens who act as auxiliary police and vital informants on terror activity -- starkly symbolizing the insurgency's loss of popular support. Captured letters of al-Qaeda leaders reveal despair as they are driven -- mostly by Iraqi Sunnis, their own Arab co-religionists -- to flight and into hiding.

After agonizing years of searching for the right strategy and the right general, we are winning. How do Democrats react? From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama the talking point is the same: Sure, there is military progress. We could have predicted that.

(They in fact had predicted the opposite, but no matter.) But it's all pointless unless you get national reconciliation.

"National" is a way to ignore what is taking place at the local and provincial level, such as Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, scion of the family that dominates the largest Shiite party in Iraq, traveling last October to Anbar in an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation with the Sunni sheiks.

Doesn't count, you see. Democrats demand nothing less than federal-level reconciliation, and it has to be expressed in actual legislation.

The objection was not only highly legalistic but politically convenient: Very few (including me) thought this would be possible under the Maliki government. Then last week, indeed on the day Cordesman published his report, it happened. Mirabile dictu, the Iraqi parliament approved three very significant pieces of legislation.

First, a provincial powers law that turned Iraq into arguably the most federal state in the entire Arab world. The provinces get not only power but elections by Oct. 1. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has long been calling this the most crucial step to political stability. It will allow, for example, the pro-American Anbar sheiks to become the legitimate rulers of their province, exercise regional autonomy and forge official relations with the Shiite-dominated central government.

Second, parliament passed a partial amnesty for prisoners, 80 percent of whom are Sunni. Finally, it approved a $48 billion national budget that allocates government revenues -- about 85 percent of which are from oil -- to the provinces. Kurdistan, for example, gets one-sixth.

What will the Democrats say now? They will complain that there is still no oil distribution law. True. But oil revenues are being distributed to the provinces in the national budget. The fact that parliament could not agree on a permanent formula for the future simply means that it will be allocating oil revenues year-by-year as part of the budget process. Is that a reason to abandon Iraq to al-Qaeda and Iran?

Despite all the progress military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now achievable victory?

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5 Comments:

At 9:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Democrats are suckers for punishment. They love to cut off their nose to spite their face. Give them a loaded gun, and they'll shoot themselves in the foot every single time. Some of the people in this country are either too blind or stupid to see these hacks for what they really are,-- and that's political hacks. It all boils down to one thing and that is; People are ignorant of American history, and they're too wrapped up in their own lives to pay attention to what is going on around them. They've grown too used to being lied to, and indoctrinated by the Liberal elite media. They are satisfied with being led by their nose. I've gotten to a point that when I hear these Democrats spouting off on TV, I switch the channel immediately. Their rhetoric is just plain boring!

 
At 3:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

In a democracy, governments are elected to fulfill the will of the people. Congress cut off funding for the Viet Nam War because the people were fed up with the loss of American lives there and had elected as their representatives politicians who believed as they did. Subsequent events have proved them right. The domino theory did not come to fruition and we now trade with, have normal relations with, and regularly exchange visits with the Vietnamese.

The same thing is happening in Iraq. Polls show that the majority of Americans want the U.S. out of Iraq. The surge may be buying us some time, but no one is suggesting that Iraq will have a stable government anytime soon. Indeed, Senator McCain has said that we may be there for 100 years. If the American people choose not to endure that kind of extended presence and require a withdrawal, a responsible and responsive government should acquiesce to their will and remove our troops. The real crime would not be in withdrawing, but in having invaded under false pretenses, in the first place.

Bud

 
At 9:13 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I support the war against terrorism and I do want our success in both Iraq and Afghanistan...even if that success comes incrementally. However, from my perspective much of the recent surge is winning is just rhetoric. A large portion of the "success" comes because the Shia and Sunni succeeded in total segregation of each individual neighborhood. The reason they are not killing each other is because they now occupy separate areas. Nobody talks about that little detail.

 
At 9:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And speaking of snatching defeat from victory, I think both Rudy and Hillary are great recent examples.

 
At 9:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bud,
You're out of touch with reality. Jack Kennedy a Democrat, got us into the Vietnam War and we would have won that war had we stayed in it a little while longer. We had them and they were getting worn down to a point that they were ready to capitulate. One of their Generals has told us this, but Nooooo, the Democrats refused to fund that war just when we were about to win it and they pulled the rug right out from under our boys. To add insult to injury; when our men and women finally did come home from that war, you Liberals treated them like they were dirt!

 

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