by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n A<\/span>lmost everything that is now written about Iraq rings not quite right: It was a \u201cblunder\u201d; there should have been far more troops there; the country must be trisected; we must abide by a timetable and leave regardless of events on the ground; Iraq will soon devolve into either an Islamic republic or another dictatorship; the U.S. military is enervated and nearly ruined; and so on.<\/p>\n In fact, precisely because we have killed thousands of terrorists, trained an army, and ensured a political process, it is possible to do what was intended from the very beginning: lessen the footprint of American troops in the heart of the ancient caliphate.<\/p>\n Save for a few courageous Democrats, like Senator Joe Lieberman, who look at things empirically rather than ideologically, and some stalwart Republicans, most politicians and public intellectuals have long bailed on the enterprise.<\/p>\n This is now what comprises statesmanship: Some renounce their earlier support for the war. Others, less imaginative, in Clintonian (his and hers) fashion, take credit for backing the miraculous victory of spring 2003, but in hindsight, of course, blame the bloody peace on Bush. Or, better yet, they praise Congressman Murtha to the skies, but under no circumstances go on record urging the military to follow his advice.<\/p>\n How strange that journalists pontificate\u00a0post facto<\/i>\u00a0about all the mistakes that they think have been made, nevertheless conceding that here we are on the verge of a third and final successful election. No mention, of course, is ever made about the current sorry state of journalistic ethics and incompetence (cf. Jayson Blair, Judy Miller, Michael Isikoff, Bob Woodward, Eason Jordan). A group of professionals, after all, who cannot even be professional in their own sphere, surely have no credibility in lecturing the U.S. military about what they think went wrong in Iraq.<\/p>\n Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes, but only one critical lapse \u2014 and it is\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0the Herculean effort to establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less than three years after removing Saddam Hussein. The administration\u2019s lapse, rather, has come in its failure to present the entire war effort in its proper moral context.<\/p>\n We took no oil \u2014 the price in fact skyrocketed after we invaded Iraq. We did not do Israel\u2019s bidding; in fact, it left Gaza after we went into Iraq and elections followed on the West Bank. We did not want perpetual hegemony \u2014 in fact, we got out of Saudi Arabia, used the minimum amount of troops possible, and will leave Iraq anytime its consensual government so decrees. And we did not expropriate Arab resources, but, in fact, poured billions of dollars into Iraq to jumpstart its new consensual government in the greatest foreign aid infusion of the age.<\/p>\n In short, every day the American people should have been reminded of, and congratulated on, their country\u2019s singular idealism, its tireless effort to reject the cynical realism of the past, and its near lone effort to make terrible sacrifices to offer the dispossessed Shia and Kurds something better than the exploitation and near genocide of the past \u2014 and how all that alone will enhance the long-term security of the United States.<\/p>\n That goal was what the U.S. military ended up so brilliantly fighting for \u2014 and what the American public rarely heard. The moral onus should have always been on the critics of the war. They should have been forced to explain why it was wrong to remove a fascist mass murderer, why it was wrong to stay rather than letting the country sink into Lebanon-like chaos, and why it was wrong not to abandon brave women, Kurds, and Shia who only wished for the chance of freedom.<\/p>\n Alas, that message we rarely heard until only recently, and the result has energized amoral leftists, who now pose as moralists by either misrepresenting the cause of the war, undermining the effort of soldiers in the field, or patronizing Iraqis as not yet civilized enough for their own consensual government.<\/p>\n We can draw down our troops not because of political pressures but because of events on the ground. First, the Iraqi military is improving \u2014 not eroding or deserting. The canard of only \u201cone battle-ready brigade\u201d could just as well apply to any of the Coalition forces. After all, what brigade in the world is the equal of the U.S. military \u2014 or could go into the heart of Fallujah house-to-house? The French? The Russians? The Germans? In truth, the Iraqi military is proving good enough to hold ground and soon to take it alongside our own troops.<\/p>\n Despite past calls here to postpone elections, and threats of mass murder there for those who participated in them, they continue on schedule. And the third and last vote is the most important, since it will put a human face on the elected government \u2014 and the onus on it to officially sanction U.S. help and monetary aid or refuse it.<\/p>\n Saddam\u2019s trial will remind the world of his butchery. Despite all the ankle-biting by human-rights groups about proper jurisprudence, the Iraqis will try him and convict him much more quickly than the Europeans will do the same to Milosevic (not to mention the other killers still loose like Gen. