Right Wing Nut House

LIBERAL BLOGGERS DISCUSS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES

I would like to take this opportunity occasioned by the arrest of the 6 obviously deranged, laughably incompetent dufuses who planned to shoot up Fort Dix (and who just happen on the off chance and by no special happenstance to be Muslims) to publicly and fervently thank lefty bloggers for their reality based approach to fighting terrorism in America.

What would we do without you guys? Keeping America safe from hysterical righties who see terrorists around every corner and terrorism in every “dog bites man” story must be taxing as well as boring work. Hardly a challenge for people of your intellectual acumen and discernment. After all, there’s a difference between being observant and alert to the danger of terrorism and being paranoid.

Just ask the airline security workers who let 3 of the 5 9/11 hijackers through their checkpoint at Dulles International airport even after they set off the metal detector.

“Frickin’ box cutters? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? These durn machines are a waste of time, dontchya think?” (Chuckling) “Move along, sir. And thank you for flying American Airlines.”

And making jokes about promoting the idea that an army of “John Does” can do more to stop terrorism here at home than the police, the FBI, and Karl Rove’s Super Secret Domestic Spying Machine and Pasta Maker put together is just your way of making sure that innocent pizza makers, convenience store clerks, and roofers (who just happen on the off chance and by no special happenstance to be Muslims) aren’t caught up in “terrorist fever” and unfairly branded as “radical jihadists hell bent on killing Americans.”

I’m sure that will come as a relief to Mohamed Atta’s flight instructor.

“Okay, lemme get this straight. You want to use the simulator to learn how to take off and fly a commercial jet but you have no interest in learning how to land? Well, that will save some time, won’t it? Here. Let me get you started.”

I think we should follow the example of FDL’s TRex who BRAVELY informs us that even without reading right wing blogs, he knows exactly what they’re saying:

You know that Debbie Schlussel is turning clumsy-ass cartwheels of joy that there’s finally some Hot Islamic Jihadi Action for her to write about. And of course, their semi-questionable citizenship status has Michelle Malkin melting through her Victoria’s Secret white cotton lady briefs. You can go look at their blogs if you want. I don’t have the stomach for it. They’ll be dining out on these six losers and their woodland paintball games all the way to the 2008 elections and beyond. The Muslim Fanatics are, like, totally among us right now!! Time to start rounding them all up, eh, Internment Girl?

Never mind that we’ve done this song and dance before with those seven losers in a warehouse in Miami that got arrested last year. Never mind that this is all suspiciously well-timed for the Bush Assministration, whose poll numbers are tanking and whose pet idiot will be making his second (and undoubtedly awe-inspiringly bad) testimony before Congress the day after tomorrow.

No, this time it’s different! This time it’s important! This time the threat was REAL!

(”Wolf!” cried the boy, “Wolf! Wolf!”)

So, expect this to be in heavy rotation in the media cycle over the next couple of weeks. They’re going to milk it for every last possible fear-mongering, freedom-squelching, race-baiting drop that they can squeeze out. You’re actually going to miss the Anna Nicole frenzy. You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

How could I have missed it? IT’S THE TIMING! IT’S THE TIMING! Jeez am I dense. Gonna have to recalibrate my Bush Headlong Rush To Dictatorship Meter or I may miss out on all the fun next time.

And TRex has this thing nailed. Why get our panties in a bunch over these fanatics? First of all, did you notice where 4 of them were from?

ALBANIA FER CRISSAKES! Albania? Quick - name something dangerous that ever came out of Albania. No, not Dracula. Close, but he was from Transylvania. Jesus, the most dangerous beasts in Albania are the goats - vicious animals who’ve been known to attack unarmed civilian carts without warning.

And after all, let’s face facts. It’s not like these guys wanted to shoot up innocent civilians. So what if they wanted to kill a few soldiers, right TRex? They probably would have died anyway once they were sent to Iraq, right? I’m sure you’ll agree that this way, we would have saved money having to ship the bodies back home.

But even more telling is that these guys evidently ran around the woods in New Jersey, whooping it up, shouting jihadi slogans and shooting paintball pellets at infidel trees. Give ‘em a pickup truck with a Confederate battle flag, fill ‘em full of white lightening, stick a chaw of tobacky in their teeth and they could be any group of fun lovin’, gun totin’, goober chewin’, bible thumpin’, cousin screwin’ militia men. Right, Dave?

The right-wing blogosphere needs to take a shower or something. They’ve been positively creaming their jeans over the arrest of five suspected Islamist terrorists who are charged with plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix. Malkin, of course, is leading the pack, but it’s seen as Vindication Day throughout the whole “John Doe”/Jihad Watch right, including Little Green Footballs and Der Perfesser.

Funny how little attention any of them have paid to the mirror-image case down in Alabama involving the militiamen who were reportedly plotting to bomb and gun down Mexicans in a nearby town. In fact, the only place I could find mention of it was at Outside the Beltway, and that was a post questioning the need for the arrests.

Dunno. Sounds serious. Planning between gulps of Mountain Dew to “bomb and gun down Mexicans” is a crime in most of these here parts. Alas, it doesn’t appear to have been quite what our Davey is getting his panties in a bunch about:

The sergeant major turned out to be a government informant.

And the informant reported to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the Free Militia was making and stockpiling grenades.

The indictment lists numerous other charges, including possession of a machine gun, a homemade silencer, a short-barreled shotgun, 68 homemade explosive projectiles and about 100 marijuana plants.

… The informant reported that Dillard tried to sell him some of the homemade hand grenades. He also reported that he and Dillard went to a military surplus store in Bynum to buy 12 grenade hulls and later packed them with powder and hid them under rocks by a dead tree in the woods.

The informant’s affidavit does not mention plans to attack Hispanic groups.

But at a bail hearing Tuesday, ATF agent Adam Nesmith introduced the idea that the Free Militia was planning to gun down Mexicans in the small town of Remlap northeast of Birmingham.

I QUESTION THE TIMING!

Um, no that’s not really right. But I’d ask Dave why he believes one branch of the government in one case (the ATF saying that the homegrown swag swilling yip yips planned on taking out a few of our darker skinned brethren) regarding a planned terrorist attack while another branch of government (the FBI saying that the Dix Six or the guys in Miami, or any other recent possible jihadi plans that have been thwarted) is to be considered suspect.

I guess I just don’t have that level of “discernment” necessary to be a true liberal. Not like the folks at Wonkette:

Ok. So, the plot was: six dudes from New Jersey buy some guns and storm Fort Dix. The Fort Dix that is full of lots and lots of Army reservists with way, way more guns. And, like, extensive military training and s**t. Yes, thank god these terrorists have been caught and locked up before they could be killed within minutes of deciding to carry out the dumbest f***ing terrorist plot we’ve ever heard of.

I heartily agree. No doubt that the dufuses would have been cut down in “minutes” - say, for the sake of argument, 5 minutes - which would have only resulted in a few needless deaths of soldiers who, after all, would probably have ended up in Iraq anyway and fallen victim to an IED or an insurgent bullet. Better they get murdered en masse here at the hands of fanatics (who just happen on the off chance and by no special happenstance to be Muslims) then killed over there at the hands of…fanatics?

Yep. “Dumbest f**king terrorist plot” I’ve ever heard of…

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt also notes that the left is downplaying (as usual) this particular terrorist plan and links to Andrew McCarthy’s excellent piece in today’s NRO:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it[.] … This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.”

