pettyfoggery

Via GatewayPundit, this post on Obama’s Iraq anti-surge meme in his NYT Editorial

Barack Obama’s continued ignorance of foreign policy is clear and evident in his editorial posted today at The New York Times. Obama continues to repeat his Far Left talking points that Iraq diverted us from fighting Al-Qaeda. The junior senator from Illinois is still unwilling to acknowledge the thousands of Al-Qaeda fighters that have been lost in Iraq. And, after saying the surge had worked last week, that we had seen “reductions in violence and stabilization”
– Today he’s back to saying it didn’t work.

No matter your view on who lied prior to the action in Iraq. No matter how poorly planned and stupid the Bremer strategy was.  No matter that Petraeus’ COIN strategy needed the involvement of the Sunni Sheiks who finally were fed up with Al Qaeda… the FACT is that AL Qaeda suffered a disaster in Iraq and this could NOT have been done in Afghanistan, even if we’d been able to hunt down and kill bin Laden within a year.

Because it took IRAQ to show the rest of the middle east who Al Qaeda really were.

Because in Afghanistan you couldn’t, and still can’t, easily tell Al Qaeda from the Taliban from just ordinary conservative Islamists.

I said before.. I’ll say again.. if the liberals REALLY wanted to make a meal of the surge, they would take credit for putting pressure on Bush and the Iraqi government. But they aren’t doing that… they are only interested in showing Iraq was a failure and that our military is inept and criminal. Any way they can.

Iraq’s Maliki is suddenly playing hardball with the US regarding our military presence in Iraq, wanting a general timetable for withdrawal of both security and training troops. This again put the lie to those who claimed he was a weak and ineffectual leader who couldnt bring all those factions together.

Sunni and secular Iraqi’s are alarmed at the idea of total US withdrawal (which is notable, in itself). Example being Mohammed Fadhil of ‘Iraq the Model’:

As I predicted in an earlier post, Maliki waited before making adjustments in his position towards the deal. However, the change came more dramatically than expected. Maliki apparently yielded to Shiite pressure from Najaf and made his choice. He made two mistakes here.

First, he forgot that while he feels that he’s got to listen to what Najaf says, America does not. Neither do Sunnis, Kurds or even many among Shiite Iraqis. Second, by making unrealistic and unacceptable demands he put himself in an embarrassing position. He may have thought that America needs the deal so badly that it will be willing to make huge concessions that he can exploit in order to please Tehran and Najaf.

Inadvertently, I posted a new page, instead of new post, about the larger picture in the WoT. Turns out it may have been a good thing. It’s core to my ‘NeoCon’ politics.

Read it