The Hound Of Ulster

That’s pretty much the only way to describe WFB’s PIECE from Saturday. (Not saying it’s wrong, though I understand that the particular phrase does have a bit of a negative connotation. But there is definitely a lot of doom involved. And gloom, as well.)

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

I’m not sure I can quite get behind the idea that this war could be the end of the GOP. But even if that’s right, I hope we don’t start making “politically-charged” decisions. That’s not going to work, either.

RedState’s Mark I POSTS on the Waxman charade, pointing out that the very reason we know about the military’s problems with the Tillman and Lynch stories is because of that same military he is criticizing.

There is nothing new in these “facts.” None of this could be learned in Waxman’s hearing today because all of it was already known. These facts were uncovered and reported by Pentagon investigations. The same military that Waxman is excoriating for not getting the facts straight is the source of the straight facts in both of these high profile cases.

(HERE is Richard S. Lowry’s account of that Lynch story.)

And here are a host of links illustrating the Reid/Pelosi nonsense that seems to be flying around everywhere at the moment:  CRITTENDEN, CALIFORNIA CONSERVATIVE I, CALIFORNIA CONSERVATIVE II, CAPTAIN ED, and FAUGHNAN.

If Pelosi and Reid are as committed as they seem to be to undercutting the war effort and tying the president’s hands, they should at least pretend to be open-minded when they do so. To admit that their minds are closed to any new evidence of progress–as Reid has done–only gives war advocates more ammunition to use against them.

Thank goodness we have SOUTHWEST. 

SCOTUSBlog has another SUMMARY of reactions to yesterday’s decision, mostly of the “newspaper editorial” variety. Some are pretty cringe-inducing, but some are surprisingly good.

Blue Crab Boulevard LINKS to The Washington Post’s ACCOUNT of the Fred Thompson/GOP meeting from yesterday.

The strong attendance at the meeting helped underscore how Thompson could potentially transform the GOP race. Only 65 percent of Republicans questioned in a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last week said they were satisfied with their candidates, compared with 80 percent of Democrats. That sentiment is reflected on Capitol Hill, where scores of lawmakers have not yet endorsed a candidate.

While Thompson remains noncommittal, the House members’ display of enthusiasm was the latest step in an effort to draft him into the race.

Michelle POSTS a pretty unusual INTERVIEW from Radar Magazine. Jon Voight does not sound like he’s from Hollywood. (Course, that was true during his Faith & Family interview, as well.)

Was the Iraq war part of the war on terror before we got there?

I’m interested in talking about this, but it’s been so politicized, it’s very disturbing, very dangerous. My view of it is this: they say our president lied to us. Well, he didn’t lie to us, everybody else had the information he had, and they voted for that tactic.

…

Outside of Iraq and the war on terror do you think the other criticisms you hear about Bush are fair?

Like what?

Well you have the handling of Katrina, there’s the Valerie Plame leak …

There are mistakes made in politics right and left. When something happens and we don’t respond, we’ve got to fix it. When you’ve got a government office that is supposed to be available in extreme disasters and they don’t come up with the goods, they are not responsive and they’re incompetently run, yes, we have to correct that. And then we have to go beyond that. We’ve got to be on our toes all the time. And in those ways, people can come up to the bat and fill in and do amazing things and others fall to the wayside are revealed to be unable to handle the crises. But this wholesale criticism of this man, just laying everything at his feet, is inappropriate. I went down to see the guys at Walter Reed, and I was interested in checking the conditions to see that these guys were being taken care of—and they were. You can be very proud of the people at Walter Reed and all the people who are surrounding the troops; This is some real rough stuff these kids are going through, there are some really difficult things to looks at. You know, serious injuries. So my eyes were open going down there.

Sounds pretty different than THIS.

“I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists.

…

But Reid drew a parallel with former US president Lyndon Johnson who decided to deploy more troops in Vietnam some 40 years ago when 24,000 US troops had already been killed.

“Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam,” Reid said.

And could we just admit that the prize for “Absolutely Least Surprising Story Of The Year” is sewn up ALREADY?

