General David Petraeus is once again in Washington to brief Congress on the progress in Iraq. Once again, the Democrats are doing their best to ignore what he has to say: not only is there military progress, but there is political progress, too.
Michelle Malkin has a great summary of the events, from the charts presented to step-by-step descriptions of the protesters who were escorted out of the hearing. Check out the link to see some great visuals on just how much military progress has taken place since the surge began.
One of the main questions is regarding troop levels. Thousands of troops have been coming home over the past few months due to success. Petraeus recommends finishing the planned withdrawals, but would like to see a temporary halt in reductions after that. Calling for a re-evaluation, Petraeus continues to avoid being pinned down to a timeline for withdrawal, despite the Democrats' best efforts. Both Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker advised that the situation is delicately stable, and further troop reductions should be based on the new situation on the ground after the current wave is over.
A key mantra of the anti-war Left -- now that the surge has succeeded, dammit! -- is that the political progress isn't where it needs to be. Unfortunately for them, that is not true. Rich Lowry delves into that mantra and proves it wrong, showing how 12 of the 18 benchmarks set out by the Bush administration have been meet. Of course, when shifting goalposts are the standard operating procedure of the Left, even a clean 18/18 isn't likely to be good enough.
Senator John Cornyn offers his thoughts on some of his Congressional comrades, revealing how the Democrats are simply unwilling to accept the realities of the war effort.
Frederick Kagan goes into great detail about why Iraq matters, and why the Left just isn't getting what the average American citizen knows. The short version is: losing wars is always bad. Kagan addresses all of the major whining points of the Left, so if you want to understand the truth behind the statement that the war costs too much, political progress isn't related to the surge, it was an invalid war in the first place, or any other of the big talking points, you've got to check out this story.
Speaking of the cost of the war, Larry Kudlow tries to simplify it. The number $750 billion (or, in some places, $1 trillion) is being thrown around a lot as the cost of the war. That may sound huge, but you need to realize that this is a number that is stretched over five years, during which the GDP of America will be around $63 trillion. So, the cost of the war is less than 1% of our total GDP. Of course, it depends on the precise numbers you look at (Kagan's article above comes out to closer to 5%), but the point is that in relative terms it is very small. We pay more sales tax on every purchase at the grocery store than the cost of the War in Iraq.
The key question is: what is the cost of freedom and victory? Surely it's worth a few cents of every dollar, isn't it?
To the Democrats, that doesn't appear to be the case. They are now pushing legislation to require Iraq to pay for some war costs with oil money. I'm not sure we even have the jurisdiction to force them to do that, but the point here is that this is just the latest attempt by the Democrats to force a premature surrender in Iraq despite the fact that we are WINNING. They've tried (and failed) with literally dozens of votes on withdrawing before a victory, so they've started trying other tactics, including angering allies (i.e. Turkey) and siphoning away the money needed to fund our troops. Without the funding, the troops can't stay over there. This is the latest attempt to do that.
What is wrong with these people?? WE ARE WINNING...!
In November, just remember which party has been constantly taking the side of the terrorists and enemies of America, and which party has not.
For the latest information on the War in Iraq, to to IraqStatusReport.com.
There's my two cents.
No comments:
Post a Comment