The Surge Is Working !

This is a lengthy article that is incredibly important and clearly describes the current situation in Iraq, its parallels to the Viet Nam war, "Scooter" Libby, and the Democrats’ strategy, tactics, and rationale to ensure defeat in Iraq. This is a seminal summary of the current situation. Dunn clearly gets it. You will not hear this view from the hard-left, main-stream media. Highly recommended.

For The Record, Surge Is Working, But Will Truth See Light Of Day?

By J.R. DUNN
Friday, July 27, 2007 4:30 PM PT

http://www.ibdeditorial.com/
IBDArticles.aspx?id=270423956263436

"God looks after children, drunkards and the United States of America." — Otto von Bismarck

It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq War: They're going to be ignored.

They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic politician is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.

Anbar is close to being secured, thanks to the long-ridiculed strategy of recruiting local sheiks. A capsule history of war coverage could be put together from stories on this topic alone — beginning with sneers, moving on to "evidence" that it would never work, to the puzzled pieces of the past few months admitting that something was happening, and finally the recent stories expressing concern that the central government might be "offended" by the attention being paid former Sunni rebels. (Try to find another story in the legacy media worrying about the feelings of the Iraqi government.)

What you will not find is any mention of the easily-grasped fact that Anbar acts as a blueprint for the rest of the country. If the process works there, it will work elsewhere. If it works in other areas, that means the destruction of the Jihadis in detail.

Nor is that all. Diyala province, promoted in media as the "new al-Qaida stronghold," appears to have become a deathtrap. The Jihadis can neither defend it nor abandon it. The coalition understood that Diyala was where the Jihadis would flee when the heat came down in Baghdad, and they were ready for them. A major element of surge strategy — and one reason why the extra infantry brigades were needed — is to pressure Jihadis constantly in all their sanctuaries, allowing them no time to rest or regroup.

A blizzard of operations is occurring throughout central Iraq under the overall code-name Phantom Thunder, the largest operation since the original invasion. It is open-ended, and will continue as long as necessary. Current ancillary operations include Arrowhead Ripper, which is securing the city of Baqubah in Diyala province. Operation Alljah is methodically clearing out every last neighborhood in Fallujah. In Babil province, southeast of Baghdad, operations Marne Torch and Commando Eagle are underway. (As this was being written, yet another spinoff operation, Marne Avalanche, began in northern Babil.)

The coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to discover the proper strategy in any war.

A cursory glance at 1943 would have given the impression of disaster: Kasserine, in which the German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent American GIs running; Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence; and Salerno, where the Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea.

But all these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 1945.

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match, leaving them harried, uncertain and apt to make mistakes.

The surge is more of a refinement than a novelty. Earlier coalition efforts were not in error as much as they were incomplete. American troops would clean out an area, turn it over to an Iraqi unit and depart. The Jihadis would then push out the unseasoned Iraqis and return to business. This occurred in Fallujah, Tall Afar and endless times in Ramadi.

Now U.S. troops are remaining on site, which reassures the locals and encourages cooperation. The Jihadis broke (and more than likely never knew) the cardinal rule of insurgency warfare, that of being a good guest. As Mao put it, "The revolutionary must be as a fish among the water of the peasantry."

The Jihadis have been lampreys to the Iraqi people — proselytizing, forcing adaptation of their reactionary creed, engaging in torture, kidnapping and looting. Arabic culture is one in which open dealings, personal loyalty and honor are at a premium. Violate any of them, and there is no way back. The Jihadis violated them all. The towns and cities of Iraq are no longer sanctuaries.

The results have begun to come in. On July 4, Khaled al-Mashhadani, the most senior Iraqi in al-Qaida, was captured in Mosul. On July 14, Abu Jurah, a senior al-Qaida leader in the area south of Baghdad, was killed in a coordinated strike by artillery, helicopters and fighter-bombers. These blows to the leadership are the direct outgrowth of Jihadi brutality and the new confidence among the Iraqis in what they have begun to call the "al-Ameriki tribe."

We'll see more of this in the weeks ahead. The Jihadis have come up with no effective counterstrategy, and the old methods have begun to lose mana. The last massive truck-bomb attack occurred not in Baghdad, but in a small Diyala village that defied al-Qaida. An insurgency in the position of using its major weapons to punish noncombatants is not in a winning situation.

You will look long and hard to find any of this in the legacy media. Apart from a handful of exceptions (such as John F. Burns of the New York Times), it's simply not being covered. Those operational names would come across as bizarre to the average reader, the gains they have made impossible to fit into the worldview that has been peddled unceasingly by the dead tree fraternity.

