Don’t Forget the Iraqis!
Andrew McCarthy makes a couple interesting points in a column on National Review Online. His main point: we have a golden opportunity to restore to the American mind the true nature of our military and to strike a death blow to the terrorists in Iraq.
Hopefully, Zarqawi’s demise is a clarifying event in the United States—for the administration, the Congress, and—hope against hope—the media. This was the real American military in action, in all its effectiveness, doing what the American people sent it to do despite often impossibly difficult circumstances: namely, eliminate nondescript terrorists who strike in stealth then weave themselves back into the civilian population.
It is a mission our brave men and women—again, the real American military—perform brilliantly, day in and day out, despite lethal danger to themselves and immense pressure to perform flawlessly. Yet, what we hear about back home is Abu Ghraib. What we hear about is Haditha—as to which the anti-war champion of the current fifteen minutes, Congressman Jack Murtha, is poised to accord our Marines a lot less due process than he and other members are extending to their radioactive colleague, Rep. William Jefferson.
What we might want to remember from time to time is that ever since we unleashed our forces, no American city has had to bury thousands of its dead or gaze upon barren craters where skyscrapers once stood.
It’s a point that we would do well to remember. Our military, critics notwithstanding, is not Abu Ghraib or Haditha.
There’s something else we’d do well to remember also, and it’s something that McCarthy got wrong. He says,
Democracy in the Islamic world is a matter of cultural upheaval over years, not just a few elections. Whether the project can ultimately succeed is debatable. One thing, however, is surely indisputable: Like the U.S. national security it is intended to promote, the democracy project cannot be sustained unless the enemy is first defeated.
It was not democracy that killed Zarqawi. It was the United States military.
No, it wasn’t. What killed Zarqawi was the United States military and democracy, specifically the armed forces of a democratic and free Iraq. Let us also not forget the assist we got from Jordan, which is rapidly becoming a valuable and steadfast ally to both the US and Iraq.
[Iraqi PM] Al-Maliki said the airstrike was the result of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area, and U.S. forces acted on the information. Casey said the hunt for al-Zarqawi began two weeks ago, and his body was identified by fingerprints and facial recognition.
A Jordanian official said Jordan also provided the U.S. military with information that helped in tracking al-Zarqawi down. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was addressing intelligence issues, would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have intelligence agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants.
Some of the information came from Jordan’s sources inside Iraq and led the U.S. military to the area of Baqouba, the official said.
Baqouba has in recent weeks seen a spike in sectarian violence, including the discovery of 17 severed heads in fruit boxes. It was also near the site of a sectarian atrocity last week in which masked gunmen killed 21 Shiites, including a dozen students, after separating out four Sunni Arabs.
“Those who disrupt the course of life, like al-Zarqawi, will have a tragic end,” al-Maliki said. He also warned those who would follow the militant’s lead that “whenever there is a new al-Zarqawi, we will kill him.”
“This is a message for all those who embrace violence, killing and destruction to stop and to (retreat) before it’s too late,” he said. “It is an open battle with all those who incite sectarianism.”
It’s critical at this point to remember that Iraqi intelligence and Iraqi soldiers were necessary to make Zarqawi’s death a blessed reality. As I said in a previous post, a victory like this can go a long way toward boosting not only the morale of the relatively green Iraqi security agencies but can also give Iraqis an immense reason to have confidence in them. That has to happen. Right now the President has a great opportunity to give the Iraqis a big “atta boy”. It won’t cost him a thing to do it and the benefits are priceless.
Supporters of the war, and of the nascent government in Iraq, have the same opportunity. The faster word spreads of the invaluable role Iraq played in ridding itself of Zarqawi, the better. I realize that we have pride in our soldiers and we ought to brag on them at every possible opportunity, especially in the face of the incessant criticisms from the MSM and the anti-war party. But on this one, we need to give the Iraqis their props.
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Category: Fighting the Islamists
