If The Boot Fits…
Captain Ed COMMENTS on that Max Boot POST from yesterday. The one that dealt with McCain and the body armor.
Of course, this nuance gets lost when media sources operate from an agenda. Boot has his agenda as well — he works for McCain as an advisor. Terry McCarthy doesn’t seem to have one, though, and the numbers show that the surge is having a positive effect on Baghdad — and will in Mosul when the Maliki government extends the security plan to that city. Hopefully, the media will report it in more depth as the situation continues to show improvement.
Maybe we could get the media to copy The Journal a bit more.
Take THIS piece on the “real Iraqi Civil Wary, for example - (HT: BLACKFIVE).
Civil war between the Sunni tribes and the extremists has broken out in Anbar Province, the stronghold of the insurgency, and the U.S. and Iraqi government should support it. Anbar is like the American West in the 1870s. Security will come to towns in Anbar as it came to Tombstone–by the emergence of tough, local sheriffs with guns, local power and local laws.
Or THIS piece on the Dems’ “surge” - (HT: BLUE CRAB BOULEVARD)
Gen. Petraeus himself in recent interviews has been careful not to oversell this early success. But it is difficult to imagine that the American public would want to hang its military with a failure if a better outcome is in reach. Failed wars exact a price. During Vietnam, between 1966 and 1973 support for the U.S. military dropped from 62% to 32%. We’re not there, yet. From 2002 till now polls have found a combined favorable view toward the military of around 85%. But withdrawing these American troops on the cusp of a reasonable success could do long-term damage.
No one can simply assume that we would avoid a decline in faith in the army as an effective American institution deserving financial support, as happened with the post-Vietnam defense cuts. As bad, it could force a failed military class–officers to grunts–to rebuild, again, the ethos and esprit necessary to defend us from the next threat. That takes time. We don’t have time.
If the Iraq surge is succeeding, the Democrats’ surge should stand down. If a year from now the Petraeus plan is foundering, the Democrats will have plenty of time to hang it around the GOP’s neck by demanding a legitimate withdrawal date–November 2008. But not now.
Wait a second. The Journal is media, isn’t it? It’s easy to forget that at times; it seems like a paper written on a different planet than the others. (A planet where the national media remembers THIS sort of thing.)