What the media are concentrating on — and will continue to concentrate on, in defiance of sense, protest and logic, to the bitter end — are peripheral stories such as the Democrats' Senate pajama party, reassertions of the claim that the war has "helped" al-Qaida and the latest proclamation from the world's greatest fence-sitters.

The situation as it stands is very close to that of the final phase of Vietnam. Having for several years confused that country's triple-layer jungle with the rolling plains of northwest Europe, William Westmoreland in 1968 turned over command to Creighton Abrams. Though also a veteran of the advance against Germany (he had been Patton's favorite armored commander), Abrams lacked his predecessor's taste for vast (not to mention futile) multi-unit sweeps. After carrying out a careful analysis, Abrams reworked Allied strategy to embody the counterinsurgency program advocated by Marine General Victor Krulak and civilian advisor John Paul Vann.

Abrams' war was one of small units moving deep into enemy territory, running down enemy forces and then calling in massive American firepower in the form of artillery or fighter-bombers for the final kill. (Anyone wishing for a detailed portrayal of this style of operations should pick up David Hackworth's "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts.") This was a strategy that played to American strengths, one that went after the enemy where he lived. By 1970, Abrams had chased the bulk of the Vietnamese communists across the border into Cambodia and Laos.

But Vietnam also had its ruling narrative, one that had no room for successful combat operations. That narrative had been born in 1968, at the time of the Tet offensive. Tet was a nationwide operation intended by North Vietnamese commander Nguyen Vo Giap to encourage the Vietnamese people to join with the Viet Cong and PAVN in overthrowing the government. It was an utter rout, with the communists losing something in the order of 60,000 men. The Viet Cong were crippled as a military force and never did recover.

But panicky reporters, many of whom had never set foot on a battlefield (not to mention figures at ease with manipulating the facts, such as Peter Arnett), were badly shaken by the opening moves of the offensive, among them an abortive attack on the U.S. embassy grounds at Saigon. Their reportage, broadcast and printed nationwide, portrayed a miserable defeat for the U.S. and its allies, with the Viet Cong and PAVN striking where they pleased and making off at their leisure.

The media portrait of a beleaguered American war effort was never corrected, and became the consensus view. (This process was analyzed in detail in Peter Braestrup's "Big Story," one of the most crucial — and overlooked — media studies ever to see print.) After Tet, there could be no victories.

The success of the Abrams strategy was buried for 20 years and more, as the myth of utter U.S. defeat was put in concrete by "experts" such as Stanley Karnow, Frances FitzGerald and Neil Sheehan. Only with the appearance of revisionist works such as Lewis Sorley's "A Better War" and Mark Moyar's "Triumph Forsaken" has the record begun to be set straight.

That was how it was played at the close of the Vietnam War. That's how it's being played today. And what do they want, exactly? What is the purpose of playing so fast and loose with the public safety, national security and human lives both American and foreign?

Generally, when someone repeats a formula, it's because they want to repeat a result. And that's what the American left wants in this case.

During the mid-'70s, American liberals held political control to an extent they had not experienced since the heyday of FDR. The GOP was disgraced and demoralized. The Democrats held the Senate, the House and the presidency. There was absolutely nothing standing in the way of their maintaining complete power for as long as anyone could foresee . . . until Jimmy Carter's incompetence proved itself, which caused the whole shabby and illusory structure to fall apart in a welter of ineptitude and childishness.

The American left wants a return to the 1970s — without Jimmy Carter. They want a cowed GOP. They want control of the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint of Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing predominance will continue for a generation or more.

Will they get it? That's a question worth some thought. Because as it stands, neither of the program's necessary elements is coming to fruition. The war is not being lost, and their great political scandal has fizzled.

The other half of the equation was Watergate. Vietnam would not have been anywhere near as much a disaster without it. Watergate paralyzed the Nixon administration. It turned Nixon himself from an odd, unlikable, but incredibly capable politician to a half-crazed ghost sobbing in the Oval Office in the middle of the night. It transformed his last great triumph — the Paris peace accords that ended the war on an acceptable standoff — into ashes.

The left wing of the Democratic Party, shepherded by people like Sens. George McGovern and Mark Hatfield, proceeded to undercut the settlement as quickly as they could manage. Two separate appropriations acts passed in June 1973 cut off all further aid to the countries of Southeast Asia. (A third such act passed in August 1974 has gained more attention but it only duplicated the effects of the first two.)

