Victor Davis Hanson: Why It’s So Hard to Win
Is it five or ten or fifteen — years that are necessary to win wars of counterinsurgency such as Iraq? By now, Americans are well acquainted with such warnings that patience — along with political and economic reforms, not just arms — defeats guerrillas.
In these messy fights, Western nations can’t, for both practical and moral reasons, use the full advantages of overwhelming arms against terrorists that hide among civilians. Such conflicts are fought far from home for perceived long-term security interests, rather than the immediate survival of the United States. And when the rising cost in blood and treasure cannot be easily explained, restive voters often give up rather than insist on eventual victory.
Charles Krauthammer: Petraeus’s Success
When asked about Shiite militia domination of southern Iraq, Petraeus patiently went through the four provinces, one by one, displaying a degree of knowledge of the local players, terrain, and balance of power that no one in Washington — and few in Iraq — could match.
When Biden thought he had a gotcha — contradictions between Petraeus’s report on Iraqi violence and the less favorable one by the Government Accountability Office — Petraeus calmly pointed out that the GAO had to cut its data-gathering five weeks short to meet reporting requirements to Congress. And since those most recent five weeks had been particularly productive for the coalition, the GAO numbers were not only outdated but misleading.
For all the attempts by Democrats and the antiwar movement to discredit Petraeus, he won the congressional confrontation hands down. He demonstrated enough military progress from his new counterinsurgency strategy to conclude: “I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our objectives in Iraq.”
Ann Coulter: From the halls of Malibu to the shores of Kennedy
But liberals soon began raising yet more pointless quibbles. For most of 2003, they said the war was a failure because we hadn’t captured Saddam Hussein. Then we captured Saddam, and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean complained that “the capture of Saddam has not made America safer.” (On the other hand, Howard Dean’s failure to be elected president definitely made America safer.)
Next, liberals said the war was a failure because we hadn’t captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Then we killed al-Zarqawi and a half-dozen of his aides in an air raid. Then they said the war was a failure because … you get the picture.
The Democrats’ current talking point is that “there can be no military solution in Iraq without a political solution.” But back when we were imposing a political solution, Democrats’ talking point was that there could be no political solution without a military solution.
Charles Krauthammer: Iraq divided
It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq’s Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned — and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.
Times Online: Hardline takeover of British mosques
Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood†for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.
Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.
As far as London is concerned, it’s very hard to make the argument that the Islamist threat consists of only a few bad apples. Presumably, these 600+ radical mosques are not empty.
Andrew C. McCarthy: No More Illusions
NRO’s Andrew C. McCarthy reviews fellow NRO contributor, and Iran scholar, Michael Ledeen’s latest book: The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction.
His latest book, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction, is released today. It is required reading for anyone — which ought to mean everyone — desirous of understanding the existential threat we face and why its beating heart is Tehran. Ledeen — incumbent of the American Enterprise Institute’s Freedom Chair, Reagan administration adviser on national-security matters, long-time National Review Online contributing editor, peerlessly insightful thinker on the ongoing war, and (in the interest of full disclosure) my good friend — has painstakingly laid out an indictment in two irrefutable counts: the Iranian regime’s unremitting determination to supplant the United States and establish a global Islamic hegemony; and the U.S.’s unremitting determination to deny (indeed, consciously to avoid knowledge of) reality, notwithstanding the mounting evidence … and body count.
Charles Krauthammer: Washington vs. Maliki
Maliki is not just weak but unreliable. Time is short. We should have long ago — say, when Stephen Hadley wrote his leaked memo last November about Maliki’s failure — begun working to have this dysfunctional government replaced.
Even the French foreign minister, upon returning from a recent fence-mending trip to Iraq, called for Maliki’s replacement. (One can discount his later apology as pro forma.) Such suggestions are often denounced as hypocritical and contrary to democracy. Nonsense. In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence.
Does anyone imagine that Maliki enjoys the confidence of the majority of Iraqis? If he does not, parliament, representing the people, has the perfect right to vote no confidence and bring down the government.
Victor Davis Hanson: For now, we should avoid a smoking Tehran
But there are subtle indications that U.S. policy is slowly working, and that a strike now on Iran would be a grave mistake, in every strategic and political sense — not to mention the humanitarian one of harming a populace that may well soon prove to be the most pro-Western in the region.
It is surreal, after all, that a French president would confess that Iran getting the bomb is “unacceptable.†Sarkozy seems to recognize that a nuclear Iran won’t be happy with bullying neighboring oil producers and carving up Iraq, but will be soon blackmailing Europe on issues from trade to war.
So finally a French leader seems to allow that if the Europeans would just cease all financial relations with Teheran, freeze their assets, and stop sending them everything from sniper rifles to machine tools, then the crippled regime would start to stagger even more. And because France has been the most obstructionist in the past to U.S. efforts in the Middle East, its mere rhetoric is nearly beyond belief.
Austin Bay: Gen. Petraeus’ Pivotal Report
There really is no particularly informative historical precedent for Gen. David Petraeus’ upcoming public assessment of Iraq.
Perhaps we are entering new historical terrain, where the commanding general’s pivotal strategic gambit is a media event.
And media event it is. With its certain long-term global import and short-term political impact, Petraeus’ report meets a hustling television exec’s primal requirement: drama.
When the spotlight strikes his face and he begins to speak, we will witness drama in large letters.
No one, however, should confuse the general’s appearance with entertainment.
Christopher Hitchens: Which Iraq War Do You Want To End?
When people say that they want to end the war in Iraq, I always want to ask them which war they mean. There are currently at least three wars, along with several subconflicts, being fought on Iraqi soil. The first, tragically, is the battle for mastery between Sunni and Shiite. The second is the campaign to isolate and defeat al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. The third is the struggle of Iraq’s Kurdish minority to defend and consolidate its regional government in the north.