The direction is to everyone. And he is not ordering that it be done because Osama says so, like the mafia does something because the don says so, or the army does something because the commanding officer says so. In bin Laden’s mind, he is merely the medium; the direction, he insists, comes from Allah. In fact, bin Laden plainly knows he is not enough of an authority figure to command terrorist attacks. He needs to cite scripture to convince Muslims that it is the ideology itself which announces these commands. Commands which this ideology compels every Muslim, not just every al Qaeda operative, to perform.

Until this singular fact sinks in on the left and among our elites, we will be fighting the War on Terror with one hand tied behind our backs. I’ve written extensively about the absolute need to get the western left fully engaged in this fight. But as long as they continue to use the War on Terror as a purely political issue or their own stupidity blinds them to the danger, we cannot and will not win.

Forget the surge. Forget the Democrats and their idiotic timetables and benchmarks. Forget that the President is once again mishandling the delicate political situation in Iraq. This news from the Iraqi Vice President about the Sunnis simply up and leaving the government is the crisis of the war:

Iraq’s top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc out of the government — a potentially devastating blow to reconciliation efforts within Iraq. He also said he turned down an offer by President Bush to visit Washington until he can count more fully on U.S. help.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi made his comments in an interview with CNN. He said if key amendments to the Iraq Constitution are not made by May 15, he will step down and pull his 44 Sunni politicians out of the 275-member Iraqi parliament.

“If the constitution is not subject to major changes, definitely, I will tell my constituency frankly that I have made the mistake of my life when I put my endorsement to that national accord,” he said. (Watch al-Hashimi express anger over lack of power-sharing )

Specifically, he wants guarantees in the constitution that the country won’t be split into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish federal states that he says will disadvantage Sunnis.

Al-Hashimi’s cooperation with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government is widely seen as essential if there is to be a realistic chance of bridging the Shiite-Sunni divide in Iraq — one of the key goals of the Bush administration.

Al-Hashimi is no fool. He can see as well as I or anyone else who has bothered to pay attention that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not making a sincere effort to address the issues that would facilitate reconciliation between Sunni and Shia and start the process of making Iraq a whole country again. The oil revenue sharing bill has been languishing for months in the Iraqi Parliament with no sign that the objections of the Kurds or Sunnis are being addressed much less that the Shias are anxious for the bill to become law in the first place.

Some of the other vital issues that Maliki is either avoiding or approaching in a half hearted manner guaranteeing failure include the proposed de-Baathification board that would allow those Sunnis who worked for Saddam but did not participate in the atrocities to work for the government - an important economic measure for the Sunni community where unemployment is rampant and where many thousands are prevented from police and army duty by their past affiliation with the regime. And Maliki’s reconciliation plan - submitted to Parliament with great fanfare last June - seems to have slipped through the cracks with nary a word heard about it in months. A Reconciliation Conference held last spring was a spectacular failure as most of the Sunni invitees refused to attend. And why should they? Until amnesty for insurgents is put on the table, what’s the point?

There are other issues that al-Hashimi and the Sunnis are concerned about including the above mentioned changes in the constitution. Outnumbered, outgunned, and nearly out of time, the Sunnis need those constitutional changes to salvage what’s left of their community. With nearly 2.5 million refugees outside the country and 750,000 internally displaced citizens (the vast majority of them Sunnis) the Sunni population has declined by an estimated 15% and is only getting smaller. They must have hope that there is a place for them in the new Iraq. And Maliki and the Shias are spitting in their face by not addressing any of their concerns.

To be sure Maliki finds opposition to these plans at every turn. Some of it almost certainly inspired by an irrational desire on the part of some Shias and Kurds for revenge. That, after all, is why Iraq is in a civil war. But there also appears to be some calculation involved on the part of both Maliki’s Dawa party and the largest political party in Iraq, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Dragging their feet in Parliament and in the Cabinet council can be seen as a deliberate attempt to effect exactly the outcome al-Hashimi is threatening; a Sunni withdrawal from government which would give these Shia elements the excuse to either “ghettoize” the Sunnis by confining them to central and western Iraq or worse, it would give some of their more radical members a pretext to begin slaughtering the Sunnis wholesale in order to bring about a “Sunni-free” Iraq.

But if al-Hashimi and the Sunnis leave the government, it begs the question: Just who or what is Maliki in charge of in Iraq? The answer is not too damn much. Hence, a Sunni withdrawal would make the Maliki government nothing more than an empty shell, not even in charge of many Shias especially in the south where rival militias are already clashing in earnest in an attempt to gain control of towns and villages.

Maliki seems paralyzed, unable to face the facts regarding what must be done to save his country. Here’s al-Hashimi on the consequences of a Sunni withdrawal from government:

The withdrawal of the Sunni bloc would unravel months of efforts to foster political participation by Sunnis in Iraq’s government. It also would further weaken al-Maliki just weeks after Shiite Cabinet ministers allied with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr bolted from the government.

Al-Hashimi’s Iraqi Islamic Party was key in getting Sunnis out to vote in the December 2005 election. Sunnis had been reluctant to take part in the political process, and many were only convinced to do so with the promise of changes to the Iraqi Constitution. Al-Hashimi said the United States co-signed those changes, and now a year and a half later nothing has been done.

Without a change to the constitution, he said, “The situation would be a disaster for Iraq.”

He added, “I would like to see the identity of my country, in fact, restored back.”

Meanwhile, the President has been ineffective in his jawboning the Iraqi Prime Minister, failing to get Maliki to face up to his responsibilities:

On Monday, the president held a 25-minute videoconference with al-Maliki, the White House and the prime minister’s office announced. In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Snow said political reconciliation efforts were “the focal point of those conversations.”

Al-Maliki talked about getting leaders of Iraq’s major factions together “to sit down in a very practical way and say, ‘Let’s get this stuff fixed,’ ” Snow said.

“What you got was a very clear sense from the prime minister that it was important to be making progress,” he said.

It may be “important to be making progress” but one wonders to who; Bush or Maliki?

Al-Maliki’s office said Bush will dispatch a senior administration official to Iraq to rally support for the government, while the prime minister “reaffirmed the importance of continuing cooperation and coordination” between U.S. and Iraqi troops now trying to pacify the capital.

The importance to Maliki that the Capitol be pacified is that if the Americans leave, he’s very like to find himself on the short end of a very long rope. So he will try to keep the Americans pacified by saying all the right words about reconciliation and power sharing while doing nothing to affect the former and actually try and sabotage the latter.

What to do? The Administration efforts in the political sphere have failed miserably to this point. Might it be time for Bush to bite the bullet and give Maliki the heave-ho, replacing him with some kind of government that would do what everyone agrees is necessary but that no one seems willing to work for?

It would be like taking all of those purple fingers raised in triumph following the election and cutting them off at the knuckle. But it may be the only way to save the country. This would be a last resort, the last arrow in Bush’s quiver and he may not use it anyway. Perhaps he’d rather see Iraq disintegrate than give up on his personal dream of promoting democracy in the Middle East.

There will be efforts to entice the Sunnis back into government if they leave. But I am absolutely convinced that Maliki, as with every other promise he has made to us, will do only the minimum necessary to bring that about. Al-Hashimi probably senses the same thing which is why he is willing to walk out in the first place.

This is without a doubt the crisis of the war. How the Administration handles the delicate matter of trying to keep the Sunnis in the government while putting pressure on Maliki to get busy with reforms will tell the tale of whether or not Iraq can be put back together again or whether it will fly apart at the seams.

UPDATE

Allah is back at Hot Air blogging about Iraq. He has the story of Sadrists guarding a Shia shrine - at our request. Trenchantly, he fleshes out the pros and cons.