From that point on it was a matter of time. Nixon resigned a little over a year later. Less than a year after that, in April 1975, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all fell.

The price tag for this, which liberals don't care to bring up, was over 2 million dead in Cambodia, 165,000 dead in Vietnam and another 200,000 plus drowned and murdered on the high seas during the exodus of the boat people. Laotian numbers can only be estimated but must have been in the thousands. The price of Indochinese "peace" was nearly twice that of the war itself.

And that, in case you were wondering, is what Plamegate was about. The Democrats needed a scandal — and not merely a run-of-the-mill, everyday scandal, but a megascandal, a hyperscandal, something that would utterly cripple the administration and leave it open to destruction in detail. The targets were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

When nothing at all could be dug up on the administration principals, the scandal was effectively over. Knocking off a vice-presidential aide might cause excitement within the Beltway, but nobody in the real world could be expected to care.

It may be a bitter thought to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby that he was taken down through sheer proximity, like a bystander during a drive-by shooting, but it was in the very best of causes. Libby's sacrifice not only saved the administration, it may well save tens of thousands of Middle Eastern lives in the years to come.

(This also explains why the President was so circumspect in dealing with the investigation — he knew exactly what the opposition was up to, and could afford to give them no ammunition whatsoever.)

Plamegate ended with a judge throwing Plame's suit out of court on strictly technical grounds. People like Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., are trying to create a conflagration by blowing on the embers of the attorney firings and the vice-presidential subpoenas. To no avail.

Scandals, like forest fires, occur only when conditions are perfect. Through their failed efforts, the liberals have in effect set a backfire, surrounding the administration with wide barriers of burned-over ground. The Democrats themselves have rendered Bush unassailable, and all the slumber parties, the empty votes and the rhetoric are intended to camouflage that fact.

Bush will have hard days yet, but he will not be Nixonized. He will be able to fight his war as he sees fit.

That means a continuation of the surge, and of the strategy of Gen. Petreaus. Will that be enough? It's impossible to say. But the past few months have been the most surprising in the entire Iraq saga to date.

I have a feeling that al-Qaida (and the media, and the Democrats), will have a few more surprises coming in the months ahead.

Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker, an electronic magazine where this article first appeared. For 12 years, he was editor of the International Military Encyclopedia.

This article was original posted on American Thinker on July 24, 2007.

A War We Can Win !

Why do we tolerate the Democrat's insistence on legislating defeat in Iraq?

A War We Just Might Win

By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

July 30, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times

Washington

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few “jundis” (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless — something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.

The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.

In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.

Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.

The U.S. is the New France

Vis-A-Vis Iran, Is U.S. Of 2007 France Of '36?

By THOMAS SOWELL

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 4:30 PM PT

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them. It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times.

Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing — and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him. Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today — "negotiations."

No leader of a democratic nation was ever more popular than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — wildly cheered in the House of Commons by opposition parties as well as his own — when he returned from negotiations in Munich in 1938, waving an agreement and declaring that it meant "peace in our time."

We know now how short that time was. Less than a year later, World War II began in Europe and spread across the planet, killing tens of millions of people and reducing many cities in Europe and Asia to rubble.

Looking back after that war, Winston Churchill said, "There was never a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action." The earlier it was done, the less it would have cost. At one point, Hitler could have been stopped in his tracks "without the firing of a single shot," Churchill said.

That point came in 1936 — three years before World War II began — when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, in violation of two international treaties. At that point, France alone was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention.

As Hitler himself confided, the Germans would have had to retreat "with our tail between our legs," because they did not yet have enough military force to put up even a token resistance.

Why did the French not act and spare themselves and the world the years of horror that Hitler's aggressions would bring? The French had the means but not the will.

"Moral paralysis" came from many things. The death of a million French soldiers in the First World War and disillusionment with the peace that followed cast a pall over a whole generation. Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions.

As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: "France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core." It was morally paralyzed.

History may be interesting, but it is the present and the future that pose the crucial question: Is America today the France of yesterday?

We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons while the United Nations is moving slowly — or not at all — toward doing anything to stop them. It is a sign of our irresponsible Utopianism that anyone would even expect the U.N. to do anything that would make any real difference.

Not only the history of the U.N., but the history of the League of Nations before it, demonstrates again and again that going to such places is a way for weak-kneed leaders of democracies to look like they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing.

The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don't think we have the guts to stop them.

Incidentally, Hitler made some of the best anti-war statements of the 1930s. He knew that this was what the Western democracies wanted to hear — and that it would keep them morally paralyzed while he continued building up his military machine to attack them.

