Return to Samarra: Imminent Victory in Iraq

 by Gary Larson  

| View comments |  Print This Post

Vets for Freedom (VFF) revisit former battle stations in Iraq . . . and find victory is at hand.  Not good news for the defeatists and news media.

It has mostly vanished from front pages, a battle nearly won — at least in Iraq, with more to do globally and in Afghanistan. News on inside pages now tell of homicide bombers' attacks by young females, so desperate is al Qaeda. But it is mostly quiet on the Iraq Front. Unless capitulation as sought (yet!) by the irresolute, victory is at hand.

Reason for popping the cork? Not yet. But indisputably, the U.S.-led coalition is winning. Even the well-meaning anti-war crowd (as opposed to “crazies”) might not like to admit it's close to over, and how that must hurt that cut-and-run crowd. Shall we all shed a tear for them?

False premises abound. Slogans such as “He Lied Us Into War” and “No WMDs” and the granddaddy of them all, “No Blood for Oil!,” take the place of cold hard logic and stubborn fact. Whoppers, yes, but like most mindless slogans of a ranting mob, these are articles of faith for the myopic, usually intensely partisan ant-iwar clique.

Truth be told, success leaves the anti-war folks a rather gloomy bunch. Think of the America First supporters after Pearl Harbor, when reality hit, and the turncoat Copperheads during the Civil War. Short-sighted losers all, selling their nation and its military short, they became intractable prisoners of a limited worldview, a sort of time warp, suffering from vision impairment. Like that “S” word on bumper stickers, it happens.

Winning battles is somehow bad news also to mainstream American media (MSM). Many a liberal
Democrat and their media allies are reluctant to acknowledge imminent victory, let alone celebrate it. Today a fragile, hard-won new democracy exists in Iraq. Bad news?

Silence of the left-liberal class suggests an unwillingness to admit they were wrong. Big fat egos get in the way, and the baggage of past utterances. Nay-sayers even to coalition's surge, a most logical thing, the vision-impaired folks insist, as did their hero John Kerry, this war is the “wrong war,” at the “wrong time” and “unwinnable.” Oh?

Imagine a bloodless, 100% politically correct war, and a splendid time for one. Try never? In this case, a regime which shot at UN aircraft, ignored UN sanctions, subsidized terror elsewhere, provided shelter for al Qaeda, invaded and raped its neighbors, murdered its Kurds, etc., brought it on. The Saddam-led force was sworn to evil. Remember Iraqi SCUDS raining down on Tel Aviv? Opera-goers going to concerts with gas masks on their belts? Like the horrors of 9/11, how soon we forget. Contrast this to World War II when the rallying cry was “Remember Pearl Harbor!”

Accepting defeat willingly, putting down our nation's military as inept or worse, as criminal, is emblematic of the new hard Left. To those doggedly pessimistic, “Amerika” can do no good. The tawdry blame-America syndrome strikes. It seems to pop up in every generation. Could it be, ah, a result of the nation's educational structure? Just a not-so-wild speculation, that . . .

Such negativism, such passivity in the face of darkness, would trump the requisite war victory, possibly with an eye to the next election cycle. Laying down one's arms would leave the field open to enemies by declaring neutrality rules. Shameful, yes, but hardly new. Such cowardice, shall we say?, in the face of evil, can come back to bite the rear-ends of the peace-at-all-cost types.

Devilishly shrewd Machiavelli described it this way in 1513: “One who is not your friend will want you to remain neutral. Irresolute princes, to avoid present dangers, usually follow the path of neutrality, and are mostly ruined by it.” (The Prince at Chap. 21). Who needs Nostradamus?

House Speaker Nancy (“Save the Planet”) Pelosi and nasty slanderers of our military, such as Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), tried their damnedest to bring the troops home in ignoble defeat, leaving the field to the enemy,  and good Iraqis dangling in the wind.

When the “pull out now” stance of the anti-war crowd is pointed out, or even hinted at, their sole refuge is to hide behind a claim that they are being labeled unpatriotic, not truly American. It's a bogus claim. How about calling them . . . naive? Geopolitically challenged? Clueless? Obtuse?

Against this dreary backdrop, a patriotic group of ex-Iraq and Afghanistan war vets is seeking to showcase imminent victory in Iraq. Their message goes largely ignored by the liberal MSM, not really a surprise, considering the selective reporting and liberal-left agenda pushing.

They call themselves Vets for Freedom (VFF). Theirs is a non-partisan group out to set the record straight about where they served, in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are led by U.S. Army Capt. Peter Hegseth, a decorated combat veteran from Minnesota and a Princeton University grad ('03).

Hegseth and other VFFers returned this summer to their former duty stations. Hegseth went back to Samarra, Iraq. What he found and reported on did not get a lot of ink back home, or air time, with a few exceptions. (C-Span interviewed him!) Blogs, bless them, reported extensively on his and colleagues' return to war zones. Thank God for responsible blogs's truth-telling.

“What I’ve seen in Samarra,” Hegseth writes, “and [what's] happening throughout Iraq, is enough to make Americans of either party proud. After years of getting it wrong — or at best, only partly correct — today we are winning the war and setting the conditions for an enduring peace in that country, even in perpetual al Qaeda cesspools like Samarra.

“Faced with a determined enemy, hell-bent on bringing America to her knees in Mesopotamia, American military will, its adaptability, and might, are carrying the day,” he writes at the well-designed VFF blog. (Check it out at www.vetsforfreedom.org.)