He also comments briefly on al-Hashimi’s threat:

I’ll leave you with a report from CNN about Iraq’s Sunni Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, threatening to pull his MPs out of the government unless the constitution is amended to prohibit partition. He’s worried about Anbar being shunted off into its own country where it won’t get any of the oil revenue from the Shiite areas, but a report from Iraqslogger last month says he might have something even bolder in mind:

What is more interesting in Az-Zaman’s lead story is the fact that the Iraqi Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashimi, is attempting to construct a new coalition, similar to [Iyad] ‘Allawi’s in several ways and carrying a comparable “anti-sectarian” agenda. Az-Zaman said that al-Hashimi has also entered talks with the Fadhila party and that he is engaged in a race with ‘Allawi to gather allies for a bid for the Prime Ministership.

A Sunni prime minister? When the current president and speaker of parliament are also Sunnis? Not anytime soon, pal.

With both Allawi and al-Hashimi waiting in the wings for a call from the Americans, one would think that Maliki would get the message and get moving on reform. But Maliki has his own card to play; a Shia uprising if we toss Maliki and his Shia brethren.

And that, my friends, would be game, set, match.

UPDATE II

It doesn’t necessarily worry me when lefties agree with me. But re-reading my post, I was a little uneasy that I had perhaps taken too dark a view of Hashimi’s threat.

Kevin Drum, a reasonable liberal, echoes my sentiments:

The October 2005 deal has served its purpose admirably: it got the constitution passed and it gave everyone some breathing room. But eventually the Shiites and Kurds were going to have to come through with some changes, and no real progress has ever been made on that. Just stalling.

So what happens next? Prime Minister Maliki might be able to buy himself some more time, but probably not much. Eventually it’s going to become clear that the Sunni amendments aren’t going to be proposed, or if they are proposed, that they aren’t going to pass. That day is looking ever closer, and all the battalions in the world aren’t going to help Iraq if the Sunnis irrevocably pull out of the government. Stay tuned.

Reasonable people can disagree about the extent of this crisis. But I have to make an effort to come up with something worse.

I am known as something of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to humor. For instance, I love Monty Python but hate Benny Hill. Eddie Murphy does nothing for me while Bernie Mac puts me in stitches. George Carlin sends me into hysterics but Rosie O’Donnell makes me want to puke.

This must be the reason I didn’t get the joke the Democrats were playing on the American people with the Iraq War Supplemental appropriations bill. Knowing full well that the President was going to veto the measure because of the artificial timetable for withdrawal that they were able to bribe, threaten, and coerce enough of their caucus to support, the Democrats nevertheless delayed vital funding for our military just so they could turn around after Bush’s veto and yell “Gotchya!” at the voters:

President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.

Democrats backed off after the House failed, on a vote of 222 to 203, to override the president’s veto of a $124 billion measure that would have required U.S. forces to begin withdrawing as early as July. But party leaders made it clear that the next bill will have to include language that influences war policy. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) outlined a second measure that would step up Iraqi accountability, “transition” the U.S. military role and show “a reasonable way to end this war.”

“We made our position clear. He made his position clear. Now it is time for us to try to work together,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said after a White House meeting. “But make no mistake: Democrats are committed to ending this war.”

The only “mistake” anyone has made is believing the Democrats are serious about anything - much less the war. The funding of our troops (or defunding them for that matter) has turned into a gigantic political game where the Democratic leadership has shown they don’t have the balls to end the war by voting to cut off funds and put their political capital where their mouth is nor do they exhibit one iota of responsible governance by finding the quickest way to send the necessary monies to our troops who are currently engaged in the hardest combat since at least the battle for Fallujah.

The entire exercise regarding the debate, passage, veto, and now capitulation by the Dems is a travesty. And it would be nice to think that the White House and Congress could actually “work together” on anything with regards to the war except that too, is a game - this time played by both sides as each seeks to saddle the other with the “blame” for the delay in funding. Sensibly, the President thinks it a bad idea to let al-Qaeda and the sectarian thugs know exactly when they can ratchet up the slaughter of innocents by announcing to the world the day the last American combat troops will leave Iraq. Frustrated Democrats want some way to change the President’s course also toward something more sensible; perhaps a realization that our troops might be better used elsewhere in Iraq killing al-Qaeda terrorists and protecting the Sunnis from rapacious and murderous Shia radicals in league with the government there.

Of course, the Dems want no such thing but if Bush was smart, he’d realize where the Democrats end game is headed - a total defeat for the Administration - and try to at least maintain some semblance of a mission in Iraq. It doesn’t have to be as I’ve outlined above. But it’s got to be less than what he’s doing now and more than the Democrats would be willing to support six months from now when almost certainly they will have the upper hand.

But this would be too much to ask; especially when there are elections to be won. So Bush stubbornly soldiers on while the Democrats stubbornly refuse to act on principle and conscience by defunding the War and forcing the troops to come home. In the meantime, our boys are dying, Iraqis are dying, Iran is licking its chops, ready to move in and pick up the pieces while the rest of the Middle East looks on in horror at the whole mess.

We’re on a collision course with disaster and our national leadership are acting like spoiled brats. I’d like to say to hell with both sides but there are 150,000 Americans whose lives are being expended in what is shaping up to be a futile effort to give the government of Iraq the breathing room to create some kind of viable nation out of the mess of sectarian and political factions who are currently (and for the foreseeable future) at each other’s throats. I say futile because if anyone believes that Prime Minister Maliki and his Shia brethren in the government have any interest whatsoever in doing the things necessary to heal their bloody, war torn nation, I’ve got a bridge over the Euphrates river I’d be glad to let you have for a song.

There are ways to leave Iraq and avoid disaster. And then, there’s rank stupidity:

President Bush vetoed the Iraq-war spending bill this evening, calling it a blueprint for failure and defeat and intensifying a showdown with the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing,” Mr. Bush said at the White House, where he vetoed the bill after the signatures of Democratic legislative leaders were barely dry.

The president said the bill would demoralize the Iraqis and send them and the world a terrible message: “America will not keep its commitments.”

The President may be in for a rather rude surprise when it comes to what exactly would constitute keeping our “commitments” in Iraq. Perhaps he should be jawboning the Iraqi government into keeping their commitments to us - i.e., this is round one in a ten round bout and while he holds the upper hand today, upon each successive revisiting of this issue, it will become more and more apparent that the Iraqi government has no intention of keeping their promises made to him and to the United States to achieve much of anything in the way of reconciling their war torn and riven country.

What this will do to his “veto-proof” GOP firewall is uncertain. Judging by the nervousness of many Republican lawmakers who wish to see at least some political benchmarks laid out for the Iraqi government to achieve as part of the funding bill, my guess is that unless their is a sea change in the attitude of the Iraqi government, GOP desertions will become significant after the first of the year.

Good to see the Iraqi Parliament taking our efforts to tamp down the violence so seriously; they’re going on vacation for two months in July and August. And Prime Minister Maliki is proving himself quite the reliable ally - at least for Mookie al-Sadr and his band of cutthroats. He’s cashiered a few generals who actually took him at his word when he said he wanted to rein in the Shia militias who are causing a lot of the sectarian bloodshed.

Maliki is a practiced liar - and an empty suit of a Prime Minister as well. He and his Shia brethren in his ruling coalition can read the writing on the wall as well as anyone in this country; that the closer we get to the 2008 election, the better the chances that any veto of the Democrat’s invitation to al Qaeda to initiate a bloodbath in Iraq will be overridden with the help of an increasing number of Republican legislators who see the War as a political millstone around the party’s neck not to mention a sure fire roadmap to the unemployment line for them. (The latter reason uppermost in their greedy little minds, I’m sure.)

