Investor's Business Daily, August 29th, 2007
Iraq: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the military success of the surge "misses the point" and complains of too little political progress in Baghdad. Is she blind, or do she and other Democrats just refuse to see?
Responding to President Bush's speech to veterans in Reno, Nev., on Tuesday, Pelosi pointed to continued sectarian violence in Iraq.
"Rather than reducing the threat of terrorism and promoting stability in the Middle East, the President's Iraq policy is making each worse," she said in a statement.
Not surprisingly, Pelosi also dutifully repeated the mantra so prominent in the Democrats' talking points:
"The purpose of the surge was to provide the Iraqis 'breathing room' for political reconciliation -- and the Maliki government has utterly failed."
Its crass political purpose is to lead Americans into thinking that no matter how successful Gen. David Petraeus is with his increased force strength and adept new counter-insurgency strategy, and no matter what good news he reports to Congress next month, Iraq is a lost cause and the president has failed.
But Pelosi and her allies are ignoring remarkable developments:
Al-Sadr's cease-fire: The Mahdi army, so powerful in Shiite-dominated cities like Basra and apparently getting more powerful, was just ordered by its leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, "to suspend all its activities for six months until it is restructured in a way that helps honor the principles for which it is formed."
Clearly, al-Sadr fears the consequences of the increasing intra-Shiite violence, like that seen in the central city of Karbala this week. But is there more to it than just that? Has al-Sadr become convinced that representative government in Iraq is durable enough for him to convert his organization into a political force? Months ago he ordered the Mahdi army to avoid hostilities with coalition and Iraqi security forces. Has the surge's effectiveness persuaded him of the U.S. commitment to a future of freedom in Iraq?
Oil revenue sharing: Details are scarce, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki apparently already is distributing some of the nation's oil wealth to the provinces and claims to have secured ethnic leaders' endorsement of the draft of a law to divide revenue.
De-Baathification: Iraq's five top political leaders on Sunday agreed to set free thousands of prisoners being held without charge and allow members of Saddam Hussein's political party to hold government jobs.
Joint fatwa against terrorism: As former Reagan national security adviser Robert McFarlane noted last week, six senior Shiite and Sunni religious leaders have agreed to work toward "the early issuance of a joint Sunni-Shia fatwa to the Iraqi people" that would, in their words, "end terrorist violence, and to disband militia activity in order to build a civilized country and work within the framework of law."
The leaders include Sheikh Ahmed al-Kubaisi, Iraq's senior Sunni religious authority whose radio sermons reach 20 million listeners, and the chief of staff to the Shiites' Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, widely considered the most influential figure in Iraq.
If such welcome developments can't be considered to be "promoting stability" it's hard to imagine what Pelosi would see as doing so. It might help, of course, if she were willing to open her eyes.