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic), posing the question: What is the real morality \u2014 trying a mass murderer and having him pay for his crimes, or engaging in legal niceties for years while the ghosts of his victims cry for justice?<\/p>\n More importantly, we can also calibrate our progress by examining the perceived self-interest of the various players, here and abroad.<\/p>\n The Sunnis \u2014 no oil, a minority population, increasing disgust with Zarqawi, a shameful past under Saddam \u2014 will participate in the December elections in large numbers. They now have no choice other than either to be perpetual renegades and terrorists inside their own country or to gain world respect by turning to democracy. The election train is leaving in December and this time they won\u2019t be left at the station.<\/p>\n Zarqawi and the radical Islamicists are slowly being squeezed as only a war at their doorstep could accomplish. Critics of Iraq should ask if we were not fighting Zarqawi in Iraq,\u00a0where<\/i>\u00a0exactly would we be fighting Islamic fascists \u2014 or would the war against terror be declared over, won, lost, dormant, or ongoing, with the U.S. simply playing defense?<\/p>\n Instead, what Iraq did is ensure that al Qaeda\u2019s Sunni support is being coopted by democracy. Jordan, the terrorists\u2019 old ace in the hole that could always put a cosmetic face on its stealthy support for radicals, has essentially turned on Zarqawi and with him al Qaeda. Syria is under virtual siege and its border sanctuary now a killing zone. Bin Laden can offer very little solace from his cave. And somehow Islamists have alienated the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Japan, and increasingly Middle East democracies like those in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq, and reform movements in Lebanon and Jordan.<\/p>\n Decision day is coming when Zarqawi\u2019s bombers will have to choose either to die, or, like a Nathan Bedford Forrest (\u201cI\u2019m a goin\u2019 home\u201d), quit to join the reform-seeking majority. That progress was accomplished only by the war in Iraq, and without it we would be back to playing a waiting game for another 9\/11, while an autocratic Middle East went on quietly helping terrorists without consequences, either afraid of Saddam or secretly enjoying his chauvinist defiance.<\/p>\n Kurds and Shiites support us for obvious reasons \u2014 no other government on the planet would risk its sons and daughters to give them the right of one man\/one vote. They may talk the necessary talk about infidels, but they know we will leave anytime they so vote. After the December election, expect them \u2014 and perhaps the Sunnis as well \u2014 quietly to ask us to stay to see things through.<\/p>\n Europe is quiet now. Madrid, London, Paris, and Amsterdam have taught Europeans that it is not George Bush but Islamic fascism that threatens their very existence. Worse still, they rightly fear they have lost the good will of the United States that so generously subsidized their defense \u2014 an entitlement perhaps to be sneered at during the post-Cold War \u201cend of history,\u201d but not in a new global war against Islamic terrorists keen to acquire deadly weapons.<\/p>\n Our military realizes that it can trump its brilliant victories in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein by birthing democracy in Iraq \u2014 or risk losing that impressive reputation by having a new Lebanon blow up in its face. China, Japan, India, Russia, Korea, Iran, and other key countries are all watching Iraq \u2014 ready to calibrate American deterrence by the efficacy of the U.S. military in the Sunni Triangle. Our armed forces have already accomplished what the British and the Soviets could never do in Afghanistan; what the Russians failed to accomplish in Chechnya; and what we came so close to finishing in Vietnam. They won\u2019t falter now when they are so close to winning an almost impossibly difficult war, one that will be recognized by friends and enemies as beyond the capability of any other military in the world.<\/p>\n The Left now risks losing its self-proclaimed moral appeal. It had trashed the efforts in Iraq for months on end, demanded a withdrawal \u2014 only recently to learn from polls that an unhappy public may also be unhappy with it for advocating fleeing while American soldiers are in harm\u2019s way. Another successful election, polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly wishing us to stay on, visits by elected Iraqi officials asking continued help, and a decreasing American footprint will gradually erode the appeal of the antiwar protests \u2014 especially as triangulating public intellectuals and pundits begin to quiet down, fathoming that the United States may win after all.<\/p>\n The administration realizes that as long as it stays the course and our military remains confident we can win, we will \u2014 despite defections in the Congress, venom in the press, and cyclical lows in the polls. In practical political terms, only the administration, not the Congress or the courts, can choose to cease our efforts in Iraq. Rightly or wrongly, the Bush administration will be judged on Iraq: If we lose, the president will be seen as a tragic LBJ-like figure who squandered his initial grassroots support in a foreign quagmire; if we win, he will be remembered, in spirit, as something akin to a Harry Truman, and, in deed, an FDR who won a critical war against impossible odds, and restored the security of the United States.