The latest from Vets for Freedom
On Capitol Hill, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are urging their colleagues to adopt a bipartisan resolution that recognizes the success of the surge. Say the senators in part:
It was exactly one year ago today that General David Petraeus returned to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress about the progress of the surge in Iraq. At the time, many members of the Senate argued that the surge -- despite growing evidence of its success -- was not working and should be abandoned. One left-wing group, Moveon.org, even made the despicable and outrageous accusation that General Petraeus would try to 'cook the books' to justify the surge when he appeared before Congress.
One year later, it is clear: the critics of the surge were wrong… Because of the strategic success of the surge, more and more American troops are coming home, not in defeat, but in honor.
Given that even Barack Obama pronounced the surge a wild success over the weekend, one would assume that passage of the resolution won't be a problem. Chortle.
In spite of likely Democratic stubbornness, the facts on the ground bear eloquent testimony to the surge's success. Pre-surge, at the war's nadir, a bad month would see over 3,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. Last month, according to the website Icasualties.org, there were 311 Iraqi civilian fatalities due to violence. August was the fifth straight month in which that number hit an all time low. So far in September, there have been 68 casualties, a rate which improves on August's.
It's also important to distinguish between the types of violence that Iraq saw and is now seeing. As war correspondents like Bartle Bull and Michael Yon have noted, Iraq used to be embroiled in a civil war. The civilian casualties during the war's darkest days were a result of that civil war. Thanks to the surge, the civil war has since been decided - at least for the moment. The remaining violence is the work of criminals, not men with serious hopes of taking over a nation.
As for American casualties, those numbers are also down sharply since the pre-surge days and at their lowest point of the war. August saw 12 Americans killed in action; July saw 8. At the war's nadir, those numbers were over 100 per month.
Still, caution is appropriate. Lieberman and Graham put it this way in their press release:
In withdrawing our troops from Iraq, however, it is critical that we do not jeopardize the hard-won gains they have achieved. That means any withdrawal must be based on the recommendations of General Petraeus and our commanders on the ground, not on an arbitrary timeline invented in Washington. Our brave military has fought too hard, and sacrificed too much, for American politicians to throw away the gains they have achieved with an arbitrary timeline.
What is needed now, therefore, is not more partisan politics over Iraq, but for Democrats and Republicans alike to come together and recognize reality: to acknowledge that the surge was not just a tactical success but a strategic success; to give thanks to our courageous men and women in uniform who made it possible; and to pledge that we will do nothing that might squander these hard-won gains.
The latest Rasmussen poll shows the public's perception of the Iraq War has changed dramatically. Last summer, 27% of poll respondents thought history would consider the war a success while 56% felt the opposite. Today, 37% think it will go down as a success while 41% think it will go down as a failure.
Of course, built into those numbers is the somewhat common feeling that the war should never have been started in the first place. While some politicians would like to spend most of their time relitigating the events of 2003, that activity while potentially (though dubiously) of political use does nothing to help determine the proper way forward. Ideally, the changes on the ground in Iraq would have long since caused Democratic politicians to try to play a more constructive role than mindlessly braying about ending the war. Returning from Fantasy World, we are dealing with a party that literally until weeks ago wanted to label the surge a failure. Politics will likely come first.
But there, too, we have cause for hope. The new polling on Iraq should show the Democratic party that using the war as a convenient piñata is just so 2007. Supporting the troops and winning the war were always the right thing to do. Now they're the politically smart thing to do as well.
