Shock
and Awful
Ralph Peters
New York Post, March
20, 2008
ON the fifth anniversary
of our cam paign to remove Saddam Hussein's monstrous regime from
power, it's hard not to despair - not because of the situation
in Iraq, which has improved remarkably, but because so few American
politicians in either party appear to have drawn the right lessons
from our experience.
For the record, I still believe that deposing Saddam was justified
and useful. He was a Hitler, and he was our enemy. But I'm still
reeling from the snotty incompetence with which the Bush administration
acted. Above all, I'm ashamed that I trusted President Bush and
his circle to have a plan for the day after Baghdad fell.
All of our other failures in Iraq stemmed
from this fundamental neglect of a basic requirement: Our soldiers
and Marines reached Baghdad without orders or strategic guidance.
We became the dog that caught the fire truck. The tragedy is that
it didn't have to be that way: One thing our military knows how
to do is plan.
But the relevant staffs were prevented
from doing so. Ideologues and avaricious friends of the administration
wanted the war for their own reasons, and they didn't intend to
alarm Congress with high cost estimates. So they trusted the perfumed
tales of a convicted criminal, Ahmad Chalabi, rather than the
professional views of the last honorable generals then-Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not yet removed.
Even on the purely military side, the
White House put its faith in hopeless gimmicks, such as "Shock
and Awe," convincing itself that ground troops were an afterthought.
Of course, it was the old-fashioned grunts, tankers, gunners and
supply sergeants who had to get us to Baghdad.
Iraq just didn't have to be this hard.
We made it immeasurably more difficult by trying to make war on
the cheap, then turning the war's aftermath into a looting orgy
for well-connected contractors.
The fundamental requirement to provide
security for the population - a troop-intensive endeavor - went
ignored, while grandiose reconstruction projects drained the pockets
of American taxpayers, only to come to nothing. Our troops and
their battlefield leaders did all they could under Rumsfeld's
yes-man generals, but every other branch of our government ducked.
The "interagency effort" was a joke.
Back home, Congress indulged in cheap
partisanship. The State Department concentrated on building the
world's largest and most-expensive embassy - a project worthy
of Saddam himself - and let the spectacularly incompetent Ambassador
L. Paul Bremer wreck what little hope of maintaining peace remained.
The administration's solution to worsening
conditions was to send more compliant generals, to continue listening
to think-tank "experts" who had never served in uniform,
to keep cutting fat checks for contractors and to let our troops
bleed between photo ops.
None of us should mistake the fundamental
truth: The only reason our efforts in Iraq have not failed completely
has been the sustained valor and commitment of those in uniform.
Our military was the only government entity that did its job.
Its thanks have been betrayal by the political opposition at home,
a rash of movies portraying our troops as psychotics and crocodile
tears from protesters who secretly delight in US casualties.
In 2007, after four bloody years of
denial, a desperate administration finally got serious about military
requirements, sending the additional troops (now weary) who should
have been deployed in 2003. With the wretched Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld headed out the door, the president also permitted
a serious soldier, Gen. David Petraeus, to take charge in Iraq.
We got lucky, too. Our global enemies
in al Qaeda alienated Iraq's Sunni Arabs in record time, indulging
in grotesque forms of oppression and terror even Saddam and his
sons had never dared to inflict. Those who recently had sided
with al Qaeda against us found that we were their only hope to
be rid of al Qaeda. The Sunni-Arab flip in Iraq has been a great
strategic victory that resounds throughout the Muslim world.
The troop surge also had a powerful
psychological effect, convincing enemies, fence-sitters and local
allies alike that we weren't quitting - despite the results of
the US midterm elections. And the Iraqi people were just sick
of the violence. By 2007, most had gotten the worst bile out of
their systems and wanted normal lives.
Even the often chaotic, corruption-addled
Iraqi legislature managed to pass more major bills in 2007 than
the US Congress sent to the president's desk.
The situation in Iraq is improving,
as I've seen with my own eyes. Despite our cavalcade of errors,
there's hope (no audacity required) for a reasonable outcome:
an Iraq that treats its citizens decently and that neither harbors
terrorists nor menaces its neighbors.
