Peter Beinart, in The Washington Post:
It’s no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge. According to Michael O’Hanlon and Jason Campbell of the Brookings Institution, the number of Iraqi war dead was 500 in November of 2008, compared with 3,475 in November of 2006. That same month, 69 Americans died in Iraq; in November 2008, 12 did.
Violence in Anbar province is down more than 90 percent over the past two years. …
[Bush’s] decision to increase America’s troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.
Liberation a stain? But Breinart couches his praise for the “surge” with continuing scorn for Iraq’s liberation itself, as if the United States went to Iraq only to remove Saddam’s suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
As Breinart puts it:
“[E]ven if the calm endures, that still doesn’t justify the Bush administration's initial decision to go to war, which remains one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history. But if Iraq overall represents a massive stain on Bush’s record …” you’ve got to admire the success of the surge.
Selfish slant. What? Here, crystallized, is the problem with the Democratic zealots. The never looked at the liberal reason for liberating Iraq. Never. They insisted like ultraconservatives on selfish reasons for invading Iraq. They asked only what was in this for “us,” and never saw what obviously was in it for the long-oppressed people living in Saddam’s totalitarian darkness. And those Democrats should be ashamed.
For the record, the invasion and democratization of Iraq always was called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” not “Operation Find WMDs or Let Saddam’s Fascism Return.” When Bush made his case before the U.N. on Sept. 12, 2002, the first reason for action he cited was Saddam’s violation of U.N. Resolution 688, which ordered Saddam to end his repression.
As a dictator who started this war with the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which cost Kuwaiti, Iraqi and American lives, Saddam was on parole under the 1991 cease-fire terms, which also required that he immediately and fully open all Iraqi facilities to U.N. arms inspectors.
Celebrate freedom. Saddam didn’t immediately open up. He didn’t stop his repression. It’s not in the nature of fascist dictators to be open or accountable or kind. Fascism is something that real liberals, not our recent Democratic partisans, want ended.
Real liberals are celebrating the liberation of Iraq. Breinart shouldn’t be asking the Democrats to admit that one military campaign worked. He should be asking Democrats to admit what was won in Iraq, the freedom of 25 million people. He should be asking Democrats why they were willing to abandon Iraq to fascism forever.
Breinart should be asking the Democrats what they are.
Frank Warner
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Update: Roger L. Simon makes a similar observation.
See also: Historian: Bush was right.
The neo-communists who are socializing America, buying banks, nationalizing car companies, and eliminating a woman's right to choose (her own doctor) don't want freedom for the US, much less for Iraq.
Posted by: Don Meaker | January 18, 2009 at 07:37 PM