Blogs For Victory

This counts as “What Media Bias? Part 117”.

The New York Times rejects a McCain Op-Ed responding to Obama – the offending document, via Drudge:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance…

…Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

The Iraq issue will be, I think, key for McCain – not in the sense that a majority will vote based just on that issue, but that it is the easiest issue for McCain to question Obama’s judgement and further question Obama’s fitness to carry Afghanistan to victory. Obama is staking his foreign/military policy meme on a “get out of Iraq, win in Afghanistan” proposal – the narrative will be that Obama will “end” the war in Iraq so that we can, finally, win in Afghanistan and thus repair all the damage President Bush has done and McCain proposes to continue. But this is a two-edged sword Obama is wielding – McCain can point out that Obama’s defeatism when the going got tough in Iraq indicates that Obama will also flunk the test when things get rough in Afghanistan. Obama ran up the white flag once entirely un-necessarily, what can he say to demonstrate to us that he won’t surrender, again, in Afghanistan?

Obama is nothing but a story – a fraud wrapped up in an illusion. As long as no one points out the nakedness of this would-be Emperor, he’ll be fine. McCain’s job is to force people to see what Obama really is – an ambitious non-entity with no requisite experience justifying installing him in the most powerful position in the world. If the election revolves around which man has the better story, then Obama will be our next President – if the election revolves around who is best able to be President, McCain will be sworn in on January 20th. We’ll have to see if Obama can hide in plain sight until November, or if McCain will force him, naked, into the public view.