We'll need to sustain a longer commitment
than would have been the case had the administration's know-it-alls
not regarded our best generals as fools back in 2003. The administration's
disgraceful treatment of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki
was paradigmatic of its arrogance.
Meanwhile, those who held power over
our military and misused it so disgracefully will never suffer
as our military casualties and their families will for the rest
of their lives. At most, those privileged men will experience
disappointing sales of their self-serving memoirs. Cowards sent
heroes to die.
I cannot help repeating the heartbreaking
truth that it didn't have to be this hard, this bloody, or this
expensive. This is what happens when war is made by amateurs.
Has anyone in Washington learned that lesson?
It's a lesson that the left, as well
as the right, needs to take to heart. While the Bush administration
deserves every lash it gets, domestic opponents of the war have
been hypocritical, dishonest and destructive. As this column long
has maintained, had President Bill Clinton sent our troops to
depose Saddam Hussein, Democrats would have celebrated him as
the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln.
The problem for the left wasn't really
what was done, but who did it. And hatred of Bush actually empowered
him - the administration had no incentive to reach out to those
who wouldn't reach back, so it just did as it pleased. Today's
"antiwar" left also contains plenty of politicians who
backed interventions in the Balkans and Somalia, who would be
glad to send American troops to Darfur today and who voted for
war in Iraq.
Both parties are quick to employ our
military. It's the only foreign-policy tool we have that works.
Neither party is a peace party - each just wants to pick its own
wars. The hypocrisy in Washington is as astonishing as the dishonesty
about security needs.
Through it all, amazingly, our young
men and women in uniform continue to serve honorably and skillfully,
holding together not just Iraq but a fractured world. We whine
and bicker. They re-enlist and go back to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Where they're targets of scorn for our elitist media.
Given all our mistakes and partisan
agendas, it's amazing Iraq is going as well as it is today. The
improved conditions in Baghdad and most of the provinces verge
on the miraculous, given the situation a year ago. But we've paid
a needlessly high price.
As for President Bush, let's face it:
He's been our most-inept wartime leader since James Madison fled
the White House, leaving his wife behind to save what she could
before the British troops arrived with torches.
That said, Bush has displayed one single
worthy characteristic (one he shares, oddly enough, with Madison):
He won't surrender.
As horribly as Bush performed for our
first four years in Iraq, it's still possible to do worse. Both
of the Democratic Party's presidential aspirants believe that
the answer is to flee, handing the terrorists we've defeated a
strategic victory, inviting a genocidal civil war, further destabilizing
the Middle East, and sending the message to the world that Americans
lack the courage and staying power of our enemies.
Declaring failure isn't the correct
re sponse to failure narrowly avoided. Both Sens. Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton would kill a struggling convalescent. Bush's
shambles would become the next administration's catastrophe. As
president, Obama or Clinton would finish with far more blood on
his or her hands than President Bush has on his.
Was deposing Saddam Hussein a good idea?
Yes. I still believe that. It was an act of vision and virtue.
It's only a shame we didn't do it competently.
Top
of the Page
Democrats
Are Still Weak on Security
Karl Rove
Wall Street Journal, March
21, 2008
One out of five is not a majority. Democrats
should keep that simple fact of political life in mind as they
pursue the White House.
For a party whose presidential candidates
pledge they'll remove U.S. troops from Iraq immediately upon taking
office -- without regard to conditions on the ground or the consequences
to America's security -- a late February Gallup Poll was bad news.
The Obama/Clinton vow to pull out of Iraq immediately appears
to be the position of less than one-fifth of the voters.
Only
18% of those surveyed by Gallup agreed U.S. troops should be withdrawn
"on a timetable as soon as possible." And only 20% felt
the surge was making things worse in Iraq. Twice as many respondents
felt the surge was making conditions better.
It gets worse for Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama. Nearly two out of every three Americans surveyed
(65%) believe "the United States has an obligation to establish
a reasonable level of stability and security in Iraq before withdrawing
all of its troops." The reason is self-interest. Almost the
same number of Americans (63%) believe al Qaeda "would be
more likely to use Iraq as a base for its terrorist operations"
if the U.S. withdraws.