Iranian leaders today make only the most token and transparent claims that they are building "peaceful" nuclear facilities — in one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world, which has no need for nuclear power to generate electricity.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and its international terrorist allies will be a worst threat than Hitler ever was. But, before that happens, the big question is: Are we France? Are we morally paralyzed, perhaps fatally?

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate, Inc

Tom Friedman Has it Exactly Right on Iraq

Bush must put the heat on Iraqi negotiations
By Thomas Friedman

I can't imagine how I'd feel if I were the parent of a soldier in Iraq and I had just read that the Iraqi parliament had decided to go on vacation for August, because, as the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, explained, it's really hot in Baghdad then - "130 degrees."

I've been in Baghdad in the summer, and it is really hot. But you know what? It is a lot hotter when you're in a U.S. military uniform, carrying a rifle and a backpack, sweltering under a steel helmet and worrying that a bomb can be thrown at you from any direction. One soldier told me he lost six pounds in one day. I'm sure the Iraqi parliament is air-conditioned.

So let's get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns.

Here is what I think of that: I think it's a travesty - and for the Bush White House to excuse it with a Baghdad weather report shows just how much it has become a hostage to Iraq.

The administration constantly says the surge is necessary, but not sufficient. That's right. There has to be a political deal. And the latest report card on Iraq showed that a deal is nowhere near completion. So where is the diplomatic surge? What are we waiting for? A cool day in December?

When you read stories in the newspapers every day about Americans who are going to Iraq for their third or even fourth tours and you think that this administration has never sent its best diplomats for even one tour yet - never made one, not one, single serious, big-time, big-tent diplomatic push to resolve this conflict, but instead has put everything on the military, it makes you sick.

Yes, yes, I know, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to make one of her quick-in-and-out trips to the Middle East next month to try to enlist support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in the fall. I'm all for Arab-Israeli negotiations, but the place that really needs a peace conference right now is Iraq, and it won't happen with drive-by diplomacy.

President Bush baffles me. If your whole legacy was riding on Iraq, what would you do? I'd draft the country's best negotiators - Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, George Shultz, George Mitchell, Dennis Ross or Richard Holbrooke - and ask one or all of them to go to Baghdad, under a U.N. mandate, with the following orders:

"I want you to move to the Green Zone, meet with the Iraqi factions and do not come home until you've reached one of three conclusions: 1) You have resolved the power- and oil-sharing issues holding up political reconciliation; 2) you have concluded that those obstacles are insurmountable and have sold the Iraqis on a partition plan that could be presented to the United Nations and supervised by an international force; 3) you have concluded that Iraqis are incapable of agreeing on either political reconciliation or a partition plan and told them that, as a result, the United States has no choice but to re-deploy its troops to the border and let Iraqis sort this out on their own."

The last point is crucial. Any lawyer will tell you, if you're negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you'll never walk away, you've got no leverage. And in Iraq, we've never had any leverage. The Iraqis believe that Bush will never walk away, so they have no incentive to make painful compromises.

That's why the Iraqi parliament is on vacation in August and our soldiers are fighting in the heat. Something is wrong with this picture. First, Bush spends three years denying the reality that we need a surge of more troops to establish security and then, with Iraq spinning totally out of control and militias taking root everywhere, he announces a surge and criticizes others for being impatient.

At the same time, Bush announces a peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians - but not for Iraqis. He's like a man trapped in a burning house who calls 9-1-1 to put out the brush fire down the street. Hello?

Quitting Iraq would be morally and strategically devastating. But to just drag out the surge, with no road map for a political endgame, with Iraqi lawmakers going on vacation, with no consequences for dithering, would be just as morally and strategically irresponsible.

We owe Iraqis our best military - and diplomatic effort - to avoid the disaster of walking away. But if they won't take advantage of that, we owe our soldiers a ticket home.

Thomas Friedman is a columnist with The New York Times.

Will Geo. Bush be a Winner?

I have a lot of problems with President Bush, but Bill Kristol makes a compelling argument.

Why Bush Will Be A Winner

By William Kristol
Sunday, July 15, 2007

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.

Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

The economy first: After the bursting of the dot-com bubble, followed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we've had more than five years of steady growth, low unemployment and a stock market recovery. Did this just happen? No. Bush pushed through the tax cuts of 2001 and especially 2003 by arguing that they would produce growth. His opponents predicted dire consequences. But the president was overwhelmingly right. Even the budget deficit, the most universally criticized consequence of the tax cuts, is coming down and is lower than it was when the 2003 supply-side tax cuts were passed.

