Old School: No Substitute For Victory

Hope and Change School: Victory is "not necessarily the goal."

MacArthur must be spinning in his grave.

Associated Press: We Won!

I wonder if it took so long for the AP to report this because they were waiting for Jamil Hussein to break the news to them.

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

They certainly had no difficulty rushing false stories about finding 20 beheaded bodies or Sunnis being burned alive within view of approving Iraqi soldiers.

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! KFC!

Do you remember Fallujah? Well, if you need anymore evidence that we have won in Iraq, here's proof.


Not quite "democracy, whiskey, sexey," but probably more importantly symbolic. How about a new slogan for Iraqi liberation? I propose democracy, whiskey sexey, KFC.
Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.

If John McCain is smart, he'll use this in a campaign commercial. That means, it won't happen.

How Long Will Obama Continue To Deny Success?

If even the Washington Post gets it, will the New York Times be next? The Times has managed to concede that the economy is a lot better than they had hoped for.

HERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. 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."

I find it odd when a mainstream media outlet like the Washington Post considers it odd that there has been a lull in news coverage of Iraq. I mean, doesn't the Washington Post control its own content? If the Post wanted news from Iraq on its pages, then why doesn't it just publish it?

Of course, it could just be that the MSM doesn't want to report good news from Iraq until after the election.

Iraq, We're Winning

But, we could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A former case officer for the CIA compares Islamist reaction to the Iraq War and the Soviet's Afghanistan War and notes that we have every reason to expect a far more favorable outcome in Iraq.

Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.

It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.

Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.

It's all turning out as I predicted a year ago(here, here and here). To defeat Islamic extremism, we need to change the course of history and not just get even after we are attacked.