Just a year ago it was almost universally
accepted that Iraq would wreck the GOP chances in November. Now
the issue may pose a threat to the Democratic efforts to gain
power. For while the American people are acknowledging the positive
impact of the surge, Democratic leaders are not.
In September, Mrs. Clinton told Gen.
David Petraeus "the reports that you provide to us really
require the willing suspension of disbelief." This week,
she said "we'll be right back at square one" in Iraq
by this summer.
In December, Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid refused to admit progress, arguing, "The surge
hasn't accomplished its goals." He said a month earlier there
was "no progress being made in Iraq" and "it is
not getting better, it is getting worse."
Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Feb.
9 if she was worried that the gains of the last year might be
lost, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot back: "There haven't
been gains . . . This is a failure." Carl Levin, the Democratic
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told the Associated
Press the same month that the surge "has failed."
This passionate, persistent unwillingness
to admit what more and more Americans are coming to believe is
true about Iraq's changing situation puts Democrats in dangerous
political territory. For one thing, they increasingly appear out
of touch with reality, a charge they made with some success at
the administration's expense before the surge began changing conditions
in Iraq.
For another, Democrats appear to have
an ideological investment in things going badly in Iraq. They
seem upset and prickly when asked to comment on the progress America
is making. It's hard to see how Democrats can build a majority
if their position on what they claim is one of the campaign's
central issues is shared by less than a fifth of the electorate.
They'd be better off arguing success allows America to accelerate
the return of our troops rather than appear to deny the progress
those troops are making.
There are more problems for Democrats
on national security. Led by Ms. Pelosi, House Democrats are digging
their party into even deeper difficulty by holding up the bipartisan
Senate Protect American Act reauthorization. The reason? House
Democrats want personal injury lawyers to be able to sue telecommunications
companies for having the audacity to cooperate with the government
in monitoring terrorist communications after 9/11.
It appears that in Ms. Pelosi's warped
world, the monetary needs of the Democratic Party's most generous
financial benefactors take precedence over the nation's security.
How else could one rationally explain her opposition? Sens. Clinton
and Obama, both of whom opposed the bipartisan Senate reauthorization
bill, have joined in her approach.
That is a mistake, both on the merits
and politically. For example, a question added to a recently conducted,
private national poll introduced the issue by saying "Congress
is now debating extending legislation called the Protect America
Act, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor communications
of foreign terrorists. Part of the debate is about protecting
telephone companies or leaving them open to lawsuits."
It then described two positions, drawing
on public statements by those involved in the issue. One position
is that of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who "say it is critical
that Congress act as soon as possible to reauthorize the Protect
America Act. They said we have already lost intelligence information
because Congress let it expire, it has had negative consequences
for our national security and degraded our intelligence capability."
The other position is that of "Democrat
Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi," who say
"this is a manufactured political crisis, the intelligence
community already has the tools that they need, and private companies
should not be granted protection from being sued when they cooperate
with the government."
When asked whom they agree with, Americans
side with Messrs. McConnell and Mukasey over Mr. Reid and Ms.
Pelosi by a 54%-37% margin. And this is without describing why
House Democrats are fighting this battle: campaign donations from
wealthy trial lawyers. The more this issue is discussed, the more
Americans will come to see Democrats have put their campaign donors
-- an unsavory group of lawyers, some of whom have been in the
headlines recently with guilty pleas in fraud and bribery attempts
-- above the country's security.
Elections are rarely decided over just
one issue; to win, candidates don't need to have a majority of
Americans agreeing with them on every big issue. But when it comes
to choosing a president, Americans take seriously the candidates'
views and experience on national security. Voters instinctively
understand a president's principal constitutional responsibility
is protecting the country.
The Democrats have two candidates with
less national security experience and fewer credentials than the
presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. And they are
compounding these difficulties with positions on Iraq and terrorist
surveillance that are shared by a shrinking minority of Americans.
(Mr. Rove is a former
senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W.
Bush.)
Top
of the Page
