Democrats fumed last week at Vice President Cheney's suggestion1 that criticism of the administration's war policies was itself becoming a hindrance to the war effort. But a new poll indicates most Americans are sympathetic to Cheney's point.Since the most ardent hand-wringers supported the war before they opposed it, why are leftists whining?:
Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale.2
The big donors on the left want the Democrats in Congress to demand that we abandon Iraq. Most Democratic politicians aren't ready to go that far because the American public won't support what the surrender option. Some of these politicians don't want to surrender either. Others do, but are too gutless to say so, just as they were too gutless to oppose the war initially. So they attempt to pacify the left-wing base by carping about the decision to go to war, thereby avoiding the more relevant conversation about what to do going forward.I agree with Peter Verkooijen's analysis: "What the Democratic party fears most is that the Bush agenda is succeeding. They desperately need to turn this into another Vietnam before it's too late." So, despite near-uniform negativity in the MSM, is "Operation Iraqi Freedom" working? Is democracy flowering (or about to) elsewhere in the mid-East?
This carping serves another small purpose -- it purports to exonerate the gutless Democrats who sent our soldiers to a war they didn't really want. Although in reality they voted for the war for political purposes, by claiming that the Bush administration withheld intelligence, they can shift the blame for their cynical votes.
Professor, criminologist, economist, political analyst and 2003 Medal of Freedom recipient James Q. Wilson says "yes":
Iraq has held free elections in which millions of people voted. A new, democratic constitution has been adopted that contains an extensive bill of rights. Discrimination on the basis of sex, religion or politics is banned. Soon the Iraqis will be electing their first parliament.Iraqis are optimistic--far more so than U.S. lefties or anti-Bush (i.e., most) journalists, as Strategy Page's James Dunnigan repeatedly has observed:
An independent judiciary exists, almost all public schools are open, every hospital is functioning, and oil sales have increased sharply. In most parts of the country, people move about freely and safely.
According to surveys, Iraqis are overwhelmingly opposed to the use of violence to achieve political ends, and the great majority believe that their lives will improve in the future. The Iraqi economy is growing very rapidly, much more rapidly than the inflation rate.
In some places, the terrorists who lost the war are now fighting back by killing Iraqi civilians. Some brave American soldiers have also been killed, but most of the attacks are directed at decent, honest Iraqis. This is not a civil war; it is terrorism gone mad.
And the terrorists have failed. They could not stop free elections. They could not prevent Iraqi leaders from taking office. They could not close the schools or hospitals. They could not prevent the emergence of a vigorous free press that now involves over 170 newspapers that represent every shade of opinion.
Terrorist leaders such as Zarqawi have lost. Most Sunni leaders, whom Zarqawi was hoping to mobilize, have rejected his call to defeat any constitution. The Muslims in his hometown in Jordan have denounced him. Despite his murderous efforts, candidates representing every legitimate point of view and every ethnic background are competing for office in the new Iraqi government.
The fighting in Iraq is constantly misreported as an “insurgency,” evoking images of Vietnam or World War II guerillas. In actuality, the fighting is the attempt by Saddam’s enforcers to hold off their encounter with a democratic Iraq’s application of punishments for past crimes. Saddam’s army was defeated, but his secret police and enforcers went home and kept fighting. Saddam’s people believe that they have a choice between getting back control of the country, or suffering prison, or worse, for old sins. But for complex political reasons, the media lovingly depicts these murderous thugs as brave freedom fighters. It’s generally ignored that nearly all the violence is occurring in areas dominated by Sunni Arabs, who are but 20 percent of the population. Kurdish and Shia Arab areas are quiet. Calling this fighting a civil war is being generous, as one could make a case for it simply being a case of organized crime writ large. It’s gangbusters, not guerillas. . .Max Boot agrees:
[But f]ew reporters in Iraq speak Arabic, or know much about Iraqi history or how military operations work. This means much reporting is flawed and misleading. To make matters worse, news editors outside Iraq often decide what stories to pursue, more concerned with what they, or the audience back home, wants to see, rather than what is actually happening in Iraq.
When it comes to the future of Iraq, there is a deep disconnect between those who have firsthand knowledge of the situation — Iraqis and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq — and those whose impressions are shaped by doomsday press coverage and the imperatives of domestic politics. . .(The IRI poll of November 11th shows 49 % "right direction" compared to 36 % "wrong direction.")
Yet in a survey last month from the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, 47% of Iraqis polled said their country was headed in the right direction, as opposed to 37% who said they thought that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56% thought things would be better in six months. Only 16% thought they would be worse.
As Publius Pundit's Kirk Sowell explains, the recently concluded Cairo conference on Iraqi "national reconciliation" -- attended by Kurds, Sunnis and Shias -- provides new evidence the Iraqi government and major interest groups side with the U.S./U.K. coalition; the conference:
rejected wording sought by Sunnis which would have explicitly sanctioned “resistance… in the shadow of the occupation.” Moreover, statements from leading Shia officials made clear that they interpreted the Iraqi “resistance” to be the current government and its fight against the insurgents. . .Indeed, looking at the mid-East as a whole, even long-standing pessimists are optimistic, according to the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland:
Prime Minister Jaafari . . . mocked insurgents who called themselves “resistance” by asking rhetorically “where was this resistance” during the time of Saddam Hussein? “The resistance, they are now the leaders of the country.” This last statement was a veiled reference to the fact that Jaafari’s group had opposed Saddam and had been forced to leave the country, suggesting that they, once in resistance outside, had now returned to lead.