Bush has also (on the whole) resisted domestic protectionist pressures (remember the Democratic presidential candidates in 2004 complaining about outsourcing?), thereby helping sustain global economic growth.

The year 2003 also featured a close congressional vote on Bush's other major first-term initiative, the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Liberals denounced it as doing nothing for the elderly; conservatives worried that it would bust the budget. Experts of all stripes foresaw great challenges in its implementation. In fact, it has all gone surprisingly smoothly, providing broad and welcome coverage for seniors and coming in under projected costs.

So on the two biggest pieces of domestic legislation the president has gotten passed, he has been vindicated. And with respect to the two second-term proposals that failed -- private Social Security accounts and immigration -- I suspect that something similar to what Bush proposed will end up as law over the next several years.

Meanwhile, 2005-06 saw the confirmation of two Supreme Court nominees, John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Your judgment of these two appointments will depend on your general view of the courts and the Constitution. But even if you're a judicial progressive, you have to admit that Roberts and Alito are impressive judges (well, you don't have to admit it -- but deep down, you know it). And if you're a conservative constitutionalist, putting Roberts and Alito on the court constitutes a huge accomplishment.

What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.

Western Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf's deals with the Taliban are apparently creating something like havens for terrorists, is an increasing problem. That's why our intelligence agencies are worried about a resurgent al-Qaeda -- because al-Qaeda may once again have a place where it can plan, organize and train. These Waziristan havens may well have to be dealt with in the near future. I assume Bush will deal with them, using some combination of air strikes and special operations.

As for foreign policy in general, it has mostly been the usual mixed bag. We've deepened our friendships with Japan and India; we've had better outcomes than expected in the two largest Latin American countries, Mexico and Brazil; and we've gotten friendlier governments than expected in France and Germany. China is stable. There has been slippage in Russia. The situation with North Korea is bad but containable.

But wait, wait, wait: What about Iraq? It's Iraq, stupid -- you (and 65 percent of your fellow Americans) say -- that makes Bush an unsuccessful president.

Not necessarily. First of all, we would have to compare the situation in Iraq now, with all its difficulties and all the administration's mistakes, with what it would be if we hadn't gone in. Saddam Hussein would be alive and in power and, I dare say, victorious, with the United States (and the United Nations) by now having backed off sanctions and the no-fly zone. He might well have restarted his nuclear program, and his connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would be intact or revived and even strengthened.

Still, that's speculative, and the losses and costs of the war are real. Bush is a war president, and war presidents are judged by whether they win or lose their war. So to be a successful president, Bush has to win in Iraq.

Which I now think we can. Indeed, I think we will. In late 2006, I didn't think we would win, as Bush stuck with the failed Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy of "standing down" as the Iraqis were able to "stand up," based on the mistaken theory that if we had a "small footprint" in Iraq, we'd be more successful. With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop "surge," I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.

If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow. Iran is a problem, and we will have to do more to curb Tehran's meddling -- but we can. So if we keep our nerve here at home, we have a good shot at achieving a real, though messy, victory in Iraq.

But can Bush maintain adequate support at home? Yes. It would help if the administration would make its case more effectively and less apologetically. It would help if Bush had more aides who believed in his policy, who understood that the war is winnable and who didn't desperately want to get back in (or stay in) the good graces of the foreign policy establishment.

But Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators.

Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president. And that brings us to Bush's final test.

The truly successful American presidents tend to find vindication in, and guarantee an extension of their policies through, the election of a successor from their own party. Can Bush hand the presidency off to a Republican who will (broadly) continue along the path of his post-9/11 foreign policy, nominate judges who solidify a Roberts-Alito court, make his tax cuts permanent and the like?

Sure. Even at Bush's current low point in popularity, the leading GOP presidential candidates are competitive in the polls with Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Furthermore, one great advantage of the current partisan squabbling in Washington is that while it hurts Bush, it also damages the popularity of the Democratic Congress-- where both Clinton and Obama serve. A little mutual assured destruction between the Bush administration and Congress could leave the Republican nominee, who will most likely have no affiliation with either, in decent shape.

And what happens when voters realize in November 2008 that, if they choose a Democrat for president, they'll also get a Democratic Congress and therefore liberal Supreme Court justices? Many Americans will recoil from the prospect of being governed by an unchecked triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. So the chances of a Republican winning the presidency in 2008 aren't bad.

What it comes down to is this: If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.

