The Investor’s Business Daily had a fine editorial today regarding Barry’s “tour”. Accurately titled, “A Tour De Farce” it points out the abject failure of Obama’s Iraq “policy”. Don’t expect to see anything resembling reporting on this from the MSM.
Campaign ‘08: The man who opposed the surge in Iraq now wants a surge in Afghanistan. But if Barack Obama had his way, there would be no troops to be redeployed and no free Iraq to visit.
Much has been made, too much we think, of the remarks by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the German newsmagazine Der Speigel that seemingly endorsed Barack Obama’s proposed 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
As John McCain has pointed out, and a fawning press has not, there would be no democratic Iraq to visit and no Prime Minister al-Maliki to have a photo-op with if we had listened to Obama. Instead, the jihadist victory that would have resulted would have rivaled the killing fields of Cambodia.
In January 2007, Obama introduced legislation in the Senate to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by March of this year. If that proposal had been adopted, our troops would have been leaving, not entering, Iraq in 2007.
In other words, the surge never would have happened, much less succeeded. The jihadists would have simply set their snooze alarms and waited, and Iraq’s democracy and its people would have been doomed.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told “Fox News Sunday” that setting an unconditional timetable for withdrawal, as Obama wants, is “dangerous” and that removing troops from Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground.
“I’m convinced,” said Mullen, “(that) making reductions based on conditions on the ground are very important. We’ve been able to do that. We’ve reduced five brigades in the last several months and, again, if conditions continue to improve, I would be able to make those recommendations to President Bush in the fall to continue those reductions.”
The surge that Obama opposed has succeeded magnificently. Al-Qaida and the jihadists have been routed, along with the Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr. A functioning democracy that has proved capable of defending itself is in place. The last of the five extra brigades President Bush sent in 2007 will be out next week.
Iraqi security forces recently took responsibility for a 10th province and expect to assume responsibility for all 18 provinces by year-end. Al-Maliki’s government has made huge strides in political reconciliation. Foreign governments are forgiving debts and opening embassies. U.S. casualties and sectarian violence have plunged.
Yet we doubt seriously that Obama’s first words to Gen. David Petraeus, Centcom commander and architect of the surge, were “Well, General, I was wrong.” Obama was caught recently purging criticisms of the surge from his Web site. We also doubt that Obama will explain why he refused to vote to condemn MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad.
So to whom do Obama and the Democrats give credit for this success? Certainly not the brilliance of Gen. Petraeus and the skill and bravery of the 170,000 troops under his command. And certainly not the wisdom of the commander in chief in approving needed changes in leadership and strategy.
Obama’s visit to Afghanistan was necessary, considering that as chairman of a subcommittee having jurisdiction he hasn’t held a single hearing on a theater of operations he now deems critical.
The irony here is the man who would have handed al-Qaida a major victory in Iraq wants to pursue its remnants and its figurehead leader in Afghanistan. Our policy against al-Qaida has failed so miserably that there have been no attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11.
The German government wisely had Obama move his unprecedented foreign campaign rally away from the Brandenburg Gate to the ironically named Siegessaule, or Victory Column. Victory was not what Obama supported in Iraq. A better site for his speech would have been Munich.
I know it’s an impossibility but it would be just outstanding if Petraeus refused to meet with Obama. After all, Petraeus is a winner.
