by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>he haggling over various resolutions and nit-picking (inasmuch as no one is seriously going to cut off funding) the surge is surreal. Whatever critics think of its rationale, it is clear that something dramatic is going to shortly transpire, most likely a last-ditch, go-for-broke effort to secure Baghdad that deserves the support of all Americans and our representatives.<\/p>\n Surely if Congress can confirm General Petraeus without a dissenting vote, it can at least give this gifted officer a period of grace to allow his counteroffensive to proceed without pre-judgment \u2014 especially when thousands of American troops will be on the offensive in a matter of hours and in greater danger as all eyes turn to Baghdad.<\/p>\n We hear ad nauseam that there is no “military solution” to Iraq, followed by platitudes about political compromises, trisection, fill-in-the-blanks diplomacy. But, in fact, only a military blow to the insurgency will allow the necessary window for the government to gain time, trust, and confidence to press ahead with reform and services. And this is as it always has been in wars. After Cold Harbor Lincoln was at an impasse \u2014 his twin workhorses, Grant and Sherman, stymied and stalled.<\/p>\n Only when Sherman cut loose from his supply lines and surrounded Atlanta (taken on September 2, 1864), along with Phil Sheridan’s progress in Virginia (September – October), was Lincoln’s political agenda of emancipation and reunification of the United States back on track. In World War I, the British government was tottering until General Haig withstood the German spring offensive of 1918 and gave the necessary respite for the surge of American troops to allow the allies to go back on the offensive and give the politicians the credibility to demand a German surrender.<\/p>\n After the fall of France, Dunkirk, losses in the Atlantic, Greece, Singapore, and Tobruk, Churchill’s soaring rhetoric was wearing thin and had earned him a motion introduced calling for censure; only the subsequent successes in North Africa, in the Atlantic, and in the air above Germany gave him renewed stature to press the case for absolute resistance to Hitler. General Ridgeway did the same in Korea, mostly through personal magnetism and insistence that his demoralized subordinates cease their defeatism and go back on the offensive. Had he failed, Truman would not have the capital to save the south. Abrams, and the so-called “Christmas bombing,” almost pulled off the same in Vietnam.<\/p>\n So now General Petraeus is trying to shake-up our forces to believe that they can and will so damage the insurgents that the Iraqi security forces and their government will gain confidence to join the offensive, and the shell-shocked citizens, sick of violence and glad for a last-chance reprieve, will support the efforts to establish calm in Baghdad.<\/p>\n Again, our elected representatives can at least call for a moratorium of a few weeks on self-serving bombast and blatant pre-2008 political maneuvering \u2014 when so many Americans are now risking their all to take on the jihadists for the future of Iraq.<\/p>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How about a moratorium on 2008 politics for a bit? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The haggling over various resolutions and nit-picking (inasmuch as no one is seriously going to cut off funding) the surge is surreal. Whatever critics think of its rationale, it is clear that something dramatic is going to shortly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[761],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-XA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3667,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-world-of-difference\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":0},"title":"A World of Difference","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Can General Petraeus turn was in Iraq around? by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The verdict on four years of fighting in Iraq hinges on the events of the next few months. With the U.S. public and many politicians intensely skeptical that a changed military strategy can salvage the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2007"","block_context":{"text":"March 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/march-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3283,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraq-round-three\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":1},"title":"Iraq, Round Three","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Policy Review A review of\u00a0Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New \u2018Greatest Generation\u2019 of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope\u00a0by Michael Yon and\u00a0Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq\u00a0by Linda\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3517,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-yet-for-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":2},"title":"Hope Yet for Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Iraq for most Americans is now a toxic subject \u2014 best either ignored or largely evoked to blame someone for something in the past. Any visitor to Iraq can see that the American military cannot be defeated there, but also\u00a0is puzzled over exactly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8988,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-administration-needs-to-abandon-its-petraeus-obsession\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":3},"title":"Obama Administration Needs to Abandon Its Petraeus Obsession","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or \"Trotskyized,\" all the images of any past kingpin who became politically\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"rfr","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/rfr-e1454252522115.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":330,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/too-many-narratives-to-get-straight\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":4},"title":"Too Many Narratives to Get Straight?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner At some point the prurient angle of the Petraeus story that alone enticed a reluctant media into becoming tangentially interested in Benghazi-gate \u2014 in the way the deaths of four Americans never did \u2014 will die down. Then we are left with largely three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3555,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-burdens-of-general-petraeus\/","url_meta":{"origin":3694,"position":5},"title":"The Burdens of General Petraeus","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"No simple mission. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I. Our Rules \/ Their Rules Several governments have defeated Islamic insurgencies, but usually only after about ten years, and adopting policies of summary executions and carpet bombing or shelling.\u00a0 The Algerians in the 1990s finally stopped the so-called Islamic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2007"","block_context":{"text":"August 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/august-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3695,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}