At the risk of incurring the wrath of my dwindling number of readers, might I suggest that the President face this reality and sit down with the Democrats in order to come to some kind of an agreement about the future of our mission in Iraq? It may be old fashioned in this day and age to talk about “the good of the country” but that’s just me, I guess - A fat old codger who can remember when lawmakers took the political adage “Politics stops at the waters edge” seriously. Of course, I’m also old enough to remember when that compact between the parties was shattered. The political ghosts of Viet Nam still haunt this country and unless we can find our way back to a sensible, rational means for the two branches to co-exist and come together on the goals and troop requirements needed for this war, I fear that the disaster that is staring us in the face will almost certainly come about much to the detriment of our interests in the Middle East and our efforts in the War on Terror (or whatever we’re going to be calling it once the Democrats admit we need to fight one).

Even a successful surge - and it is showing signs of success in important ways - will fail to bring about the desired political results that would give us the victory all of us want but is looking more and more impossible to achieve. The recalcitrant Iraqi government seems perfectly content to expend American lives to increase their own legitimacy with the Iraqi people as the violence begins to subside while not doing what is necessary to validate our men’s sacrifices by bringing the warring factions together in order to form a viable state.

So the President’s veto of this bill will not be overridden. And the two sides will sit down and probably come to a compromise agreement that will fund the troops for a very limited time - perhaps 3 months if reports are accurate - with the Democrats abandoning their formal invitation to our enemies setting a date certain for the al-Qaeda/militia bloodbath to begin in earnest. Instead, the withdrawal timetable will be advisory only, thus encouraging our jihadi friends to simply watch, wait, and keep their powder dry and their swords sharpened.

Needless to say, we can’t go on like this. But we will. And when the dust settles from this political row, we can look forward to another Congressional food fight to break out when we revisit the issue in the fall.

Okay. So?

Dan Riehl devotes three posts to my thoughts and still can’t figure out what I wrote. He also said I write with a Thesaurus beside me. Judging by Mr. Riehl’s wild and crazy personal attacks, that must mean that Dan replies with a dictionary next to his keyboard, struggling to comprehend the meaning of words that any high school drop out in my day would have no trouble deciphering.

I’ll try and keep the syllables under 4 just for you Dan.

What all the hub bub boils down to is that many of you are saying that I am weak and cowardly because I changed my view on the war. In other words, I am not steadfast enough and that I don’t stick with “my principles” thus, making me wishy washy; a “sunshine patriot” as one wag was kind enough to put it.

This is a good criticism, an honest criticism. I have no problem with it. It is based on the excellent notion that standing by what we believe even when things get rocky is the essence of honesty and integrity.

But something happened on the road to Damascus and I changed my thinking. Allow me to explain.

When any of us form opinions - be it on Iraq or whether the Cubs are going to win the 2007 World Series - we base that opinion on an underlying set of assumptions. For instance, an assumption regarding the Cubs is that they haven’t won a World Series since forever and are perhaps the most doggedly jinxed baseball club in Christendom. Other assumptions would include the fact that the ownership rarely does anything right and that Wrigley Field and day baseball saddle the team with a disadvantage. Ergo, my opinion that they don’t have a Tinker’s chance in hell to win it all is based on solid assumptions, grounded in logic and a coherent view of the situation as it exists in baseball, in the National League, and in the eyes of history. The Cubs are toast and I’ll stick by that opinion come hell or high water.

Now suppose it’s late October and high water has arrived; the Cubbies are up in the World Series 3 games to none, needing only one win for the championship. I can still hold the opinion that they haven’t a ghost of a chance to win. But what has changed?

Some of the underlying assumptions are no longer valid, or obsolete, or simply false. Other assumptions remain rock solid. But in maintaining my opinion that there’s no way the Cubs can win, I have had to stretch logic, ignore some facts, concentrate on tangential issues such as perhaps an act of God will halt the Series now before the Cubs can win. In other words, I’m reaching to justify my opinion.

That’s where I found myself a year or so ago with regards to Iraq. Some of the underlying assumptions I had about the war changed. I believed for the longest time that the Administration and the Pentagon had a good idea of what was going on in Iraq and had a viable strategy to deal with the problems there. That assumption proved false. This became apparent when Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would paint what was happening there in the rosiest of hues - so many schools built, so many clinics opened up, etc. Meanwhile, the insurgency grew, became more vicious, and al-Qaeda began to implement their strategy of pitting Shia against Sunni in order to foment civil war.

Anyone who was reading reports of what was going on in Iraq would more than likely do a double take listening to either one of those gentlemen. Are we talking about the same war? Those of us who have questioned what is happening in Iraq - most of the people that I’ve read anyway - were enormously troubled by this disconnect.

One by one, assumptions I had formed at the beginning of the war and occupation fell victim to changing realities in Iraq. This is not the same place it was 4 years ago nor is it even the same as it was a year ago. And if it has changed - if the facts, perceptions, and reality has changed, what did that do to the underlying justification for my opinions?

Once I began “reaching” to justify my opinions, I got very uncomfortable. The threads of logic became more tenuous the more I examined those pesky assumptions. I realized that many (not all) of my original assumptions were basically obsolete, done in by the cruel logic of domestic politics and a growing realization that the the US military could do everything that was asked of it and more and still come up short thanks to the balking politicians in Iraq, the twisted narrative of the war being spun by the left and the Democrats, Administration failures to implement a strategy that would win the war, and a growing belief that the country was sliding out of control.

So if you’re in my shoes, what do you do? Continue to defend a position you know is becoming untenable as a result of changing realities (and new information not available at the time you formed your original assumptions)? Or do you alter your assumptions and change your opinion?

It could very well be that abandoning long held opinions and beliefs about the war makes me a cowardly wretch. It all depends on how you look at it I suppose. But as I said, I still hold to some of those original assumptions; that Saddam was a potential threat, that the reasons for going into Iraq were basically sound (so much for my new found friends on the left, eh?), and that deposing the murderous tyrant was a good and moral thing to do. I don’t buy in to the left’s narrative regarding Iraq, finding it based on hysterical posturing and bilious phantasms (sorry Dan, couldn’t resist). And I also believe that Iraq is still a central front in the War on Terror (or whatever the Democrats are going to call it).

That said, this is one battle - a battle I sincerely believe we’ve botched as badly as Anzio or Tarawa, or any other blunder made during World War II - and what must be done now in my opinion is try our best to avoid disaster. There will be other battles and we will learn some hard and bitter lessons from this one.

That is, as long as we strive to be honest with ourselves. For me personally, this has meant questioning my beliefs when I thought the circumstances demanded it. If that means I’m “thinking too much” or seeing “too much nuance,” so be it. That is who I am. That is how I write.

Maybe I should get into the stock prediction business.

As I fully expected, some on the right are in full throated howl over my suggestion that we alter our mission in Iraq. The predictable response of the slack jawed yawpers doesn’t necessarily depress me, although I am not insensate to the barbs . Their personal attacks (in lieu of answering my points with intelligent counters) reveals how truly bereft they are of any understanding of what it will take for the efforts of our troops in tamping down the violence to bear fruit.

Also as I predicted, the left has attacked me for not advocating a complete withdrawal. There are also those who have “congratulated” me for “finally” seeing it there way.

Frankly, that’s hogwash. For more than a year I have been expressing my belief that the Administration’s strategy was not working, that despite the brilliant performance of our troops, any military gains made against he insurgency were lost because of the political inertia that even our best efforts could not affect. The Iraqi government was failing to take the steps necessary to reconcile the various factions and create a viable, democratic state. Just because people vote doesn’t mean democracy is in place. The rifts and divisions in that bloody land are standing in the way of uniting the people behind the idea of nationhood. In order for the idea of “nation” to take hold, there must be an accounting of both ancient history and recent history. And before Iraq can become a nation, Sunnis and Shias will have to look at each other and see a fellow countryman rather than an oppressor or a threat.

