There are encouraging signs that the tide in Iraq has finally turned in favor of the United States. Many media outlets have finally admitted that the military surge begun five months ago is working, including the stubbornly persistent anti-war New York Times, whose front-page, lead story on Tuesday confirmed dramatic security gains. Confidence in Iraq’s economic and political future has increased so much that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are returning home from exile. People are venturing out to formerly abandoned parks, shops and restaurants in Baghdad, where civilian casualties are down by a stunning three-quarters since early summer.
Even more astounding, the Anbar Awakening has now spread to other areas in Iraq. Thousands of Sunnis and Shiites have joined forces, and together are turning against al-Qaeda and foreign-paid insurgents who have been butchering their families.
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Yet long after it became apparent that Gen. David Petraeus’ brilliant counter-insurgency strategy was getting results, Congressional Democrats refused to acknowledge any progress – despite the evidence of a dramatic turnaround – exactly the kind of tangible progress Democrats demanded from Petraeus when he testified before Congress in September.
He has delivered. They have not.
House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee chairman John Murtha continues to parrot Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s unsubstantiated belief that victory in Iraq is unattainable. They’re both apparently still reading from an old 2006 political script in which they promise to end the war – but not to win it.
The Democrats’ current refusal to release $50 billion in supplemental war funds without withdrawal strings attached (which they know will be vetoed) is more than a disturbing inability to adapt to changing circumstances on the ground. By deliberately choking off funds at this critical juncture, they are threatening the Pentagon’s ability to consolidate the dramatic economic and political gains in Iraq that the military surge has allowed, virtually assuring a self-prophesized U.S. defeat.
The stakes are so high that Defense Secretary Robert Gates warns that as many as 100,000 civilian employees will have to be furloughed beginning next month if supplemental war funding is not approved and he is forced to dip into other accounts to support combat troops in the field.
This political game of chicken, played exclusively for political gain, is one of the most morally reprehensible examples of troop abandonment since the Vietnam War. A veteran like Murtha should be ashamed of himself.
