We went through similar times in the early 1990's. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union crumbled and we won the Cold War. Yet it was beyond the typical liberal's ability to acknowledge that Ronald Reagan had anything to do with these accomplishments. So you had the ludicrous spectacle of bespectacled college professors arguing that Jimmy Carter could have won the Cold War or the Soviet Union would have fallen apart regardless of what we did. In 1992 after Reagan addressed the Republican convention, Tom Brokaw speculated from his national TV perch that the government debt run up under Reagan's watch would be the Gipper's principal legacy.
We're seeing something similar happen now. In the past couple of weeks, two extremely promising news stories have sprung from the War on Terror. The situation in Iraq is looking promising, and there is a real possibility and perhaps even a likelihood that the Iraq war will leave as its legacy a remarkably civilized and progressive country by the standards of the region. More importantly, the war may leave behind a stable and humane nation that will not be hostile to American interests, one that may serve as a beacon for it neighbors.
Perhaps more noteworthy is the CIA's assessment that "portrays Al Qaeda as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." While I always take CIA pronouncements of this sort with a grain of salt given the agency's limitations and recent history of sloppy analysis, this conclusion does square with Al Qaeda's declining and practically disappearing activities.
Since these have been George W. Bush's wars, one would think he would receive at least a modicum of credit for any progress. Alas, if Bush is to receive credit, he'll have to be patient just like Reagan was.
Regarding Iraq, yesterday this week saw the disheartening spectacle of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claiming that "some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians." This is an obscenity on two levels. Most people will naturally focus on the fact that Pelosi's refusal to credit the Bush administration also means she must refuse to credit our Armed Forces who have sacrificed so much and fought with such skill and bravery to make the surge a success.
Still more disgusting is Pelosi's bizarre desire to credit our enemies in Iran for our progress. This claim is so at odds with the truth and so offensive, it's shocking that even the most partisan Democrat would make it. General H.R. McMaster described Iran's purported "goodwill" this way:
In the case of what Iran is doing in Iraq, it is so damn obvious to anybody who wants to look into it, I think, that is drop the word "alleged" and say what they're doing, which is, we know for a fact organizing and directing operations against the government of Iraq and against our forces - the government of Iraq forces and our forces - we know they have done that, certainly in the past. We know that they are supplying them with weapons and the most effective weapons that they used to attack the Iraqi people and our forces and these include the long-range high payload rockets that have been coming in from Iraq as well as the explosively formed projectile roadside bombs that come from Iran.
As far as winning the battle against Al Qaeda is concerned, many will argue that Islamic populations, once exposed to fundamentalist barbarism, have decided that going back to the 7th century looked a lot more attractive on paper than it turned out to be in reality. This is true to a certain extent, but it is no more the sole cause of any victory we'll achieve than a struggling Soviet economy was the sole cause of victory in the Cold War.
A guiding principle of the War on Terror was and still is the need to prove to the world that Jihadism is a dead end. To some extent or another, every war has had a similar endgame. WWII did not conclude until Japanese society accepted the fact that the policies of Imperialist Japan had led to its nation's ruin and, if continued, would lead to its nation's total destruction.
What bin Laden said about the strong horse and the weak horse was right. And he and his minions don't look like the strong horse running for their pathetic lives in Waziristan for years on end. The Islamic world has watched as al Qaeda has become the weak horse. President Bush deserves credit for fighting the war with the steadfastness he has. Remember, it was less than four years ago when John Kerry implored us to fight a more sensitive war on terror. Somehow I doubt sensitivity would have had the same impact on the Jihadists as the predator drones that now fill their skies.
I've never been reticent about pointing out the Bush administration's shortcomings. Its spendthrift ways, its elevation of unqualified lackeys to positions of importance, its longtime adherence to ineffective tactics in Iraq, its inability to communicate…I better stop - I could go on all day. My point is that the Bush administration has been a flawed vehicle, and I've never shied away from saying as much.
But President Bush is on the verge of winning the big ones. It will be no small thing if he has shown and mostly secured the path to victory in Iraq and in the War on Terror before leaving office. It will drive the left crazy and as was the case with Reagan, it will take liberals decades to admit it, but Bush will strut back to Crawford a big winner.
Few remember that Abraham Lincoln spent years running a dreadful war effort presided over by the ineffective likes of George McClellan and Joe Hooker. And those who do remember such things view them charitably, as Lincoln got things right by the end. If President Bush does wind up also having gotten the big things right, something that seems increasingly likely, the enormous successes of his administration will dwarf the failures in history's eyes.