I like the odds.

editor@weeklystandard.com

William Kristol is the editor of the Weekly Standard.

Deport Illegal-Alien Felons and Criminals Now

Criminal Aliens Make Mockery Of U.S. Security

By MICHELLE MALKIN
Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:30 PM PT

My fellow Americans, we have a problem. We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, but our government can't even track and deport convicted criminal aliens.

These are not the well-meaning "newcomers" who just want to "pursue economic opportunities" by "doing the jobs no one else will do."

These are foreign-born thugs, sex offenders, murderers and repeat drunk drivers who are destroying the American Dream.

If our immigration and entrance system cannot effectively monitor, detain and kick out convicted criminal aliens — including illegal border-crossers, illegal visa overstayers, fugitive deportees and green-card holders who have committed serious crimes and aggravated felonies — what good is it?

The terrible kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Zina Linnik in Tacoma, Wash., on July 4 is a typical example of the criminal alien revolving door.

Terapon Adhahn, Linnik's suspected kidnapper and killer who allegedly snatched her from the backyard of her home, is a permanent legal resident from Thailand. He was convicted of incest in 1990. Adhahn had sexually attacked a 16-year-old relative and pleaded down from a second-degree rape.

Two years later, he was convicted of intimidation with a dangerous weapon.

Section 1227(a)(2)(C), Title 8, of the U.S. code dealing with immigration states: "Any alien who at any time after admission is convicted under any law of . . . using, owning, possessing, or carrying . . . any weapon, part, or accessory which is a firearm or destructive device . . . in violation of any law is deportable."

But Adhahn was not deported. In fact, as Lorie Dankers, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, admitted: "He escaped our attention."

Just like illegal alien gangster Mwenda Murithi, arrested 27 times without deportation before being arrested in the shooting death of 13-year-old innocent bystander Schanna Gayden last month in Illinois.

Just like illegal alien thug Ezeiquiel Lopez, who built up a six-year rap sheet without deportation before being arrested in the murder of Deputy Frank Fabiano two months ago in Wisconsin.

Just like illegal alien Juan Leonardo Quintero, who had been previously deported after committing crimes from indecency with a child to driving while intoxicated, but who traipsed back into the U.S. last fall and was arrested after allegedly shooting Houston police officer Rodney Johnson four times in the head during a routine traffic stop.

And the list goes on and on and on.

It is not "anti-immigrant radicals" who are fed up with the failure to kick out and keep out criminal aliens. Zina Linnik's uncle, Anatoly Kalchik, points out that his family was a family of legal immigrants who all obeyed the laws.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported: "Zina's uncle was angry that the suspect had not been deported after being convicted in a sex crime. 'We are all immigrants, but we come legally,' Kalchik said of his family. He added that the adults all cleared a criminal background check. 'If someone is a sex offender, or any kind of offender, he has no business being in America,' he said."

Federal auditors and immigration officers have tried to blow the whistle on this recurring problem for the past 10 years.

But the Department of Homeland Security inspector general reported last year that of an estimated 650,000 foreign-born inmates in prison and jails this year, half will be removable aliens who won't be removed because the detention and deportation office "does not have the resources to identify, detain and remove" them.

And that's just a best guess. Despite federal mandates, cooperative agreements and endless political promises, there still is no working nationwide system in place with basic information about incarcerated criminal aliens.

Don't we have enough homegrown criminals without the added public safety menace of known, convicted criminal aliens being released from prisons and jails to disappear and commit more crimes?

Rep. David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, is sponsoring legislation to require monthly prison and jail checks by DHS to track incarcerated illegal aliens, increase spending on criminal alien deportations, and expand a program known as 287(g) to encourage more local and state officials to cooperate with the feds to help identify and deport criminal aliens in their hometowns.

Why the hell aren't we doing all this already? How many more innocent lives will be taken or ruined before we do?

After the defeat of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill last month, I received tons of e-mail from readers asking: "What can I do?" Answer: Don't wait for Washington. Sign up to help pressure our government to rid this country of convicted criminal aliens at www.deportthemnow.com.

For Zina. For Schanna. For Deputy Fabiano. For Officer Johnson. For our safety, sovereignty and the protection of the American Dream for those who deserve it.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate, Inc

Al-Qaida in Iraq --- Al-Qaida in Iran !

This is really bad news!

Al-Qaida Menace Is In Iran, Too

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Tuesday, July 17, 2007 4:20 PM PT

War On Terror: That the latest U.S. intelligence outlook still sees al-Qaida as our main foe is no surprise. What is surprising is that the terrorist group seems to have found a welcome home in Iran.

