Bitter Pills
Greyhawk’s got ‘em. Blue Pill. Red Pill. Another Red Pill. I like this part from Red Pill Part 2:
Its become all too common these days to approach declaring everything before the surge as “failed” in Iraq - in spite of the fact that all of the tactics used during the surge were tried and proven in the years prior, in Tal Afar and Qaim and Ramadi and other locations throughout the country, and nowhere had American troops surrendered the battle.
“We initially looked at this is a classic counterinsurgency, and we moved in and secured the people. We had several examples we were able to follow and studied the counterinsurgency doctrine that our Army has been pushing to the forefront and were able to apply that immediately upon getting here.” Colonel Kershaw wrote, and added praise to the previous unit in the AO: “our predecessors from the Strike Brigade of the 101st literally had their way into the heartland of this al Qaeda sanctuary. Their hard fight really put us in a good position to launch our counterinsurgency operations, which commenced 20 September 2006, as we assumed this area of operations from our Strike brethren.”
Obama, to his credit, seems to have chosen to swallow the red, and gets to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
What you get when you take your medicine. Krauthammer at WPost on the great accomplishment of George W. Bush in the Middle East:
The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States.
They must not pass unnoted. They were certainly noted by Iran, which fought fiercely to undermine the agreements. Tehran understood how a formal U.S.-Iraqi alliance endorsed by a broad Iraqi consensus expressed in a freely elected parliament changes the strategic balance in the region.
For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don’t blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally.
…
A self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Iraq is within our reach. It would have two hugely important effects in the region.
First, it would constitute a major defeat for Tehran, the putative winner of the Iraq war, according to the smart set. Iran’s client, Moqtada al-Sadr, still hiding in Iran, was visibly marginalized in parliament — after being militarily humiliated in Basra and Baghdad by the new Iraqi security forces. Moreover, the major religious Shiite parties were the ones that negotiated, promoted and assured passage of the strategic alliance with the United States, against the most determined Iranian opposition.
Second is the regional effect of the new political entity on display in Baghdad — a flawed yet functioning democratic polity with unprecedented free speech, free elections and freely competing parliamentary factions. For this to happen in the most important Arab country besides Egypt can, over time (over generational time, the time scale of the war on terror), alter the evolution of Arab society. It constitutes our best hope for the kind of fundamental political-cultural change in the Arab sphere that alone will bring about the defeat of Islamic extremism. After all, newly sovereign Iraq is today more engaged in the fight against Arab radicalism than any country on earth, save the United States — with which, mirabile dictu, it has now thrown in its lot.
Don’t just take his word for it. Crittenden at Weekly Standard: Obama’s Debt of Gratitude to George W. Bush.
They’re bitter pills. But if you want to kill that cancer …
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:34 am on Friday, December 5, 2008
One Response to “Bitter Pills”
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December 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
“If we don’t blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq…” Amen, Charles. Two of our bases in Iraq are ‘Hard’-ie-planned for decades of presence as we’ve successfully done in Europe. This is critical. Scampering out of the free, liberated, democratic, prospering country would tell the Persian Mullahs much about American resolve & commitment for the long haul. It will be the prime weather vane of Obama’s mettle. As if Ike had removed American Forces from Germany after taking the oath in January 1954. Or, if JFK removed our military from South Korea in 1961. The despots are hoping for a limp wrist, Barack. What say you show them a continuum of muscular courage. Come to think about it, your Left Base Nutters are hoping for flabby cowardice. What say you hand them a Mister Scowly Face, Kiddo ?