Director Oliver Stone is planning to direct an anti-war television commercial chosen by members of the liberal group MoveOn.org.

The Stone ad campaign will focus on a specific American family affected by the war. Which family and soldier used will be determined by the votes of MoveOn.org members.

An anti-war veterans organization, VoteVets.org — which was responsible for the Super Bowl ad that included an Iraq war vet amputee — is also backing the project.

I think I’m going to be sick. (THIS helps, though. Hudson’s account of Bush as an actual man is important to keep in mind. He is an actual man, and an admirable one at that. Sure, he has failings. But something about glass houses and stones comes to mind here. Are his failings magnified by the stage on which he commits them? Surely. But I still strongly believe that there is much for which he should be praised.)

Centcom has a RELEASE on the transfer of security in Maysan Provence.

Today’s transfer of security responsibility in Maysan Province from the Multi-National Force-Iraq to the Government of Iraq and civilian-controlled Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) demonstrates another step towards a stable and secure Iraq. Maysan is the fourth of 18 provinces to be transitioned and this reflects Iraq’s continued steps toward a capability to govern and protect itself and its citizens as a sovereign nation.

…

The transition of responsibility in Maysan Province represents another step toward Iraqi self-reliance. With the continued support of the Coalition, Iraq will continue to progress along a path to national unity, improved security, and increasing prosperity that benefits all its citizens.

And THIS piece from Rocco DiPippo is as hard-hitting as they come.

It has been said by the Left that Democrats are more empathetic than Republicans. It has also been said by leftists and those sympathetic towards them that they are more compassionate than people on the Right, that the Left fights for “the oppressed,” for the “little man,” for “human rights” and for “civil rights.” Yet the Left is willing, almost eager, to abandon the people of Iraq, a people desperately in need of all the Left says it offers. It is ready to abandon innocent Iraqis to those who will brutally oppress them, who will deny them their rights, including the most basic one of all: the right to live.

…

I ask Democratic Party leaders to put hatred aside long enough to pretend that it is their sons and their daughters, their wives and their children who are being harassed, tortured, maimed and killed by oppressors here in Iraq. Please realize that if you Democrats get your early withdrawal, the torturers and murderers will control Iraq. And emboldened by that victory, and in possession of Iraq’s substantial resources, it will only be a matter of time before those hunters of humans — the beheaders, the torturers of women and children, the suicide bombers and the hyper-religious fanatics - bring death to your own cities and towns and streets.

Then, you and your loved ones will have paid a dear price for your unending hatred of one man, your naked self indulgence, your utter, rank hypocrisy and your unquenchable thirst for power.

4. SUMMARY:

We have brilliant military and civilian leadership on the ground in Iraq. General Dave Petraeus, LTG Ray Odierno, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have the country’s treasure and combat power at their disposal. Our cause is just. The consequence of failure will be severe. The American people hold that the US Armed Forces are the most trusted institution in our society. The polls also show that domestic opinion is not calling for precipitous withdrawal. However, this whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle. We now need a last powerful effort to provide to US leaders on the ground —the political support, economic reconstruction resources, and military strength it requires to succeed.

Barry R. McCaffrey
General USA (Ret)
Adjunct Professor of International Affairs
USMA, West Point, NY

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.)

That’s the title of a PIECE in yesterday’s Journal. It is a piece written by Tawfik Hamid, “a physician and former member of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiya,” and it is striking in its contrast to recent pieces written by Dinesh D’Souza.

The first point of disagreement is over the strange claim from D’Souza that Islam is historically a religion of peace. Instead, Mr. Hamid clearly states that traditional and mainstream Islamic teaching “accepts and promotes violence.”

Plus, though Hamid is in agreement with the claim that “the West” is somewhat responsible for our predicament, the reason for it is not our moral decline, but our “tolerance” - another brainchild of the Left, though one that is no easier to criticize in safety. (HT: THE TANK)

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the “end of days.” The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

…

All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.

(And HERE, courtesy of Amy PROCTOR, is a bit of an insight into just how much like us “they” can actually be.)

