Investor's Business Daily, May 21st, 2007
War On Terror: In both Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces are making further impressive gains against terrorists. Don't expect Democrats to let that stop them from claiming that we're losing.
As part of the new surge strategy in Iraq, U.S. Marines and Iraqi army forces have arrested 250 terrorists in the large, once-unmanageable western province of Anbar, it was reported on Sunday. Operation Harris Ba'sil, or "Valiant Guardian," reached completion after eight weeks of disrupting enemy routes and shelters outside cities.
"We uncovered more than 250 caches, arrested over 250 suspected insurgents and discovered over 100 improvised explosive devices," Lt. Col. Michael Manning of Regimental Combat Team 2 reported.
"We clearly surprised them. The number of caches and detainees attest to that; but more importantly, we let the enemy know that they can't hide from us," he said.
Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan on Sunday an ambush of U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces led to a 14-hour battle and airstrikes of seven enemy compounds that killed 25 terrorists, including a Taliban commander named Mullah Younus. Last week, the feared Taliban military mastermind and "butcher of Kandahar" Mullah Dadullah was confirmed killed.
Are Democrats cheering these victories in the war on terror?
Quite the contrary. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continue to try to pass legislation to starve our troops.
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards just called on Americans to spend Memorial Day demonstrating against the war in Iraq. That way, according to the former U.S. senator from North Carolina, the world will stop thinking "we're a bully and we're selfish."
American Legion national commander Paul Morin was right to call Edwards' idea "as inappropriate as a political bumper sticker on an Arlington headstone."
The Iraqi people braved bullets for their chance at representative government, but we got a chilling reminder this week of their awareness that America might provide a repeat performance of Vietnam: Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi announced that Iraq's military will draw up plans on, as he put it, "how we can deal with a sudden pullout."
With 23 killed over the weekend in Taliban suicide bombings, including three German soldiers, complaints have intensified of too many civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The country's pro-Western president, Hamid Karzai, has suggested it could threaten his government's stability, and the Afghan parliament wants negotiations with the Taliban.
German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung complained to NATO and warned of "erosion of support in the civilian population in Afghanistan," and NATO responded that military tactics in Afghanistan will be reviewed. Jung was quick to add, however, that it is "a clear, express tactic of the enemy in Afghanistan to put civilians in harm's way."
Americans must bear in mind that the exact same is true in Iraq, too. On Sunday, 55 people were killed or found dead there, 24 of whom were executed. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, bombings in busy markets filled with innocents, including women and children, are one of the Islamofascist terrorists' chief tactics.
Killing innocents in large numbers is, after all, the aim of terrorism, and the terrorists in both countries know how effective a method it is in eroding support for the war on terror, both in America and other Western nations, as well as among war-weary Muslims in the Middle East. Anyone who expects it to stop, or even slow to a trickle, without intervention is being naive.
Such gruesome slaughters must not distract us in either of the two countries. We are making progress in both on the road to victory. To let Edwards, Pelosi, Reid or any other politician who has invested in surrender veer us from our course would be disastrous.
