Real Army Winning Dean's "Unwinnable" War!
From an American Spectator article, In Search of Murtha's Army :
Loose Canons [/] In Search of Murtha's Army [/] By Jed Babbin [/] Published 12/13/2005 12:10:46 AMLast week, I went to Iraq to search for John Murtha's army. You know: the one he described as "broken, worn out," and "living hand to mouth." Thanks to the help of some friends in low places, I met with a lot of the troops and almost all of the commanders around Baghdad and at Camp Fallujah. Murtha was not just wrong, but damnably wrong. And so, unsurprisingly, is Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who declared the war unwinnable.
None of the soldiers I spoke to -- Army or Marine -- was happy about being in Iraq. Some were there for the third year-long tour, a big strain on their families. One senior officer from the 4th I.D. told me about one of his favorite young warriors, a captain, who he said was "enormously adaptable and capable." But the captain had been on one tour in Afghanistan and two in Iraq in his five years of service. The result? "He's no longer married." That's the kind of wound even the best docs can't mend. […] But [the sergeant], like all the others, agreed on one important point.
All the men I spoke to (and, yes, the women as well) didn't believe this job was over. They have committed themselves to the war, and expect their commitment to be matched at home. Frustrated? Yes. Tired? Sure. Broken? Don't believe it for one microsecond. Living hand to mouth? Oh, please. Everyone I spoke to -- officer and enlisted -- said they had everything they need, and get more for the asking. […]
Is our army broken? Not hardly, but it could be. One 4th I.D. colonel said it best: "You want to break this army? Then break your word to it." Which is precisely what the Dems want to do. President Bush was right when he said yesterday that the only way we will lose this war is if we lose our nerve. The Dems long ago lost theirs.
Because the politicians haven't gotten to the point of cutting off war funds or setting withdrawal schedules, our troops are not paying a lot of attention to the winds blowing around the Beltway. In their ignorance, poor souls, they don't understand the judgment of their betters -- the Deans, Pelosis, and Murthas -- that the war is "unwinnable." So they're just going ahead and winning it. And you have to understand that "winning" means not only defeating the insurgents, which we are doing, but training, equipping, and teaching the Iraqis to both protect themselves and keep their country together.
DEFEATING THE TERRORISTS MEANS not only capturing or killing them, but cutting off their sources of arms, men, and money. Syrian, Saudi, and Iranian support for terrorists is a constant problem. The main "rat lines" -- the routes into Iraq from Syria and Saudi Arabia -- are not closed, but tightened down enormously. The official line is that we are not engaged in operations against Syrian forces or on Syrian territory (more than one senior military commander said that directly and would not budge from it). But something has been going on for weeks if not months. Syrian support for the insurgents has, I believe, been forcibly reduced. Iraqi forces, including the "Desert Protectors" -- really tribesmen operating in their home areas -- are proving effective against infiltration. Part of the remaining problem, one senior officer said, is the "booze, money, and drugs" coming in from Saudi Arabia, and arms coming in -- especially those described by Tony Blair -- from Iran.
[…] One senior officer said that we've "taken out" -- i.e., captured or killed -- an estimated 90% of the al Qaeda in Iraq. They are among the more than 2,000 terrorists we have caught or killed there.
The foreign fighters coming in are almost entirely suiciders, not soldiers. But at least 90% of the insurgents being caught are Iraqis: members of anti-occupation groups, some of which trace their origins to the 1920s when they drove the Brits out. It is these people -- mainly Sunni but some Shia such as those answering to Moqtada al Sadr -- who are the most stubborn opponents of democracy. They have no confidence in the current Iraqi government and if they refuse to vote in the Thursday election -- as it appears they will do at least in the big city of Ramadi -- the insurrection will continue.
[…] THE BIGGEST CONCLUSION I DREW from the trip is that the Iraqi civilian government lags badly behind the Iraqi army in taking charge and moving forward. Time after time, our top commanders expressed frustration that the politics aren't keeping up with the development of the Iraqi military. It's inevitable in a democracy, but this kind of dissent is very counterproductive. […]
[…] It's too bad that the Iraqi pols don't have the vision their military counterparts do. At the Iraqi military academy at al-Rustamiya, BGen. Dan Bolger and his Iraqi and Brit cohorts showed me the future of the Iraqi Army. I had the chance to talk to several members of their first graduating class. To a man, they will be graduating straight into the two-way firefight. And, to a man, they want to rid their nation of the terrorists that prey on it. They are an Iraqi investment in the future. Let's hope the Iraqi pols don't waste that investment. And we have to ensure that the Dems don't waste ours.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004). [My ellipses and emphasis]
