Friedman: Iraq’s Triumphs are Obama’s Triumphs
The boldness of the MSM’s bias is simply breathtaking sometimes. Thomas Friedman asserts, without any shame at all, that any triumph of the strengthening Iraqi civil society will be credited to Barack Obama.
In 2003, the United States, under President Bush, invaded Iraq to change the regime. Terrible postwar execution and unrelenting attempts by Al Qaeda to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war turned the Iraqi geopolitical space into a different problem — a maelstrom of violence for four years, with U.S. troops caught in the middle. A huge price was paid by Iraqis and Americans. This was the Iraq that Barack Obama ran against.
In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq. There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.
That is the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world in a different direction.
I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.
If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national security credentials than that.
In fact, we have begun drawing down our troops not “because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty” but because the Iraqi police and military are proving themselves capable of handling things themselves. The lion’s share of the credit for that (aside from that earned by courageous Iraqis who have seized the opportunity to run their own country democratically) should go to President George Bush, General David Petraeus, and the men and women of the US armed forces who stood between the nascent Iraqi government and the vile scum who have tried to take it down.
In short, as the Iraqis stand up, we stand down. Sound familiar? You might have seen that phrase a time or two for the past four or five years. I’m not New York Times columnist or anything, but I can remember a phrase I’ve heard a couple dozen times from the President of the United States. I’m sure that Friedman remembers the words “hope” and “change”, but perhaps that’s because they were uttered by the honeyed lips of The One.
Barack Obama and the Democrats worked against our soldiers and the people of Iraq almost every single day. Their cowardice and cynicism was, at times, staggering. If they had gotten their way, we would have abandoned the Iraqis years ago to the Islamist predators who would have enslaved them anew. With very few exceptions, Democrats deserve no credit for any success we see now in Iraq or will see there in the future, Friedman’s apple-polishing notwithstanding.
The best thing Barack Obama can do right now is to continue on the course that President Bush and our able commanders in Iraq have set us. The best thing Thomas Friedman can do is to write for a beat that better suits his intellectual honesty. I suggest the funny pages.
Ace’s comments on the left’s dishonesty is worth reading as well.
Other Posts of Interest:
Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media., Our Foreign Policy, President Barack Obama, President George Bush