<\/p>\n George Bush may well go down in history as a less-effective leader than his father or Bill Clinton; but unlike either, he may also have a real chance to be remembered in that select class of rare presidents whom history records as having saved this country at a time of national peril and in the face of unprecedented criticism. Bush\u2019s domestic agenda hinges on Iraq: If he withdraws now, his proposals on taxes, social security, deficit reduction, education, and immigration are dead. If he sees the Iraq project through, these now-iffy initiatives will piggyback on the groundswell of popular thanks he will receive for reforming the Middle East.<\/p>\n Strangely, I doubt whether very many would agree with much of anything stated above \u2014 at least for now. But if the administration can emphasize the moral nature of this war, and the military can continue its underappreciated, but mostly successful efforts to defeat the enemy and give the Iraqis a few more months of breathing space, who knows what the current opportunists and pessimists will say by summer.Will they say that they in fact were always sorta, kinda, really for removing Saddam and even staying on to see democracy work in Iraq?<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Almost everything that is now written about Iraq rings not quite right: It was a \u201cblunder\u201d; there should have been far more troops there; the country must be trisected; we must abide by a timetable and leave […]<\/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":[782],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-15C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2066,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-flip-flopping-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":0},"title":"Our Flip-Flopping Wars","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We don't hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we? The war at one point almost tore apart this country. Public anger sent George W. Bush's approval ratings plummeting. And the outrage over our losses helped elect vocal anti-Iraq-war candidate Barack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3581,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-york-times-surrenders\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":1},"title":"The New York Times Surrenders","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A monument to defeatism on the editorial page by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal Online On July 8, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0ran an historic editorial entitled \u201cThe Road Home,\u201d demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but \u201cThe Road Home\u201d pulls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2007"","block_context":{"text":"July 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/july-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1348,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-surges\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":2},"title":"A Tale of Two Surges","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services From 2007 to 2009, a surge of 20,000 troops under the generalship of David Petraeus saved a mostly lost war in Iraq. Petraeus\u2019s counterinsurgency doctrine helped win over the population, as the surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq\u2019s government and military.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-to-lose-this-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":3},"title":"How To Lose This War","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers As gas prices rise at home, scream that the war abroad was fought to steal Iraqi oil and get American hands on cheap petroleum. Talk about American imperialism and hegemony while the United States spends billions of dollars to implant democracy in Afghanistan and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2004"","block_context":{"text":"May 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/may-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1283,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraq-through-the-looking-glass\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":4},"title":"Iraq Through the Looking Glass","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Most Americans will support President Obama\u2019s call for patience in Afghanistan and his policy of continuing the long-planned drawdown in Iraq. But there was something bizarre about his entire Iraq speech \u2014 it was as if it were being delivered by an exhausted Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2010"","block_context":{"text":"September 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/september-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7900,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bomb-occupy-or-neither\/","url_meta":{"origin":4192,"position":5},"title":"Bomb, Occupy, or Neither?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Blowing apart a problem for a while is different from ending it for good. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Wars usually end only when the defeated aggressor believes it would be futile to resume the conflict. 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