Only by accepting the concept of power sharing will the Shia government in Iraq succeed. And only when they are convinced that the Shias are not out to destroy them will the Sunni insurgents lay down their arms and join the government. The sad fact is that the United States military - as bravely as they have carried out their mission - can only create the conditions where this is possible; they cannot unite the factions through any conceivable military action.

What has changed? Clearly, the government of Prime Minister Maliki doesn’t have time to affect the changes necessary that would lead to this reconciliation. By that I mean our efforts at improving security (the largest but by no means the only aspect of our new strategy) will only last as long as we have sufficient troops on the ground to carry out that mission. And the entire point of my article was simple; time is running out. Blame it on the press. Blame it on the Democrats. Blame it on Elvis. The fact is the American people have had enough. And what little support there is for our mission in Iraq will only lessen the closer we get to the 2008 election.

I blame Bush for this. He has been AWOL in using the Presidency as a soap box to consistently, patiently, and honestly explain why we’re in Iraq, what the stakes are, who the enemy is, and why we must fight. His inexplicable silences over the last 4 years - sometimes lasting weeks - allowed the political opposition to hijack the war narrative and twist it for their own political purposes. Every six weeks or so, the President would embark on a 3 or 4 day PR offensive, appearing mostly at military bases and talking up the war. It was never enough. And we’re paying the price for this PR blunder with an American public who have been frustrated with the lack of progress in defeating the insurgency as well as the stalling tactics of the Maliki government.

For in the end, that is where the problem lies. The Prime Minister, the major parties in Iraq (SCIRI, Dawa, the Sadrists) have expressed little interest and less desire in affecting the changes in power sharing, de-Baathification, amnesty, reconciliation, and promised constitutional changes that would alter the political climate and start the Iraqis down the road toward a peaceful society. And again, there is nothing the US military can do to push the government off of square one and get this process moving.

And lest anyone misunderstand me (or, for those of you who simply didn’t bother to read what I wrote) I am not advocating anything more than a token withdrawal of American troops. And that would be as a consequence of cutting a deal with Democrats in Congress who almost certainly would insist on some kind of cutback of troops if they were to sign on to a redefined mission of fighting al-Qaeda, protecting the Iraqi borders (including the Iran-Iraq border), and preventing a humanitarian catastrophe. Only the significant presence of US troops will prevent the massacre of Sunnis by Shias hell bent on revenge as well as those who wish to make Iraq “Sunni free.” That same presence would probably also prevent a general Middle East war as well.

So those who believe I was signing on to the Democrats plan for phased withdrawal are simply wrong. In fact, I think it would be a blunder that would make the blunders made the previous 4 years look tame by comparison. Only those wishing the absolute worst for the United States, Iraq, and the Middle East would advocate such a course of action. Better that we maintain a strong presence in Iraq and allow the various factions to work out their own solutions to the problems facing the country.

My point about dealing with the Democrats is simple common sense. If we are going to stay in Iraq with the numbers of troops necessary to help train the Iraqi army, kill al-Qaeda, and protect the Sunnis, the Democrats are going to have to be aboard so that the political will for such a mission can coalesce and form around both Congressional and White House leadership. For this to happen, Bush will have to make the first move. I’m not expecting much even if Bush were to wear sackcloth and ashes and knee walk up the Capitol steps. But given the alternative - ultimate Democratic success down the road in pushing arbitrary timetables for a withdrawal of the bulk of our troops - what has the President got to lose?

Nothing I’ve written here or in my other post is very original. The political conditions in Iraq are well known if you read enough reports - both from the media and our own government. And the change in mission has been advocated by both Republicans and Democrats in and out of government. I don’t claim authorship only conversion to a point of view.

I guess the overarching point is that our divisions are killing us. Someone, somewhere has to reach out and find the common ground so that we can avoid an unmitigated disaster in Iraq. Judging by some of the comments here and elsewhere, I find it difficult to place much faith in that prospect.

ADDENDUM:

You may note that I have avoided the term “victory” when redefining the mission. Since I believe our original mission has already failed, trying to define “victory” would be an exercise in futility. Better to describe the mission as “staving off disaster.” That would be accurate.

I hate writing posts like this. Since I don’t advocate an immediate “turn tail and run” the left climbs all over me. And since I don’t say everything is going swimmingly in Iraq and that we’re on the verge of victory, the right thinks I’m a traitor.

The fact of the matter is, most commenters here and elsewhere on blogs don’t do nuance. Those few (and you know who you are) who carefully read what I write and either agree or disagree to varying degrees, I am most grateful for and therefore, I am dedicating this post to you. Your opinions are the only ones I care about anyway because most of us have made a similar journey with regards to our beliefs and insights into what is going on in Iraq.

Even those of you who started out opposed to the war and who have commented intelligently here by critiquing our strategy and tactics, have caused me to think about where I stand. And of course, those of us who supported the war, still support the mission to varying degrees, but have looked on in frustration and horror as the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and our generals on the ground in Iraq have made mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder and brought us to where we are now - the edge of the precipice - we all have had our eyes opened and beliefs challenged by practicing a little independent thinking.

I have come to the conclusion over the last few days that, due to domestic conditions here in the US and the inability of the Iraqi government and society to deal in a timely manner with the political problems that must be solved if Iraq is to have a viable, multi-sectarian society the United States is on the verge of suffering a humiliating defeat in Iraq. A perfect storm of almost non-existent public support for our war aims coupled with US pressure on the Iraqis to shoehorn radical changes in their society, their constitution, and their politics into an unrealistic and inevitably, an impossible time frame will ultimately doom our efforts to take any military success achieved via the surge and turn it into progress on the political front.

If we had 3 or 4 years and the political will to maintain troop levels where they are now, then we would have a real chance to make the difference. But our commitment to the military aspects of the surge will be measured in months, not years. By early fall, the race for President will be in full swing and the obvious lack of political progress in Iraq will increase calls for some kind of redeployment - probably from even some Republicans. And it doesn’t appear that the insurgents nor al-Qaeda in Iraq are interested in dialing down their vicious attacks on civilians. They will continue to maximize their attacks, killing as many Iraqis per attack as possible to keep the body count high and the American press fixated on the blood. The continuing large body counts from these attacks will also give the Democrats a ready made benchmark to claim that the surge isn’t working, even if other, less publicized aspects of our strategy are showing signs of success.

This eye opening article that deals exclusively with the political situation in Iraq as it stands now not only rings true but shows how the ticking clock of American involvement may have caused us to overplay our hand in some instances while allowing some elements in Iraqi politics to exploit our vulnerability to the time factor:

U.S. military commanders say a key goal of the ongoing security offensive is to buy time for Iraq’s leaders to reach political benchmarks that can unite its fractured coalition government and persuade insurgents to stop fighting.

But in pressuring the Iraqis to speed up, U.S. officials are encountering a variety of hurdles: The parliament is riven by personality and sect, and some politicians are abandoning Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. There is deep mistrust of U.S. intentions, especially among Shiites who see American efforts to bring Sunnis into the political process as an attempt to weaken the Shiites’ grip on power.

Many Iraqi politicians view the U.S. pressure as bullying that reminds them they are under occupation. And the security offensive, bolstered by additional U.S. forces, has failed to stop the violence that is widening the sectarian divide.

