President Bush could not have been more frank or honest with the American people than he was last night. That said, the central issue remains today what it has been since the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001: Are we as a nation willing to do whatever is required to win the war on terrorism?
Iraq is today the central front in that war, and the president is doing all within his power to defeat the terrorists there now so that we don’t have to fight them here in the future.
The president believes the war in Iraq can be won by increasing American troop strength for a period as the Iraqis themselves assume greater responsibilities for securing their country and by increasing U.S. economic aid to rebuild infrastructure and provide jobs.
Calling this troop movement a “surge” was unfortunate because it conveyed the idea of something that isn’t going to happen — putting more U.S. soldiers on the ground than we have had heretofore. In fact, as The Examiner’s Bill Sammon reported yesterday, even with the “surge” announced last night, we will still be a few thousand short of the high water mark of 160,000 U.S. troops a year ago.
More important than the raw numbers is how those troops are deployed.
The president acknowledged last night that mistakes were made in the days leading up to the U.S. action in Iraq and the first phases of building the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Working with increased Iraqi military and police forces, our strengthened forces will now be able to rectify the biggest of those mistakes: failing to eradicate the insurgents completely and not disarming private militias like that of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Special attention is to be devoted to Baghdad and Anbar province, with Iraqi army units in the lead.
There will be more U.S. casualties in coming months. But the only way to affirm the sacrifice of American blood and material resources in Iraq is persevering and winning. Iraq is not Vietnam unless congressional Democrats heed extremists like Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and withdraw funding for the American war effort in Iraq as they did in 1974, which led directly to the fall of Saigon in 1975.
The killing fields followed throughout Southeast Asia as the victors took revenge upon those who looked to America for protection and freedom. The killing fields will come again if America fails now because Iraq will dissolve into chaos and then a jihadist totalitarianism.
Many Rubicons are being crossed on Iraq. There will be no crossing back if we heed the ignoble call to retreat.
