The headlines appeared in peculiar juxtaposition. “Pelosi calls Iraq a failure…surge was a bust” was immediately followed by “al Qaeda in Iraq in ‘total collapse’ say seized letters.” You’ve got to love Matt Drudge’s sense of irony.
Of course, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was not the first to declare defeat in Iraq, a distinction belonging to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Last April 19th, with American troops fighting and dying in battle, Senator Reid proclaimed, “I believe…this war is lost.” Like Pelosi, Reid declared the surge a failure, even though less than half of the surge troops had been deployed when Reid hoisted the white flag.
Nor did Speaker Pelosi equate American fighting personnel with Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, a patriotic tip-of-the-hat to our troops from Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.
Nor did Ms. Pelosi accuse our soldiers and Marines of ”terrorizing Iraqi women and children.” That gem belongs to Democratic Senator John Kerry. Gee, no wonder Democrats are so proud of their leaders.
Today, Nancy Pelosi might be the only person on the planet claiming the surge has failed, an assessment bordering on insanity were it not for the odious political overtones. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer challenged the Speaker’s eagerness to withdraw American forces from Iraq by asking the obvious, “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?” Wolf struck a nerve, as Pelosi’s response edged toward hysteria: “There haven’t been gains, Wolf…This is a failure. This is a failure.” Maybe the Speaker should switch to decaf and watch the evening news.
Of course, American forces have made fantastic, unexpected progress in Iraq since Harry Reid’s ill-advised allegation of defeat, something everyone but our gal Speaker has acknowledged. Over six months ago, two self-described Bush administration critics submitted a glowing report of “significant changes” in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack wrote on July 30, 2007 “Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq…we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce…a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”
Iraqis have reported astonishing success in breaking al Qaeda’s hold in large areas of the country. According to the AP this past December 29th, “Iraq’s interior ministry spokesman said…that 75 percent of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s terrorist network had been destroyed this year.” (Emphasis added)
Even the defeatist Harry Reid has acknowledged “the surge certainly hasn’t hurt. It’s helped. I recognize that.” Perhaps Harry should call Nancy and give her the good news.
The U.S. military has filed numerous reports detailing across-the-board progress in the war. Bombings are down, Iraqi and American casualties are down, neighborhoods that were formerly terrorist strongholds have been cleared, over a million Iraqis have returned home, and some 80,000 Sunnis, many formerly allied with terror networks, “have joined tribal groups of ‘concerned local citizens’ [CLCs] that have helped eject al-Qaeda from swaths of western and northern Iraq, including much of Baghdad,” according to The Times (of London) online. American military leaders on the ground in Iraq believe we have dealt “devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in recent months.”
Perhaps the best news, progress Nancy Pelosi specifically denied, was reported by the AP just eight days ago. “Iraq’s presidency council issued a law Sunday [Feb 3, 2008] that will allow thousands of Saddam Hussein-era officials to return to government jobs, legislation viewed by the Bush administration as central to mending deep fissures between minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds and the majority Shiites who now wield power.” The overwhelming majority of Iraqis have finally figured out their real enemies are al-Qaeda and disunity. The ultimate serendipity in all this is that Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds are banding with each other and the U.S. military to rid Iraq of all terrorists, especially al-Qaeda.
American forces have captured documents — the “seized letters” noted in our first paragraph – revealing the near total collapse of al-Qaeda in recent months. Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis,” says one terror leader in Anbar province. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight,” according to published excerpts of the letter. In another intercepted letter written last October by an al-Qaeda leader operating just north of Baghdad, the dejected terrorist “describes how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.” The Anbar letter conceded “that the ‘crusaders’ — Americans — had gained the upper hand…”
Of course, the real fly in this ointment is that Nancy Pelosi knows all of the above and more, a damming reality in light of her statements yesterday on CNN. She is lying about the state of the war, in better times an impeachable offense. Today, her poll numbers will probably rise.
The unvarnished truth is that victory in Iraq is bad news for Democrats, as House Majority Whip James Clyburn affirmed in a moment of candor he no doubt now regrets. Asked to comment, last July, on the possibility that General Petraeus might submit a better-than-expected report on the Iraq war, Democratic Representative Clyburn “said that would be ‘a real big problem for us,’” according to the Washington Post. Clyburn’s and Pelosi’s sentiments are of a piece. Good news from the war front helps Republicans, and we can’t have that! Better to sacrifice the country’s vital interests than to risk losing political ground.
For the first time in American history, an entire political party is committed to military defeat for the purpose of political gain. A precipitous withdrawal of American forces, advocated by all current Democratic presidential candidates and congressional leaders, will be catastrophic for Iraq, the middle-east, and America. If the situation in Iraq is tenuous now, with 160,000 American troops present in Iraq, the sudden pull-out of those forces will lead to terrorist, sectarian, and religious strife on a grand scale, almost certainly resulting in the creation of a radical Islamic state heck-bent on America’s destruction. The Democrats’ willingness to risk such an outcome in exchange for political advancement reveals their baseless character and raw desire for power. Those who would elect them would do well to think long and hard about what they are choosing.
Not one Democrat has described a vision of Iraq without American support, an omission that should open the eyes of Americans who naively believe exiting Iraq will end the war. An al-Qaeda victory in Iraq will lead to the selfsame unending war Pelosi and others so often decry, as a radicalized Iraq serves as base for campaign after campaign against America and her allies. Never again will an Arab or Persian country trust our resolve. Neither winning nor losing in Iraq will end the war on terror, but winning will make the rest of the struggle much easier.
As it stands now, the limits of terrorist power and bankruptcy of al-Qaeda’s mission are exposed. Now is the time to apply overwhelming force to seal the deal in Iraq. Sudden victory will prove less expensive than protracted conflict. John McCain and the Republican Party can and will successfully resolve the Iraq War, lessening the intensity and cost of what in any case will be an ongoing battle. The Democrats have testified to their own irresponsible self-promotion. They cannot be trusted to lead America in perilous times.
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Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Politics, Video, War in Iraq