One of the biggest obstacle appears to be the chicken everyone believed as long ago as the immediate aftermath of the invasion who would eventually come home to roost; the Kurds and their desire for a large degree of autonomy. The Kurds have made no secret of their desire for as much independence as they can get away with, being restrained only by the US desire not to agitate Turkish feelings about the Kurds setting up a separate state. The Kurds appear willing to bide their time until the Americans are no longer a factor in Iraq. This is evident in their opposition to the oil revenue distribution law that was passed by the cabinet back in March but is languishing in Parliament as members wrangle over many of the details:

Politicians from the semiautonomous Kurdish region say measures in the law that would take undeveloped oil fields away from regional governments and have a new national oil company oversee them are unconstitutional.

“Iraq, frankly, does not have the money to invest in oil fields,” said Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdish region’s minister of natural resources. He added that the Kurds are disputing four annexes to the draft law that would dilute their ability to exploit oil in their territory. If the draft isn’t “watered down,” Kurdish regional authorities will not support it, he said.

The Kurds also don’t trust the central government to distribute oil revenue, saying it has been behind in payments in other instances. Some have suggested that a fund be set up outside Iraq to dole out that money. “We are asking for our fair share and guarantees that we will receive it,” Hawrami said.

Sunni Arabs and some secular Shiite politicians, however, stand firm that the central government must control oil production and revenue distribution. “If we want to keep the unity of Iraq, the best way is to keep the oil under the authority of the central government,” said Adnan Pachachi, a secular Sunni with the Iraqi National List party of former prime minister Ayad Allawi.

And the oil revenue law isn’t the only necessary political development that Prime Minister Maliki must address if our current strategy is to achieve the desired results:

“The Americans should take into consideration the Iraqi situation and its complications, not just their own internal politics,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish legislator.

Ten weeks into the security plan, even as U.S. lawmakers propose timelines for a U.S. troop withdrawal, there has been little or no progress in achieving three key political benchmarks set by the Bush administration: new laws governing the sharing of Iraq’s oil resources and allowing many former members of the banned Baath Party to return to their jobs, and amendments to Iraq’s constitution. As divisions widen, a bitter, prolonged legislative struggle is hindering prospects for political reconciliation.

“They are all up in the air,” said Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shiite who is chairman of Iraq’s Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification. “They are certainly not going to be produced in any timetable that is acceptable within the context of the current political climate in the United States.”

Issue after issue that the Iraqis absolutely must deal with if reconciliation is to have a chance and disaster avoided is being bottled up by political forces with differing agendas and competing interests. Couple that with the mistrust, the hate, and the decades of brutality experienced by the people, and it appears to me that as bravely as our troops are performing now and will no doubt continue to perform, the fact is they are “buying time” for a government that has already decided that our commitment is coming to an end and that all those competing interests will have to make the best deals possible without the Americans.

The problem, is that it is liable to get very bloody once we depart. Michael O’Hanlon from the Brookings Institution:

[I] think [the consequences] would probably be…the civil war getting anywhere from two to ten times worse in terms of the rate of killing. I think ultimately, the Sunni Arabs would be mostly defeated, and they would essentially be ghettoized in the western part of their country without much oil, very angry at the world, and therefore even more likely to collaborate with al Qaeda. As you know, one of the hopeful things right now is that the Sunni Arabs are not collaborating as much with al Qaeda, and in some cases, fighting them out in al Anbar Province. But I think that dynamic would probably change for the worse, and you would see that region become to some extent a sanctuary for terrorism, and of course, there’d be a risk of regional war. I don’t know how to score the probabilities on that, but some risk of a greater regional war. And Iraq itself would be in mayhem probably for many years to come, looking sort of like Somalia or maybe the way Afghanistan did in the 80’s and 90’s. I think that’s the most likely outcome. You know, I’m not saying that it would destabilize the entire Persian Gulf, but there would be some chance of a regional war, and a very high chance of genocide inside Iraq.

(HT: Powerline)

Is it time then for a Plan B? Can the President and the Democrats lay aside their hostility toward one another and come up with some kind of a strategy that will allow us to continue to fight al-Qaeda while trying to protect the Sunnis from the worst of what surely will be an attempt by many Shias to make Iraq a “Sunni free” country? It seems to me that only our presence in Iraq would prevent Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia and even Jordan from intervening militarily to prevent a slaughter of their co-religionists. That, of course, might draw Shia Iran into the mix and it would be a Middle East free for all.

Time enough for playing the blame game later. After all, we’re still a year and a half away from the 2008 elections - plenty of time for the Democrats to remind voters who got us involved in Iraq in the first place. For now, the imperative is preventing unmitigated disaster. It may involve giving in to the Democrats and withdrawing some of our troops and redeploying some others. Is the President a big enough man to do this? Or is he more in love with his legacy and would therefore resist changing course to reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground and in the councils of government in Iraq?

I have no confidence in either the Democrats or the Administration. Both parties have played politics with the war for so long that now that we have this disaster staring us in the face, it seems ludicrous to think that they could work together in the national interest to avoid the worst of it. And perhaps the absolute best we can hope for at this point; to take our lumps while still being able to keep Iraq from falling apart and descending into chaos while preventing the blood being shed there from spreading outward to affect the rest of the Middle East.

This will not be accomplished without compromise by both parties as well as some extremely frank talk from the President to the American people about the dire straits we find ourselves as a result of the failure of his policies. Only then - and with the help of the Democrats - will it be possible to convince enough of the American people that it is absolutely vital we maintain some kind of presence in Iraq.

So the question ultimately rests with the President and, to a lesser extent with the Democrats; will politics trump the national interest? Will this stiff-necked President who has refused to admit many mistakes in the past be capable of demonstrating such largeness of character?

He has risen to the occasion in the past. He must do so again.

UPDATE

I have posted “A Clarification or Two” to this article here.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

If I were George Bush right about now, I’d wrap my arms around Harry Reid and give him a great big kiss on the cheek. And I might even consider sending Speaker Pelosi a dozen roses, thanking her for playing her part to perfection in this Democratic Party defeatist extravaganza. For in truth, the Democrats are handing the President the one thing he desperately needed in order to maintain the surge, veto the Iraq supplemental with its timetables and withdrawal stipulations, and unite the Republicans as they haven’t been since the election last November; a political club with which to beat his opponents and re-energize support for the war among his base.

It’s been a while since Bush was presented with such a gift. In previous months, the Democrats played the Iraq card with great care and skill, not getting too much out in front of the American people while maintaining support for their position by framing the debate as one of “altering course” rather than cut and run. They successfully portrayed the President as intransigent on changing strategy. And, of course, the Democrats were helped enormously by the constant drumbeat of negativity regarding the surge as a result of several high profile, horrific bombings with large civilian death tolls.

As an aside, in one of the great historical ironies of all time, the very same elements in the media and on the left that took the Pentagon to task 40 years ago for harping on enemy body counts to show progress in the Viet Nam War now confidently use body counts to show that the surge supposedly isn’t working.

C’est la vie! C’est la guerre!

There’s little doubt that Bush was on the defensive when it came to the Iraq supplemental. While his veto would have been upheld anyway, Harry Reid and his assessment that the war is already lost as well as Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to meet with the Commanding General in Iraq for a briefing has changed the dynamic of the debate over the war, giving the Administration a juicy opening with which to skewer the opposition.

Pelosi’s gaffe is mind boggling. Being able to find time to meet and drink tea with the Syrian thug President Assad but brushing off a briefing with America’s own Iraq Commander General Petraeus is a juxtaposition of priorities that is too delicious not to use. The idea that the defeatists are living a variation of the Three Wise Monkeys by “seeing no progress, hearing no progress, and speaking no progress” when it comes to Iraq reveals a nervousness about some of the news that is breaking through all the stories about car bombings and suicide attacks, which are down in number but not much in the casualties; the fact that some of the indicators regarding the violence are improving less than 3 months into the surge.