To those who say al Qaeda was not in the forefront, he responds: “I challenge anyone to walk the streets of Fallujah, Baqubah, Samarra, or elsewhere in Iraq, and tell the locals that their city — their neighborhoods — have NOT been al Qaeda battlefronts.

“Every Samarran I spoke with — every single one — brought up al Qaeda, pronouncing the name with a guttural disdain distinct in Iraqi accents. Most have had a family member killed by al Qaeda’s indiscriminate tactics, and have no desire to live in their seventh-century fantasy world.

“A few months ago, a raid south of Samarra uncovered the primary administrative hub for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The bunker complex — piled high with medical records, travel documents and pay stubs — was where foreigners were sent before receiving their suicide assignments. Al Qaeda literature and videos littered the underground headquarters.”

(Why wasn't this data-rich raid given more attention in MSM? Did it not fit a preconception?)

Party-line defeatists argue Iraq is a “distraction” from the real war. (Afghanistan apparently is the real deal.) One-sided war critics also claim, without evidence, that the presence of coalition forces perpetuates new-breed hatred for Americans, thereby creating more radical Muslim jihadists.

But Michael Moore's lie-laced 9/11 film probably produced more hatred, and it's drawing SRO audiences lapping up his anti-American, Bush-hating diatribe in Middle East cinemas. (One wonders how many U.S. “troops” Moore has killed or maimed by his anti-American rhetoric. That question is off the table to Democrats, who attended its premier in droves, and the MSM. Shhh.)

Peacekeeping? In Iraq? Who said anything about that? Soldiers serving are more than tolerated for the peace they bring to once-embattled neighborhoods, reports Hegseth. Some GI's are adored, and given spartan gifts, for bringing peace and hope to reclaimed neighborhoods. In some places they are now celebrated as heroes, a dastardly fact the MSM are loathe to report.

As to “distraction,” anti-war pundits have it backwards, argues Hegseth. “Iraq has actually proven to be a distraction for al Qaeda,” he says. On the run, losing badly, it throws the evil-doers off track. How many lives have been saved by al Qaeda attacks NOT executed in Iraq and elsewhere? That will be forever a matter for speculation — another question the anti-war mavens would prefer not engage.

Hegseth calls al Qaeda's decision to go full-bore into Iraq in 2003 a “strategic blunder.” His assessment is validated by intercepted letters between al Qaeda leaders. They bemoan their huge losses, their loss of control. This fact, too, gets scant mention in MSM.

It would have been a “strategic blunder” if coalition forces were withdrawn before victory, in accordance with some politician's timetable. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory would seem especially stupid to some, but not to the anti-war freaks.

Some still naively insist, Hegseth observes, that if we left Iraq high and dry — but not, for some inscrutable reason, Afghanistan — everything will be hunky dory. And the tooth fairy exists?

What particularly bothers Hegseth (and yours truly) is “the self-aggrandizing notion that opposing the Iraq war then [at the beginning] automatically devalues the importance of the endeavor today.”

A member of the New York National Guard, Capt. Hegseth stresses the incongruity of the war critics' stance with today's reality: “Today’s hardcore Iraq war detractors — politicians, pundits, polemicists alike — all use the same lines of argument to smear the importance of the Iraq war at every turn.”

“My experiences in Samarra,” he adds, “and facts of the new counterinsurgency strategy [of General Patrias, or “General Betrayus” to the anti-military Left] directly refute this. As we have surged into neighborhoods — to protect the Iraqi people, earning their trust, and benefiting from their help — violence has dropped, and locals have turned against the jihadists.”

Terrorist and weapons caches are being singled out by local Iraqis now, reporting to coalition forces to scoop them up. The decline in violence may not sit well with war protesters, or enhance their candidates' chances, but it's quite true. Even The New York Times says so, and every fair-minded person knows its stridently anti-war, anti-”W” bias.

Reluctantly, some anti-war pushers are brought kicking and screaming to a realization “we” (now including them, as Johnny-come-Latelys) are winning. Still puzzled, though, by “our” war aims, they continue to pile on the administration they so despise (hate is not too strong a word), which merely spared the nation of another 9/11. Such is the nature of true irony.

Thanks to political courage and military will and self-sacrifice, Americans can, if they will, take pride in victory in and for 25 million Iraqi citizens and, coming later with NATO help, victory also in mountainous Afghanistan. Freedom is not free, we are constantly reminded, by combat deaths and the wounded, and the immense debt. But then, freedom never did come on the cheap.

The world is watching. “Whether Americans like it or not,” Pete Hegseth concludes: “What ultimately happens on the streets of Samarra — militarily, politically, economically — will reverberate through the Middle East and the world. Will our allies and our enemies see a strong America that wins its wars and stands by its friends?” Or not? Aye, that is the question.

* * *

Author's note: Vets for Freedom's efforts to tell Americans about their realities of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been much reported. Capt. Peter Hegseth's VFF  was denied an educational platform even in his hometown, Forest Lake, Minnesota. At the 11th hour the local American Legion post stepped forward to give local citizens an opportunity to hear from the touring Vets for Freedom.  My article on this city's effrontery to our military, as also reprinted in Hegseth's local newspaper, was first published here as “Outrage in Minnesota: Spurning Our Military Heroes.”

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/03/27/outrage-in-minnesota-spurning-our-military-heroes/

Foreign Affairs: Iraq War

Read more articles by Gary Larson