The Democrats – and lots of others – are howling for a withdrawal plan from Iraq. Bring our troops home now, is the chorus from the left. And, under tremendous political pressure, as evidenced by the results of the November elections, a growing number of politicians are starting to sing from the Pelosi-Murtha-Reid hymnal.
Lost in all of the serious and necessary debate is the distinction between clear disagreement with the direction and nature of the conflict, and those that just hate this President.
Most everyone, including the President, has come to the conclusion that the war in Iraq is far more violent, longer, more costly in lives and dollars, bloodier, and more complex that most anyone envisioned or expected. While much of the country is stable and in control of Iraqi security forces, Anbar province and Baghdad remain extremely violent with no clear solution in site. Roughly 1/3 of the entire population of Iraq is in, or near Baghdad. Imagine if 100 million Americans lived in lawlessness with no expectation of economic or political stability.
So, with disagreement from many (perhaps a significant majority) in Congress, clearly a large portion of the media in opposition to him, and a continually growing dissatisfaction with the general population, President Bush is faced with still being the only Commander-in-Chief. Congress can – and has – bellowed a lot about cutting off funding, or passing meaningless resolutions, but despite the sound bites that make it into the paper, when it comes to waging war, ultimately only the President’s opinion matters. Chain-of-command works in the military, and the President is the top link.
Mistakes have been made. President Bush has said so, and accepted personal responsibility. Acknowledging those mistakes, it is still worth noting that regardless of current personal opinions, America went into Iraq believing that Saddam possessed the capacity and the will to use weapons of mass destruction as he had done in the past. Saddam had thumbed his nose at the UN Security Council’s 17 Resolutions regarding the terms under which the US and the Coalition forces agreed to a cease fire in 1990 to halt Operation Desert Storm throwing UN Inspectors out of Iraq, and blustering to the world of his military might and willingness to use it against America and our allies.
Was intelligence flawed? Yes. But, in the wake of 3000 dead Americans on September 11, we had reason to take his threat seriously.
The good news most certainly is that since that horrible day, America has not suffered another terrorist attack, though many have been thwarted by intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The bad news is we are locked in a conflict that even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Pace, described as one "we're not winning, but we're not loosing either." Unfortunately, in war you can’t play to a tie and just go home. There are only winners and loosers.
The stakes are too great for America to even consider anything but winning -- VICTORY! That seems to escape many of the talking heads in the media, lots of members of Congress concerned about their popularity and electability back home, and a lot of citizens who wish all this would just disappear, and their comfortable life could go on day-after-day uninterrupted.
The problem is that’s not reality. There is an enemy out there that hates us as much or more than King George’s great army did, or Hitler’s Nazis, or the Soviet’s and their communist allies. And, as certain as America’s security and survival was dependant on victory in previous conflicts, the reality is that we find ourselves there again.
By essentially minimizing the threat and ignoring what was happening inside radical Islam, America created our own vulnerability and every day we failed to confront this new incarnation of evil the cost grew greater, the task more complex, and the strategy less clear.
A plethora of opinions and advice have been issued of late. The Iraq Study Group thinks we ought to sit down with two other sworn enemies, Syria and Iran. Maybe with Iraq’s neighbors there is a solution for acceptable retreat, they think. I disagree. Diplomacy is always an open door, but it has to be on our terms, not our enemies. Iran and Syria are fueling and supporting much of the problem in Iraq today, and the only object they have is the defeat of America and corresponding benefit to the spread of Radical Islam that is sworn to bring death to all infidels (that's us).
The ISG fails to account for the victory we would hand to our radical Islamic enemies by crawling on our knees to them. We may just as well wave a white flag. The cause and confidence of the terrorists would grow overnight, and America’s standing in the free-world would forever be shattered.
The ISG fails to account for the impact of leaving Iraq with a job unfinished. As poorly as the effort to establish a functioning, stable government has gone, retreating to our home turf and letting nature take it’s course, will surely result in a strong, bolder, more lethal enemy that will have to be dealt with at a future date, and perhaps on our own soil again.
Many, like the ISG, seem to believe that it is possible to back out gracefully, and that the jihadists will say "thank you very much" and then leave us alone. That opinion is not only wrong, it is suicidal.
When the jihadists ran the Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1988 (interestingly enough with a lot of American help – read “Charlie Wilson’s War”) that victory gave rise to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s network of terrorists. In a recent Washington Times article documenting the results of a recent CIA exercise to determine the impact of defeat in Iraq, Rowan Scarborough wrote that,
"Jihadists perceived the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1988 as a seminal event that spawned the creation of al Qaeda under the direction of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda leaders thought that if jihadists could defeat a global power in one theater, it could bring down governments in other nations.
"Six years later, when U.S. troops left Somalia after taking casualties at the hands of al Qaeda-trained Muslim fighters, it reaffirmed its feeling of invincibility and its belief that Western powers have a low threshold for casualties. After Somalia, al Qaeda -- and like-minded jihadists -- began attacking U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf region and ultimately struck America on September 11, 2001." (Click here to read Scarborough’s entire article)
I'm no military expert, but unlike the vast majority of people, I have been to Iraq twice. I have met with their leadership, our commanders in the field, and numerous members of our rank-and-file – the men and women who are the "boots on the ground."
