Maybe, of course, America will lose the war in Iraq, followed by genocidal mayhem, the rise of a Saddam-like, jihad-endorsing dictator, further, perilous instability in the Middle East and an increased risk of emboldened terrorists one day blowing up a city or two or three over here, in the United States.
Or maybe not.
Over the past week and more, testimony from official and unofficial sources _ including the analyses of two Brookings Institution Democrats _ has indicated that, believe it or not, the military surge is working, sectarian violence is lessening and that an out-maneuvered, outnumbered al Qaeda enemy is inch-by-inch being defeated.
One witness on the side of hope is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a hard-facts realist who recently returned from Iraq with the message that many Iraqis once against us are now with us as they desperately and successfully try to rescue their neighborhoods from daily, violent death. That’s part one of the heartening news he reported. Part two is that the increase in troop numbers has meant that when the enemyis whipped in one place and jumps to another, we squash him there, too.
Gates and reports from the scene have cited persuasive progress in Anbar province, in city after city and in ever-growing portions of Baghdad. The issue today seems less a sectarian violence than it is an al Qaeda being weakened by repeated, heavy blows, if still barbarically intent on blowing up civilians in public settings as a key tactic in converting first Iraq and eventually the whole world into an Islamic caliphate.
The Brookings scholars chime in to support conclusions similar to those of the secretary and U.S. generals, warning, however, that nothing’s close to certain yet and worrying that Iraqi politicians are fiddling when the need is for major movement toward unity of purpose.
“Politics trumps the battleground in the end,” one of them said in a Fox TV interview by way of highly serious caveat. What should be remembered along with that concern is that these two _ Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack _ believe it would be mistaken to end the surge strategy quits before new assessments can be made next year.
In that regard, they are at odds with many Democrats, whose fear of optimism was symbolized by a Democratic congresswoman from Kansas and whose means of dealing with the Islamic threat was summed up by Clinton administration inaction.
The congresswoman was Rep. Nancy Boyda, who has drawn critical comment for having marched out of a hearing because she disliked the report of retired Gen. Jack Keene that the terrorists were now on the defensive in Iraq. As she made clear, his was a judgment she just could not abide, and that she feared the public might hear.
Meanwhile, as we listen to continued Democratic urgings for a retreat timetable, let’s keep in mind how the Clinton administration was like the Bush administration in saying Saddam Hussein had WMD and should be deposed and that al Qaeda was a major danger to the American people.
President Clinton neglected to do anything that mattered much about either proposition. Terrorists attacks were met with little more than frowns and futile gestures, and finally we lost 3,000 lives on American soil on 9/11.
Perhaps, at some point, we will need a vastly different Iraqi strategy that includes military redeployment, but we seem now to be edging toward some semblance of victory, and the consequences of speedy, politically opportune troop withdrawal could be devastating for something hugely important.
Haste could make waste of American civilization.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at [email protected].