In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak -- who once told an American diplomat that democratic reforms were a good concept but would not happen while he ruled -- is haltingly and spitefully letting his system become more open as pressure for democratic change spreads in other Arab lands.And, mirabile dictu -- thanks to the unfairly scorned John Bolton -- even the UN shows promise: for the first time, the UN condemned Hizbullah:
A significant terrorist attack in Israel or a sudden whim by Egypt's aging autocrat could stymie the reversals I cite. Yes, it is still the Middle East.
"But it is a Middle East in which those who believe in democracy and civil society are finally actors, even though we still face big obstacles," says Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt's battle-scarred democratic activist.
Ibrahim originally opposed the invasion of Iraq. But it "has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be the midwives," Ibrahim told me in Washington.
Egypt has allowed nongovernmental organizations to monitor local elections this month, and it is permitting more freedom of expression in a handful of independent newspapers recently established there. "The regime still cheats in elections but less than before," said Ibrahim, to explain his relative optimism.
Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday's Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.And on the homefront? Ignore the Dems; listen to Jane Kenny, in her letter to the editor of USA Today:
This condemnation - slamming Hizbullah by name for "acts of hatred" - marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.
When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: "John Bolton," a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.
Why hasn't this country been attacked since 9/11? Think about it: It has been four years. It sure looks like President Bush's war strategy — "the best defense is a good offense" — is very effective ("American attitudes on Iraq similar to those in Vietnam," Cover story, News, Wednesday).While the left's still locked into mid-East "mirror imaging", reflexive pro-Frogism, biasing High Schoolers against Bush, fuzzy math and forging alliances with space aliens, the President's doing well to stay the course. Call it a "B+".
There's one thing we have to give Bush credit for: He's consistent. The president has maintained that we will stay the course, continue to pursue the terrorists and defeat them across the globe so we won't have to fight them here.
The president's critics need to look at the big picture. Bush has the ultimate responsibility to protect the homeland, and on that issue he is consistent, unwavering and courageous — even when his popularity ebbs in the polls and the press continues to pound him.
More:
Today's Christian Science Monitor:
[T]he Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies.The November 26th Economist:
Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.
Every reasonable person should be able to agree on two things about America's presence in Iraq. First, if the Iraqi government formally asks the troops to leave, they should do so. Second, the argument about whether America should quit Iraq is not the same as the one about whether it should have gone there in the first place. It must be about the future.Still More:
Mary Laney in the Chicago Sun-Times:
[H]ere we get all the static, all the talking heads, and all the theories of what's happening over there. We hear politics instead of facts. We get editorials in place of reports. We have Congress tied up with some politicians making threats and insisting that we set a date to withdraw our troops or withdraw our troops immediately. We hear them making accusations that President Bush lied when he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- even though former President Bill Clinton said the same thing when he was in office, as did others in his party who now seem to be suffering from an acute case of amnesia regarding the recent past.More x More x More:
The supreme ayatollah of Iran is urging a speedy pullout of foreign troops from Iraq. Now, if former President Jimmy Carter were still in the White House, perhaps that would happen.
SGT Ron Long:
If you want to know if progress is being made in Iraq, I can tell you, "YES." As the Medic on the MTT (Military Training Team), I was personally involved in the training of hundreds of Iraqi Army troops (and some Iraqi Police).More Still:
The vast majority of the Iraqi Security Forces that we trained are dedicated and want to learn as much as they can so that they can soon take over the security and stability of their new, free nation. This process takes time though, a fact that some people cannot understand. They cannot just transform overnight. It will take months and even years to do this.
SGT Walter J. Rausch, 1st Platoon, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault):
You need not to have a great understanding of the world but rather common sense to realize that it is our duty as HUMAN BEINGS to free the oppressed. If you lived that way would you not want someone to help you????Interesting analysis by Alaa at the Messopotamian:
The Iraqi’s pour into the streets to wave at us and when we liberated the cities during the war they gathered in the thousands to cheer, hug and kiss us. It was what the soldier’s in WW2 experienced, yet no one questioned their cause!! Saddam was no better than Hitler! He tortured and killed thousands of innocent people. We are heroes over here, yet American’s badmouth our President for having us here.
Every police station here has a dozen or more memorials for officers that were murdered trying to ensure that their people live free. These are husbands, fathers, and sons killed every day. What if it were your country? What would your choice be? Everything we fight for is worth the blood that may be shed. The media never reports the true HEROISM I witness everyday in the Iraqi’s. Yes there are bad one’s here, but I assure you they are a minuscule percent.
[T]he fury of the Arabs and other Moslems against the Americans is not because they invaded and occupied Iraq, but because as a result of this action and the fall of the Saddam regime, the Shiaas have become liberated and acquired a louder voice. This by the way is also the main factor fanning the “insurrection” and terrorism in Iraq, a fact which is publicly proclaimed by people like Zarqawi. Thus the development of representative democracy with the Iraqi Sunnis taking their rightful place is the real antidote to these stupid prejudices. This is the hope of all patriotic Iraqis of all sects and the final happy outcome that we are all praying and working for.__________________
1 Assuming anyone watching CNN could identify Vice President Cheney.
2 Commenting on LGF, photo-blogger Zombie digs deeper:
[T]he pdf file of the actual poll results . . . says that 70% thought the Dems were hurting morale, 13% thought they were helping morale, and 17% refused to answer. How much do you want to bet that a large percentage of that 17% were far lefties who were insulted by the question, that their whole point was to hurt morale, but they didn't want to say that to the pollster?(via LGF, Instapundit, MaxedOutMama, Joe's Dartblog, Protein Wisdom, SC&A and The Anchoress)
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