According to the new National Intelligence Estimate, the U.S. remains threatened by al-Qaida's presence in Iraq, making talk of withdrawing from that country before we vanquish the threat akin to a senseless, unilateral surrender.

"Of note," says the report, "we assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage contacts and capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq, its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland.

"As a result," the report continues, "we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment."

One good thing to emerge from the report: Though we live in a "heightened threat environment" for terrorism, al-Qaida's ability to attack the U.S. has been "constrained" since 2001 thanks to global counterterrorism efforts.

This represents the best thinking of all 16 U.S. spy agencies. It is important to remember this as Democrats pull their little all-night talk-fest, trying to force a withdrawal from Iraq even as the war, thanks to the surge strategy implemented by Gen. David Petraeus, becomes ever more winnable.

But here's the bad part: Al-Qaida is, even now, trying to get its hands on weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological and, scariest of all, nuclear.

Given this, our question to those senators who spent the evening Tuesday debating a U.S. pullout from Iraq would be: What happens if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, and al-Qaida then gets control of that country's immense oil wealth?

And how long do you think it will take them to get a nuclear weapon — either on the still-existent black market for nukes, or from a friendly third party, or by reconstituting Saddam's old program?

The picture grows even worse when you consider that the battle against al-Qaida isn't just in Iraq or, as some Democrats would have it, Afghanistan. No, al-Qaida has found haven in the so-called tribal lands of Waziristan, Pakistan's Western frontier with Afghanistan. Worse still, it's also in Iran.

That's right: Al-Qaida leaders regularly meet in the mountains of eastern Iran, according to New York Sun columnist Eli Lake, citing a final working draft of the NIE. Iran has, in effect, made it possible for al-Qaida to function even as we hunt down its leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's aiding and abetting our enemy.

Here's how it works. Al-Qaida now has two known leadership "councils" dubbed Shura Majlis. One meets in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas, the other in Iran.

The one operating in Iran does so with the aid of Iran's Quds force, the terrorist support group that has helped both Shiite and Sunni militias in Iraq kill American soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike.

"In the past year," writes Lake, "the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of al-Qaida in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran."

Those details include the fact that senior al-Qaida members have taken up residence in Lavizan, a military base near Tehran; Chalous, a Tehran suburb; Mashod, a Shiite holy city; and Zabul, a town near the Afghanistan border.

If true — and there's little reason to believe it isn't — this is a blockbuster revelation, adding to the already long list of reasons for taking action against Iran.

We've pledged to pursue al-Qaida to the ends of the earth — an idea that even the soft-on-security Democrats have signed off on.

Well, today it appears that al-Qaida, the group responsible for the murder of 3,000 American civilians, has found a comfortable home in Iran. Yet, the U.S. is about to embark on direct talks with Iran about its "continued behavior that is leading to further instability in Iraq," a State Department spokesman said.

We're not schooled in the delicate nuances of diplomatese. But at the very least, we'd like our envoys to look across the table and issue an ultimatum to Iran's representative: Expel al-Qaida, a group that's at war with the U.S. and the West, and hand its leaders over. Or consider yourselves at war with us.

Then pause, take a drink of the bottled water, and wait for a response.

Beware of Democrat's Tax Hikes

See "Learn about the FAIR TAX" link under Important Links on the main page.

Time To Sink Democrat Raft Of Tax Hikes

By REPRESENTATIVE TIM WALBERG

Posted Tuesday, July 17, 2007 4:30 PM PT

In Ronald Reagan's famed "A Time for Choosing" speech in 1964, the future president clearly analyzed the economic crossroads America found itself in and still struggles with today.

Reagan remarked:

"We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as his strength and ability will take him. . . .

"But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure."

Right now, Democrats in Congress are discounting advancements made possible by the 2001 and 2003 tax relief passed by Congress and are trying to slap taxpayers with a $400 billion tax increase that will slow our economy's progress.

Raising taxes hurts American families, discourages innovation and hinders job creation.

If Democrats follow through on their budget promises, the American people will face the following:

• A $500 per child tax increase.

• A 55% death tax.

• A 13% tax increase for many small businesses.

• A 33% tax increase on capital gains.

• A 164% tax increase on dividends.

This tax-increase plan seems to ignore recent news reports that indicate tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003 is working.

The New York Times, rarely a bastion of pro-capitalism economic news, reported on its June 11 front page that this year "more than 40 states have found themselves with more money than they planned. . . . States are looking to give relief to taxpayers who have long been howling about property taxes, and to pay back areas that states have been robbing to balance previous budgets."

