Loving the Troops, Hating Their Mission

Article by Captain Pete Hegseth, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division from 2005 to 2006, is chairman of Vets for Freedom.

Obama wants to have it both ways on Iraq.

By Pete Hegseth

Denver — Yesterday, I once again watched Speaker Nancy Pelosi stubbornly deny the success of the surge. Under questioning from Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press, Pelosi insisted that — despite dramatic improvements on the ground — the surge has not been successful because “the Iraqi government has not stepped up to the plate. . . . ” Her opposition, in the interview and elsewhere, is built on naming three pieces of stalled Iraqi legislation. (Hmm, can you name three pieces of stalled U.S. legislation?)

This remains the only anti-surge talking point on the Left. One problem, though: it’s no longer true — especially in light of the Iraqi government’s “surge” to autonomy, which is emblematic of their newfound political aptitude. The Maliki government has passed 15 of the 18 political benchmarks our Congress laid before it, not to mention taking on rogue Shia militias throughout the country and bringing the largest Sunni political party back into the fold. It’s not a beacon of democracy yet, but it is Iraq-ocracy.

In light of this indisputable political progress and the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq — which Brokaw referenced — Pelosi’s position is a radical one. Unfortunately, we’ve come to expect such political talking points from Ms. Pelosi — nothing short of a Planned Parenthood in every Iraqi village would denote success for her. But what of the man who has pledged to usher in a new kind of politics?

Senator Barack Obama has done his best to make it appear as if he has embraced the surge, noting in his VFW speech last week, that “gains have been made in lowering the level of violence” (note that passive construction) and that Iraq’s Security Forces have “increase[ed] capacity.” Such factual acknowledgements are welcome. Yet when actually pressed on the subject he continues to insist — as does Pelosi — that the surge has not worked. He is effectively embracing the surge without embracing it at all.

Obama has gone so far as to insist — when pressed by Katie Couric last month — that if given the opportunity to support or oppose the surge again, he would still oppose it. So, on one hand, Obama recognizes success in Iraq. But on the other hand, he still opposes the American policy that fostered that success. In Obama’s mind, this is not a contradiction.

The reason why is that Obama won’t admit that the gains we’ve seen in Iraq are at all related to the surge. He knows things have improved in Iraq — even on the political front — but credits everything but the surge strategy and U.S. troops for those improvements. Sure, he’ll say on the stump that “our troops have accomplished every mission” and “they have performed brilliantly.” But in the very next breath, he’ll deny that they were responsible for the success (remember: “gains have been made”). It seems as if nothing good can possibly have come from U.S. military policy in Iraq simply because it went ahead without Obama’s blessing.


In January of this year, Obama said that security gains were achieved because — get this — Sunni tribes in Anbar were scared that “Democrats elected [to Congress] in 2006” would hasten withdrawal. He has never retracted this unsubstantiated claim. More recently, Obama and his apologist, Madame Speaker, credit improvements in Iraq almost exclusively to the ceasefire of Muqtada al Sadr’s militia and the Sunni awakening (again, supposedly induced by the Democrats). Pelosi has even cited the “goodwill of the Iranians” as a factor; ignoring U.S. intelligence that shows Iranian arms and expertise are killing our troops.

I gladly acknowledge that other factors (well, aside from the ludicrous proposition on Iranian goodwill) have been integral to progress in Iraq. But intellectual integrity should compel Democratic leaders to admit that, at the very least, the surge has been a significant factor in the gains. Why not, if only for the sake of the troops (who, by the way, comprise “the surge”), admit that it worked?

Because detaching the surge — and the troops — from the progress in Iraq is a political necessity for Obama; admitting even the qualified success of the surge would require admitting his failure in judgment. Obama’s entire campaign was born in the notion that he exercised superior judgment on Iraq. Abandoning that proposition now would risk alienating his antiwar base.

And who gets the shaft in this equation? The soldiers and Marines who made the surge happen, that’s who. They get no credit from Obama and other leading Dems, whose mantra remains “we support the troops, but not the war.” They support the troops . . . but not so far as to upset Pelosi and Obama’s public narrative on Iraq. In order to discredit the surge strategy, its architects, and its principal political champion — John McCain — they are even willing to credit progress in Iraq to Muqtada al Sadr and Iran.

At the convention today, I suspect, we’ll see and hear only a few platitudes about success in Iraq — our “troops are wonderful, but the policy failed” they’ll say; but bend your ear and see if you hear anything positive about the surge. You won’t.

It needn’t be that way, and for the sake of our country’s future — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader war on terror — Obama and Co. should re-examine what it means to be for our troops in the abstract but against their present mission. If not, the American people just might do it for them.

