Cowards, I know, would quit the fighting now
but the man who wants to make his mark in war
must stand his ground and brace for all he’s worth –
suffer his wounds or wound his man to death.
The Iliad, Book XI (Robert Fagels trans.)
Admirers of George W. Bush – not a numerous company but a stubborn one – like to anticipate that he eventually will take a place in history like Harry S Truman’s, a President who left office as a “failure” but is now widely praised for taking the first steps toward victory in the Cold War. It was not at all certain in the immediate aftermath of World War II that the United States would offer serious resistance to the advance of communism in Europe and Asia. We could have pulled back to our own hemisphere and let foreign nations take care of themselves. Similarly, the pro-Bush prediction is that his decision to treat terrorism as an act of war rather than a law enforcement concern, his espousal of the doctrine of defensive preemption, and his successes in Iraq and Afghanistan will set the West on course to suppress Islamofascism, however many detours may lengthen the way.
One element of the Truman-Bush parallel that no one has emphasized strongly is that President Truman started a process with meager short-term results. During his time in office, the Soviet Union swallowed Eastern Europe, Mao Tse-tung took control of mainland China, Stalin’s spies scored their most spectacular espionage feats, deterrence failed in Korea, and the accession of pro-communist governments in Western Europe remained a real possibility. Against those setbacks could be set the salvation of Greece and not much more. It would have been realistic to say in January 1953 that the “War on Communism” was a dismal failure. If either political party then had been like the Democrats now, it would have been said, and loudly, too.
A year ago, it wouldn’t have been excessively gloomy to foresee that President Bush would leave office with his Administration’s defining struggle in a similar state: Iraq would flounder into civil war and be abandoned by a President Clinton or Obama; Afghanistan would fall to resurgent Taliban; Pakistan would become a de facto terrorist ally; the mufsidun ideology, its prestige boosted by such victories, would come to define Islam; an emboldened Iran would emerge as a regional superpower. For every commentator who called the President steadfast in adversity, ten sneered that he was merely obstinate. The War on Terror was certainly not lost, but it looked to be as long as the Cold War.
Today, by startling contrast, it wouldn’t be utterly Pollyannish to say that George W. Bush will walk away a winner, leaving a devastated terrorist movement as his legacy.
About Iraq, the Washington Post’s editorial board (that’s Washington Post, not New York) says,
While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”
Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war againstAmericans. . . .
Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once – something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has “unparalleled” public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.
The situation is looking good enough that Team Obama is pretending that Slick Barry never said, “We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops: I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”
And in Afghanistan,
Missions by special forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have “decapitated” the Taliban and brought the war in Afghanistan to a “tipping point”, the commander of British forces has said.
The new “precise, surgical” tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith.
In the past two years an estimated 7,000 Taliban have been killed, the majority in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But it is the “very effective targeted decapitation operations” that have removed “several echelons ofcommanders”. . . .
“We have seen increasing fissures of stress through the whole organisation that has led to internecine and fratricidal strife between competing groups.”
Taliban fighters are apparently becoming increasingly unpopular in Helmand, where they are reliant on the local population for food and water.
They have also been subjected to strikes by the RAF’s American-made Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle and the guided Royal Artillery missile system, which have both proved a major battlefield success.
“I can therefore judge the Taliban insurgency a failure at the moment,” said Brig Carleton-Smith. “We have reached the tipping point.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s economy is facing ruin from mismanagement and corruption. Nancy Pelosi’s notion that the mullarchy deserves the credit for the Iraqi government’s gains is a desperate anti-war fantasy, striving to put the worst face possible on victory, but suppose that it were true. Wouldn’t the President deserve kudos for either intimidating or charming the mullahs into a more cooperative frame of mind? As James Taranto says, “Who needs Barack Obama if the Bush administration is generating so much Iranian goodwill?”
And so it goes. Not that this good news amounts to an assured triumph. The enemy retains substantial resources and may be able to regroup. Worse, there is a danger that we will complacently relax the pressure too soon. Nonetheless, the President’s vindication may come much more rapidly than Truman’s, perhaps soon enough to embarrass the Bush haters mightily.
I have yet to meet a leftist who is capable of embarrassment. When I point out something they should be embarrassed about, it turns out they were right all along, but I'm just too dumb to see it.
Posted by: Mike Kriskey | Monday, June 02, 2008 at 07:14 PM