As an American, I was thrilled to see THIS sort of thing. But as a dad with a son very nearly that age, I was moved to tears. No further comments necessary.

(Still trying to recover.)

I’m back to my old tricks again. The MSM’s willingness to criticize NancyJackHarry on the Iraq Strings bills was refreshing. But we seem to be returning to normal again.

Michael Goldfarb has the LATEST.

There’s something in McCaffrey’s report for everybody, but one would have to be profoundly pessimistic–inclined to view the whole Iraq project as an unsalvageable “fiasco”–to report that the bottom line of this story is that the U.S. military is in “strategic peril.” The bottom line is that progress is being made, our objectives are attainable, and we face serious challenges in the months and years ahead.

Red State’s dkilmer has MORE, and he’s a bit more pointed. (Quite a bit. Seems fair, though. That article really seems to butcher MCCaffrey’s memo.)

Amy Proctor WONDERS why the media won’t cover Staff Sargeant Andrew McCann. Rhetorically, of course.

Still, the MSM’s not a total loss. It does give Ol’ Fightin’ Joe a PLATFORM from time to time. (Yes, I recognized that it was USA Today’s blog. Ironic.)

There seem to be lots of positive signs in Iraq.

Captain Ed REPORTS that the enemy is starting to attack itself.

Potential hurdles still exist. The Sunni insurgents want to force the Iraqi government to recreate itself “from square one,” according to a Shi’ite member of Nouri al-Maliki’s party. The Shi’ites will resist that idea, and rightly so. The plans for the government came from an elected body of representatives, elected while the Sunnis boycotted the polls. Now they want a do-over, and it’s too late for that. However, they can participate in elections now and offer amendments to their constitution to address their needs. The Shi’ites will have some desire to be flexible in exchange for an end to the factional fighting in Baghdad and the west.

The split between AQI and the natives could bring about a national reconciliation, if properly managed. Nothing unifies a people like a common enemy — and AQI’s brutal nature has made them an almost universal foe in Iraq.

Michael Goldfarb PUBLISHES excerpts from Stuart Bowen Jr.’s testimony.

Stuart Bowen Jr, the special inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction, testified on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Bowen has been a harsh critic of the incompetence, disorganization, and waste that has characterized U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq, which he has documented in a series of scathing reports since his appointment twenty months ago.

Nonetheless, after having returned from his latest trip to Iraq last week, he now feels “cautious optimism . . . something that I had not returned from Iraq with . . . over the last twenty months.”

As he put it: “It’s been about twenty months since I have returned from Iraq with a sense of cautious optimism. I have that now.”

(Goldfarb also REPORTS on more MSM madness, but Jules Crittenden SEES improvement even there.)

Of course, then the Senate went and did THIS.

Republican attempts to scuttle the non-binding timeline failed on a vote of 50-48, largely along party lines. The roll call marked the Senate’s most forceful challenge to date of the administration’s handling of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

Three months after Democrats took power in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the moment was at hand to “send a message to President Bush that the time has come to find a new way forward in this intractable war.”

Great. With friends like these…(Yes, I’m looking at you, Chuck.)

That’s what the Chicago Tribune SAYS about Iraq. Only they’re taking about the “lose-lose” potential of the Pelose/Murtha madness. (HT: BLUE CRAB BOULEVARD)

Americans are understandably impatient about the war. They want the Iraqi government to stop dithering and start moving more quickly on benchmarks of political, military and economic progress.

Ultimately, however, it’s the president’s job–not lawmakers’–to pressure the Iraqis. It’s his role to let Iraq’s leaders–and, just as important, the American people–know what will happen if they fail to meet their goals in a timely manner.

Bush still hasn’t done that to anyone’s satisfaction. But setting a date for withdrawal won’t help the U.S. prevail in Iraq.

Nor will it prevent Iraq from sliding into chaos.

There has been a refreshingly large amount of criticism from the MSM on this matter. I should flag this post and come back to it next time I get depressed/irritated with media coverage of the war. They may be wrong a fair amount of the time. But at least they do seem to care about the facts from time to time.