Robocop's Comment:

The Libtards are in denial. This proves that to them, no news is good news regarding a victory in this war.

Judgment Under Fire

Editorial by Deroy Murdock.

As top Democrats address their national convention in Denver, they will propose “ending” Operation Iraqi Freedom, demand a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces there, and insist that “Bush lied, and people died.” What they will not do is apologize for their nearly universal failure of judgment regarding the wisdom and effectiveness of President Bush’s spring 2007 “surge” of 20,000 troops into Iraq. Widespread Democratic defeatism and lack of faith in our GIs’ ability to win gouged a gap between their forecasts of doom then and Iraq’s far sunnier outlook now. With few exceptions, Democrats got this one dead wrong.

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is [sic] going to solve the sectarian violence there,” Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Not so.

Thanks to brave U.S. GIs and valiant Iraqi soldiers, cops, and volunteers, Iraq is increasingly tranquil. According to the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs, “Overall violence is down at least 80 percent since the surge began, and ethno-sectarian violence — the kind that seemed to be sucking Iraq into all-out civil war in 2006 — is down by over 90 percent.” American fatalities have plummeted from 66 in July 2007 to five last month.

“By and large, what’s left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told the Associated Press in late July.

“As we have surged into neighborhoods — to protect the Iraqi people, earning their trust, and benefiting from their help — violence has dropped, and locals have turned against the jihadists,” wrote Army National Guard captain and Vets for Freedom chairman Pete Hegseth last week after returning to Samarra, where he served from December 2005 – July 2006.

“The economy on the street is booming,” a Baghdad-based American businessman told me. “The Iraqi people are going about their business, and business is thriving. It is so, more and more. I see it in places I could not go even six months ago.”

“The simple fact is that sending in over 20,000 additional troops isn’t the answer. In fact, it’s a tragic mistake,” 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry said on February 16, 2007. The Massachusetts senator continued: “It won’t end the violence; it won’t provide security. . . . It won’t turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won’t deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won’t rein in the militias.”

The simple fact is that the surge has helped turn the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s biggest militia, into a charity. “The group will focus on education, religion, and social justice,” the Wall Street Journal’s Gina Chon explained on August 5. Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decided to disarm his battered force. He is rumored to be studying Islam in Iran.

As for terrorists, the surge and Sunni disgust with the barbaric Islamo-fascism of al-Qaeda in Iraq almost have squeezed AQI to death. Last month alone, two high-value AQI-affiliated emirs and an associate surrendered to Iraqi and Coalition forces.

“The surge is not succeeding,” Sen. Joseph Biden (D., Del.) told journalists on April 26, 2007. “It’s like squeezing a water balloon. You squeeze it in one place, it bulges somewhere else.”


While Biden proposed trisecting Iraq into a Shiite south, Sunni middle, and Kurdish north, the surge has calmed things enough that Iraqis are working to keep their constitutional republic together, rather than yield to centrifugal forces.

“The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution,” Senator Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) said August 22, 2007. “It has failed.”

Congressional Democrats like Clinton often attack Iraq’s parliament as foot draggers who specifically failed to implement a petroleum reform law. This is mighty rich for Democrats who managed to pass not one appropriations bill this year, yet jetted off for a five-week vacation rather than consider GOP ideas for increasing oil and energy production.

The Iraqi parliament in 2008 adopted a budget, a pension law, and amnesty for some prisoners. It scheduled provincial elections for October and is weighing plans for an expected $50 billion budget surplus (a virtual foreign phrase in Washington, D.C.), largely from an ever more productive petroleum sector.

According to the Brookings Institution’s stunningly comprehensive Iraq Index [PDF available here], attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines fell from 19 in May 2007 to one last March. This has helped oil production swell to 2.54 million barrels per day, surpassing peak pre-war production of 2.5 million barrels daily.

On April 19, 2007, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) flatly declared that ‘‘this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything. . . .”

Wrong again.

“The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost,” the AP’s Robert Burns and Robert Reid reported last July 26. “In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago…”

While key Democrats blew it, starting with their standard bearer, the GOP nominee got it right.

“We must have more troops over there,” Senator John McCain told Fox News Channel on December 12, 2006. “And we have to have a big enough surge that we can get Baghdad under control and then Anbar province under control.”

McCain embraced the surge concept, encouraged President Bush to implement it, and energized Republicans on Capitol Hill and across America to support it. He trusted U.S. service personnel to stabilize Iraq. And they delivered — big time.

On the nation’s most urgent issue, John McCain and the GOP scored a bull’s eye, while Barack Obama and the Democrats’ arrow missed the target and crashed in the dust.