In truth, the Democrats and the left have already left the surge for dead. No matter what news comes out of Iraq, the Democrats will spin it to prove that the strategy is not working. Unfortunately, this will be relatively easy to do since the insurgents and terrorists are very obliging in working hand in hand with the defeatists in Congress to undermine the President’s strategy by getting as big a bang for their buck with each brutal attack on innocent civilians as they can.

Of course, other elements of the new strategy not totally dependent on the military are showing signs of success. The reconstruction teams whose numbers have doubled and who have already begun working with tribal leaders to turn the tide in Anbar Province have met with many small but significant successes. This is reflected in a growing realization by Sunnis that they are likely to get a better political deal if the Americans stay rather than if our troops are withdrawn, leaving them in the lurch:

Meanwhile, opponents of the Iraqi operations back in the United States are getting nervous about the success of the security operations in Baghdad and its suburbs. The fact that nearly all the Sunni Arab tribes have joined the government is seen as a political disaster by many U.S. politicians who have declared Iraq a failed venture for the United States. It’s a bizarre situation, and long has been. You only have to visit web sites frequented by Iraqis or American troops, to see that what is reported in most of the media about Iraq is invented, or distorted beyond all reason into an alternate reality.

This “alternate reality” lived in by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi is aided and abetted by a compliant news media who appears to be too lazy to balance coverage of bloody body counts with other aspects of the surge that show some signs of progress. The Iraqi army appears to be making significant strides in helping to police Baghdad. And there is a slow process underway to purge many police units of some of the worst elements who enable the sectarian death squads to carry out their murderous rampages or who are killers themselves.

Taken as a whole, some aspects of the surge are working better than others. But even the most caustic observer - and I include myself in that company - would have to agree that there are definite signs that we are not “losing” the war and may, in fact, be nearer to a modest success than anyone realizes.

Much will depend on the actions of Prime Minister Maliki and his government. How committed are they to a truly multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic Iraq? Can they resist the influence of Iranian backed militias and political parties? Will the Shias ever agree to share power with the Sunnis?

These are questions that will not be answered by any actions taken by the US military. But how Maliki deals with them will determine whether or not our strategy is successful.

All of that lies in the future. For now, Harry Reid has a problem. His defeatist words are still ricocheting around the internet and cable news, refusing to disappear down the usual rabbit hole where Democratic faux pas are quietly sent by the media. Instead, those words have energized the pro-war crowd and angered many of the troops. Is it any wonder? When the news organ of the enemy - al-Jazeera - makes your defeatist words headline material, one wonders what else might define the crime of “giving aid and comfort to the enemy?”

But Reid and the Democrats don’t seem to care at this point. Since they have never seen the Iraq War as anything except a political weapon to be used against the President and the Republicans, their cold calculations with regards to handing President Bush and by extension, the United States a defeat don’t need to be buttressed by any kind of nonsense about “supporting the troops.” Their platitudes about caring about our men and women under arms rings rather hollow when the second most powerful Democrat in Washington tells them they’re a bunch of losers - that all their efforts, the blood they’ve spilled, the sacrifices they’ve made, have been in vain.

This won’t be a turning point in the war. But like Admiral Farragut capturing Mobile Bay when the Civil War was at its absolute nadir in August of 1864, Reid’s words have actually heartened the President’s remaining supporters in that they have given them a political opening to portray the Democrats as exactly what they pretend not to be; a party that would rather lose a war than acknowledge any progress toward success in Iraq.

Thanks for the leg up, Harry. We sure needed it.

“If it was good enough for your daddy/granddaddy’s war it’s good enough for yours,” seems to be what the Pentagon is saying with regards to trying to hype the accomplishments of Pat Tillman - whose character assassination by the left continues to this day - and Jessica Lynch, the young woman whose convoy was ambushed resulting in severe injuries and her capture by the Iraqis.

The problem is times have changed and trying to manufacture heroes for public admiration and to build support for military action has long since outlived its usefulness, not to mention that the tactic has fallen victim to an ever more intrusive and curious press whose sympathies cannot be counted on to cover up the truth when what really occurs on the battlefield comes to light.

That last is especially relevant in Tillman’s case where higher ups evidently tried to enlist Tillman’s comrades in a scheme to suppress the truth about his death by friendly fire:

The last soldier to see Army Ranger Pat Tillman alive, Spc. Bryan O’Neal, told lawmakers that he was warned by superiors not to divulge — especially to the Tillman family — that a fellow soldier killed Tillman.

O’Neal particularly wanted to tell fellow soldier Kevin Tillman, who was in the convoy traveling behind his brother at the time of the 2004 incident in Afghanistan.

“I wanted right off the bat to let the family know what had happened, especially Kevin, because I worked with him in a platoon and I knew that he and the family all needed to know what had happened,” O’Neal testified. “I was quite appalled that when I was actually able to speak with Kevin, I was ordered not to tell him.”

Asked who gave him the order, O’Neal replied that it came from his battalion commander, then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey.

“He basically just said … ‘Do not let Kevin know, that he’s probably in a bad place knowing his brother’s dead,’ ” O’Neal told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman. “And he made it known I would get in trouble, sir, if I spoke with Kevin on it being fratricide.”

How Tillman’s commanding officer and higher ups in the Pentagon thought they could keep secret the circumstances surrounding the young man’s death is indicative of a military mindset not attuned to the times we live in. The fact that Pat Tillman was a high profile enlistee and that his death would generate intense scrutiny seems to have escaped the mossbacks and pencil pushers in the Pentagon who only saw propaganda gold when viewing Tillman’s death. A similar denseness captivated the officers and higher ups at the Pentagon when Jessica Lynch was rescued. The young woman was made into a “Little Girl Rambo” according to Ms. Lynch herself:

The former US private Jessica Lynch today condemned what she said were Pentagon efforts to turn her into a “little girl Rambo”, and accused military chiefs of using “elaborate tales” to try to make her into a hero of the Iraq war.

Speaking at a congressional hearing on the use of misleading information, an emotional Ms Lynch described how she suffered horrific injuries when her vehicle was hit by a rocket near the Iraqi town of Nasiriya in March 2003, killing several of her companions.

The Pentagon initially put out the story that Private Lynch - a slight woman who was just 19 at the time - had been wounded by Iraqi gunfire but kept fighting until her ammunition ran out. In fact, her gun had jammed and she did not fire a shot.

Pat Tillman was a hero not because of how he died but because of how he lived, eschewing a huge contract with the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL to enlist following 9/11. And Jessica Lynch’s heroism is the heroism of hundreds of thousands of young Americans who have answered the call to serve a purpose higher than themselves and enlist in the US armed forces. She also endured her injuries and capture with a singular stoicism while remaining true to her fallen friends and comrades in arms.

Isn’t this enough for the myth makers in the Pentagon? The American people today are much more sophisticated and skeptical than their counterparts who manned the homefront during World War II and Korea. Viet Nam saw to that. Aided by a skeptical and at times, openly hostile press, we look upon military pronouncements about the war with a cynicism born of experience and leavened by pundits and talking heads who tear into the information coming from the military using as a baseline the idea that nothing that comes from the Pentagon can be believed.

This situation was not helped by Rumsfeld’s rosy scenarios and “the glass is half full” press conferences. It drove many of us who support the war absolutely bonkers to hear the former Defense Secretary or the Vice President (”last throes,” anyone?) give briefings that bore little resemblance to the worsening situation in Baghdad and Anbar province not to mention downplaying the numbers of insurgents, the infiltration of the militias into the police and military, the Interior Ministry death squads and secret torture chambers, and a host of other “glass half empty” benchmarks that, while certainly not good news, would have given the American people a more complete picture of what was going on in Iraq.

