Investor's Business Daily, August 23rd, 2007
Politics Of War: Barack Obama tells the VFW there's no military solution in Iraq while Gen. David Petraeus proves him wrong. Petraeus is scheduled to report to Congress on Sept. 15. We'd prefer Sept. 11.
Like many other Democrats, former Illinois state legislator and freshman Sen. Barack Obama grudgingly acknowledged at the VFW convention in Kansas City, Mo., this week that the surge, only now complete, was working.
But like other Democrats, he wants us to declare victory and leave because Iraq is not yet an Athenian democracy or Switzerland.
Obama, whose foreign policy includes talking to our enemies while invading our allies, told the assembled veterans, "All our top military commanders recognize that there is no military solution in Iraq."
Maybe Wesley Clark believes that. But Petraeus, our surgin' general, knows that defeating al-Qaida in Iraq, not talking to Iran and Syria, as Obama prefers, is the prerequisite of a free, secure and independent Iraqi democracy.
What Obama and his colleagues fail to note is that the surge only recently started.
In January, the new Democratic Congress voted without objection to put Petraeus in command in Iraq. In his testimony, Petraeus said he would preside over a surge of 21,500 troops. But he made clear the surge would take time.
He said the new deployment wouldn't be complete until June 15. In June, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Christopher Garver said that as troops arrived they "are going to take some time to integrate into their battle space and get to know their counterparts." That would take 30 to 60 days, he added.
So the surge is only now at full strength. Yet on April 19, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid insisted that "this war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything."
The surge already has accomplished a great deal -- reducing violence in Baghdad, pacifying Anbar and Diyala provinces, and uniting Sunni and Shiite tribes in opposition to al-Qaida in Iraq. At full strength, it will accomplish more.
This success, acknowledged even by Sen. Hillary Clinton, has caused Democrats like Obama to lapse into incoherence: We are winning, but we can't win; the surge is working, but Iraq is the biggest foreign policy mistake we've ever made.
No, that dubious distinction, as President Bush has pointed out, was when another Democratic Congress, the Watergate babies of 1974, cut off aid to South Vietnam, spawning the communist killing fields in Cambodia and Vietnam.
Obama also argued that "no military surge can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq's leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks."
We're thankful the French didn't follow Obama's philosophy before helping us win our independence from King George. Our desire for independence was not unanimous. Many wanted to stay part of the British empire.
Our squabbling continued long after independence was won. The Articles of Confederation failed, and we squabbled until we formed our current government under our current Constitution, which we're squabbling about to this day.
Political reconciliation? Like in the current Congress?
More is at stake here than Iraqi democracy. As the president said, cutting off Iraq as the Democrats cut off South Vietnam, and like Bill Clinton's shameful withdrawal from Somalia, would lead not to peace but to another 9/11.
Barack Obama is an inspiring speaker. But the only ones he's inspiring are our enemies.
He prefers the Neville Chamberlain approach. We prefer that used by generals such as Petraeus and Patton.