I'll forever remember the private who first greeted me as we exited the military cargo plane in Baghdad in November of 2003, he grabbed my bag and hurried me inside to safety, and then looked desperately into my eyes and said, "You guys are going to let us stay here and finish this, aren't you?" He wasn't alone in his fear that all of the hard work, sacrifice, and loss of life that they were enduring would end like Vietnam – without Victory, not because America lacked the military superiority, but because America lost her will to fight.
I want our troops to come home, too. But, I want them to come home victorious, having made America and the world more secure. President Bush laid out what might be his last opportunity to make a serious strategic decision to impact the outcome of the war.
The plan he's advanced is reported to be based on the recommendations of General Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. He’s gotten a lot of other advice, too, as opinions aren’t hard to find these days.
The President also recently replaced his top two commanders in Iraq (Casey and Abizaid) and put Gen. David Petraeus in command and named Gen. Ray Odierno as his deputy.
I know both of these men, and believe them to be more than capable of the task in front of them. I first met Gen. Odierno in Kirkuk about a month before his men found and apprehended Saddam. He was the commander of the 4th Infantry Division (with a lot of good Coloradans under his command) that was charged with bringing the Sunni triangle under control, and did a fine job. Among other duties, Petraeus was in charge of Mosul, bringing stability to that volatile region. Both men are intimately familiar with the conflict, the circumstances, the Iraqis, and I believe are up to the task. We owe them our prayers and support, and a chance for Victory.
Security in Iraq is a big part of the solution, but a lot of the future outcome depends on Iraq’s own ability to establish a government and maintain an orderly society. Of the disappointments and failures, the political problems have maybe been the greatest. Prime Minister Malaki has not demonstrated the ability to govern, and his lack of identifiable progress is at the root of a deepening dissatisfaction in the Congress and general public. If it were clear that Malaki’s infant government was making significant progress toward providing their own security and building an open sustainable economy, I believe the American sentiment would be far different. But, just because Malaki has come up short of expectations doesn’t necessarily mean we should go home.
President Bush, in his January 9 speech laid out his expectations for Iraq as well as for us. Some think he did well; many apparently don’t believe his plan will work. Most of the non-believers fail to offer their own plan, other than one of surrender – pull out now.
Bush critics are many. He can be stubborn. Perhaps hasn't had the best of advice, nor made all the right decisions. He undoubtedly made his initial decision to invade Iraq based on seriously deficient intelligence, and that probably contributed to an underestimation of the will and capability of the enemy, and the intensity and duration of the conflict. Without question the difficulty of the Iraqis to establish their own stable government including their own security forces has been a huge miscalculation.
While some of his decisions and strategy has been wrong, his objective has never wavered: to defend America against all enemies, foreign or domestic, as he took an oath to do. Many who took a similar oath keep calling for the President to come up with an exit strategy. And, then regardless of the civil war and mass killings that would surely follow, regardless of the virtual certainty that Ahmajenidad and Iran would move immediately to make Iraq a puppet of Tehran, regardless of the unimaginable surge it would give radical Islamic Terrorism to drive out and defeat America – critics and Bush-haters say exit anyway.
Thankfully, the President knows what Joe Lieberman knows – and with which I very much agree:
"In war, there are two exit strategies. One is called victory. The other is called defeat. America has too much on the line in Iraq to accept defeat." Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut)
I don’t know if the latest iteration of the Bush Iraq Plan will work. History will record the outcome and I hope to be around to witness it. But, I agree with Sen. Lieberman, we have too much on the table to fold our cards and go home.
I recently read David McCullough’s great accounting of the enormous difficulties that the first Commander-in-Chief went through in that epic year that is also the title of the book, 1776. Contrary to folk lore, things weren’t going so well back then either. Washington faced defeat after defeat that year, and his Continental Army were sick, poorly clothed and more poorly trained, and often went for extended periods unpaid. Desertion was rampant, and as they fought for America’s freedom, the local town folks – majorities of which were loyal to the British crown – gave comfort, food, supplies, and intelligence to the enemy.
Washington, now memorialized as the omnipotent, revered General, made repeated strategic blunders, and struggled to take decisive action, deferring instead to his war council, and adding to their growing discomfort with him. Retreat was the maneuver with which they had the most experience. Congress had fled the Capitol in expectation of the advance of the British and two members had resigned and gone over to the enemy. Even his adjutant general and closet aid, Joseph Reed, had lost faith in Washington and the cause of the Revolution, and had written his wife of abandoning the cause and returning home.
The legendary crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, could accurately be described as a "Hail Mary" act of desperation. Large numbers of his pieced together Army were completing their enlistment period at month's end, and almost surely would head home in massive numbers, leaving Washington to face the world's greatest military with a reduced, disheartened remnant of an already greatly disadvantaged force.
While many had lost faith and the will to continue the fight, preferring instead to live under the heel of a distant King, Washington never did. In spite of his set backs, embarrassments, and increasing defections, as McCullough wrote, "Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up."
On July 2, 1776, learning of the vote in Congress to declare Independence, and just hours before the historic signing of the Declaration of Independence, Washington put his charge in his own words, "The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army."
At a critical moment in history, mistakes behind him and having learned from them, Washington put together a strategy and took charge. And, as our First President envisioned, untold millions were the better for it.
I hope and pray that history repeats itself, and that once more America prevails against her enemy. Yes, I’d like to see President Bush come out on top, but I’m far more concerned for the world my children and grandchildren inherit from us.