The point that propaganda doesn’t work anymore - not in the current atmosphere of press scrutiny and suspicion - seems to be lost on the Pentagon officials who tried to pump up the circumstances surrounding the death of Pat Tillman and rescue of Jessica Lynch. They are living in the past if they believe they can get away with it. And the hell of it is, it besmirches the life and yes, legend of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch; two Americans who were simply answering the call to serve and fulfilled their obligations with a startling devotion to duty and their country.

I sincerely hope the Pentagon has learned a lesson from this very public and humiliating expose of their PR machinations. Perhaps they could highlight the very real and unbelievable heroism of people like Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor who threw himself on a live grenade and died saving his comrades. Or the 19 Navy SEALs and Special Operation Aviation Regiment (SOAR) members who lost their lives on a rescue mission in Afghanistan. Or any of the countless other Americans, living and dead, who have honored the flag, their comrades, and their country by sacrificing so much in the cause of freedom.

UPDATE

Good for Don Surber:

Why did Pentagon officials lie? Their distortions gained so little in the short-term and undercut the war efforts in the long-term. Heads should roll.

Contrast that with the myopia exhibited by Powerline:

There is no question that the initial misreporting of the circumstances of Tillman’s death was stupid and improper. The claim of a government conspiracy to cover up the facts, however, is ludicrous. If you read the fine print in the article linked above, you find that Tillman died on April 22, 2004. His family was told that the cause was friendly fire on May 29, 2004, barely a month later. The same day, the Army publicly announced that friendly fire was the apparent cause.

So once the facts became clear and the matter rose to a level above the commanders in the field, the Army publicized the result of its investigation. For the Democrats and Kevin Tillman to try to make political hay out of this one-month delay, three years after the fact, casts them in a worse light than it does the Army.

Conspiracy? Perhaps too strong a word. But the fact that there is direct testimony from one of Tillman’s comrades that he was told not to divulge the circumstances surrounding Tillman’s death in the immediate aftermath of the incident is telling indeed. And the fact that both Tillman’s commanding officer and higher ups in the chain of command knew right away that Tillman’s death was due to friendly fire calls into question the 5 week delay in giving Tillman’s family the truth.

I don’t care about Kevin Tillman’s politics (which were radicalized by this incident, him being a conservative prior to the death of his brother) but I sure would be angry if I had to wait 5 weeks to find out the truth about my brother’s death.

Perhaps the Democrats should think very seriously about substituting the ostrich for the donkey as a mascot for their party.

It certainly would make more sense after House Armed Service Committee members decided to ban the use of the phrase “War on Terror:”

The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.

A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”

The “global war on terror,” a phrase first used by President Bush shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., should not be used, according to the memo. Also banned is the phrase the “long war,” which military officials began using last year as a way of acknowledging that military operations against terrorist states and organizations would not be wrapped up in a few years.

Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”

“There was no political intent in doing this,” said a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified. “We were just trying to avoid catch phrases.”

The problem isn’t that the “War on Terror” doesn’t describe the nature of our conflict with radical Islamism. We’ve heard it repeated ad nauseam that terror is a tactic, not an ideology. And this is true to a large extent.

But the problem with this change in nomenclature is that the “War on Terror” was a phrase that made it absolutely clear that the conflict was both global in nature and that all of the “operations” the Democrats are now going to list separately had an interconnectedness to them, that they were part of a united effort against a common enemy. And since both political correctness and strategic necessity disallowed the obvious alternative to “War on Terror” - that being, a “War Against Radical Islam” - supporters of the war found themselves hamstrung in what else to call the conflict.

Some military people began to refer to the war as “The Long War” which was accurate as far as it goes but much less descriptive. Now apparently, the Democrats have simply abandoned the idea of a general war at all and will pigeonhole each operation as separate and unrelated to any other operation underway around the world.

This is the culmination of nearly 6 long years of work by Democrats to banish 9/11 as a seminal date in history; that America was a different place after the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans than it was before.

And the reason the Democrats have been so anxious to change the dynamic regarding the “War on Terror” is shockingly political; they see a huge advantage accrue to the Republicans as a result of the attacks on this country and have been seeking for 6 years to destroy that advantage. Despite a transparent attempt to change the narrative of 9/11 to reflect badly on the President, to this day the President’s performance on 9/11 and the days following is seen as the highlight of his presidency by the majority of Americans. Unable to undermine history by substituting their own cockeyed narrative of the events on that day and immediately after, the Democrats are doing the next best thing; they are trying to remove the impact of 9/11 on our military and foreign policy and the subsequent decisions made by the President to fight Islamic radicalism all over the world.

And lest anyone think that this isn’t almost entirely about politics, House staffers makes it plain as day:

Committee aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said dropping or reducing references to the global war on terror could have many purposes, including an effort to be more precise about military operations, but also has a political element involving a disagreement over whether the war in Iraq is part of the effort to combat terrorism or is actually a distraction from fighting terrorists.

House Democratic leaders who have been pushing for an Iraq withdrawal timetable have talked about the need to get combat troops out of Iraq so they can be deployed against terrorists in other parts of the world, while Republicans have said that Iraq is part of the front line in the war on terror. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the armed services committee chairman, has been among those who have complained that having the military tied up with Iraq operations has reduced its capacity to respond to more pressing problems, like tracking down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

At the moment, the only other place to deploy troops is Afghanistan - a hypocritical idea since the Europeans aren’t pulling their weight as it is and such a move would give the lie to the Democrats oft repeated criticism that Bush is all too willing to go it alone when it comes to the conflict formerly known as The War on Terror.

The Washington Times hits the nail on the head:

This is yet another sign that the Democrats are going hard-left on national-security issues generally and not just on Iraq — in this instance, trying to airbrush away the very war on terrorism from our most basic defense legislation.

This is also hypocrisy, simple and rank — the sort that causes us to question motives. There is no other conclusion given that the phrase “war on terror” still has its uses for some Democratic lawmakers. One of them is Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee and is ultimately responsible for these directives. “Today, we are in the midst of a long struggle against the evil of terrorism,” reads his press release commemorating the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001. Iraq is “separate and distinct from the war on terrorism,” which, according to the Ike Skelton responsible for the Sept. 3, 2006, release, still retains merit. Of course, this document is intended for public consumption. It is only secondarily a means of cudgeling Mr. Bush.

Which is it, Mr. Skelton? A catch-phrase or a long struggle? We suppose it depends on whom you’re talking to.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so taken aback. Many Democrats have been uncomfortable with “war on terrorism” for its alleged bellicosity, its lack of “nuance” and its clarity on whom the bad guys are. Above all, they dislike its close association with the presidency of George W. Bush.

No doubt that “close association” with Bush is one the major reasons for the change. From a party that has portrayed this president as more dangerous than terrorists; a Hitler, a stupid ox (while at the same time attributing Machiavellian achievements to him), and the greatest threat to civil liberties and liberal democracy in American history, removing part of his legacy would seem to be the least they can do to stick it to him.

I suspect that this directive will be honored in the breach and many Democrats of the Blue Dog stripe will continue to use the term “War on Terror” to describe the long, twilight struggle against radical Islam. And since global operations against terrorism will continue regardless of what Democrats call it (at least until a liberal democrat is elected President), it might be fun to watch Democrats twist themselves into knots trying to describe an operation that targets the financial reserves of the Philippine terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf Group while using Special Forces to interdict bombs and bomb making materials from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whose links to the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiah are well established. In the meantime, American FBI and CIA scour the back alleys and slums of Asian cities looking to break the links that bind all those groups together.

Yeah…but don’t call it a “Global War on Terror.”