Just last week, news reports indicate our federal budget deficit has continued to drop and our economy continues to grow due to the same tax relief policies passed by Congress.

As Congressional Democrats ponder the ramifications of their gigantic tax increase, they should look across the sea.

Massive tax-and-spend policies in countries like France and Germany have led to anemic job creation and stagnant economies.

France elected a new president based largely on his pledge to cut taxes, balance the French budget and get its economy moving again.

Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress must join together to ensure the American economy is not crippled by a massive, European-style tax increase.

The Democratic plan would raise taxes by $3,019 for each person in my south-central Michigan district, according to a recent Heritage Foundation study.

Additionally, the Heritage study revealed this tax increase would cause 2,272 job losses in south-central Michigan and cost my district's economy $207 million.

These numbers are not exclusive to my district, as 100% of Americans will feel the effects of this massive tax increase.

Last month, I introduced the Tax Increase Prevention Act, legislation that would make permanent tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003.

If my bill becomes law, the American people will see none of the tax increases Democrats are proposing on things like marriage, childbirth, adoption, earning money, saving money, paying college loans and dying.

My bill simply takes away all the sunset provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief packages that passed Congress and provides American families and job creators the certainty to plan for the future.

By making these tax cuts permanent and continuing to boost our economy, this Congress can foster further prosperity and build a better, brighter future for our country.

Walberg is a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Michigan.

Iraq After Harry Reid

After Iraq
By Thomas Sowell
July 17, 2007

"And then what?" That is the question which should be asked of those who are demanding that we pull out of Iraq now.

No candid answer should be expected from cynical politicians like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have their bets riding big time on an American defeat in Iraq, as their ticket to winning the 2008 elections.

But that question should be answered by those who honestly and sincerely think that a troop pullout is the answer to the Iraq problem. What do they think will happen if we do?

That question is studiously avoided by those in politics and the media who urge pulling out.

Those who deal in talking points may believe, or claim to believe, that there will be no further repercussions. But those who have to confront the real world know that pulling out now is a formula for a bigger disaster than anything that has already happened in Iraq.

Should American troops stay in Iraq indefinitely?

Nobody has ever wanted that. Our whole history shows that American troops have repeatedly pulled out of countries around the world when wars ended and enough order was restored to turn the country over to its own people.

The political conflict today is between people who think that pulling out should depend on conditions in Iraq, as those conditions unfold, rather than on arbitrary timetables created by politicians with no military experience, and with a time horizon that extends no further than the 2008 elections.

Those who say that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the war on terror seem not to notice that the terrorists themselves obviously think otherwise.

Terrorists are pouring men and military equipment into Iraq, with the help of Iran, and using suicide bombers there for some reason.

Terrorists recognize the high stakes in the outcome of this war, even if growing numbers of people over here refuse to.

To drive the United States out of Iraq would be a huge victory for the terrorists, attracting both recruits and support from around the world, and causing countries around the world to reconsider their ties to the United States.

International cooperation is essential to thwarting and disrupting terrorist activities, through such things as intelligence sharing among nations and clampdowns on the international money flows that finance terrorist activities.

But how many countries will continue to cooperate with the United States when they know that the terrorists are in this for the long haul, while the U.S. can abandon them to their fate at any moment, whenever it becomes politically expedient at home?

Terrorist or Iranian control of Iraq would give them enormous leverage with other countries in the Middle East, putting control of the oil that is the lifeblood of Western economies in the hands of implacable and ruthless enemies.

With more resources to finance more international terrorism, does anyone think the terrorists will spare the United States?

Much has been made of how long we have already stayed in Iraq, the casualties, and the mistakes that have been made. But both deaths and mistakes have always been inseparable from war.

As for how long we have been in Iraq, the cost of a war is not measured in time. It is measured in lives lost.

While our media are impatiently waiting for the 4,000th American death in Iraq that they can trumpet, and rub our noses in -- in the name of "honoring the troops" -- we need to understand that casualty rates in Iraq are low, as wars go.

If and when that 4,000th American death in Iraq is reached, we need to recall that more Marines than that were lost taking one island in the Pacific during World War II.

During the Civil War, more than twice as many Union soldiers as that were killed -- in one day -- at the battle of Shiloh, and again at Gettysburg.

The "war on terror" is a misleading phrase. It is the terrorists' war against us -- and it is not something that we can unilaterally call off. Our only choice is where to fight it, over there or over here.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

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