A Sad Day for Copperheads
You won't easily find it on
Fox News or
CNN or
Google News, but somewhere, between the shocking news that Don Imus might have a
race-relations problem and the ground-breaking development that
Palestinians have engaged in self-defeating random violence, most of us seemed to miss that a dream is more than halfway towards completion.
Al Anbar province in Iraq, once described as all but lost, will become the tenth Iraqi province handed over to Iraqi government control:
The U.S. military will transfer control of security in Anbar Province to Iraqi forces this week, the governor of the region said Monday, a remarkable turnaround given that the region was considered lost to insurgents less than two years ago.
Anbar will be the 10th of 18 provinces in Iraq to return security matters to Iraqi control since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, but it will be the first Sunni Arab region to do so.
Mamun Sami Rasheed, governor of Anbar Province, said the handover ceremony would take place Saturday. "We have been dreaming of this event since 2003," he said.
With ten provinces down and eight to go, we are passing a milestone of sorts. More than half of the country will be under the control of a democratically-elected Iraqi government, the first freely-elected Arab government in modern history. You would think that Democrats would be thrilled at this step towards freedom, as the turnover also means we are one small step closer to a withdrawal from Iraq, which they claim to be their goal.
Barack Obama isn't trumpeting the good news, however. Left-leaning blogs also appear to be silent on the issue, or nearly so, if Memeorandum is a guide. Instead, liberal bloggers there seem more interested in reacting to Glenn Greenwald's latest long-winded rant about FISA (while ignoring Greenwald's own history of wiretapping, of course).
Al Anbar? It doesn't seem to exist.
With ever passing day that Iraq inches towards success or takes a dramatic leap, it becomes ever more apparent that many Democrats in this country, be they members of the news media, the new media, elected officials, or the activist left, don't just want the United States out of Iraq. They want us cast out or withdrawn in defeat.
The al Anbar handover is symbolic in nature as well as practical, and good news for two Democratic nations. Sadly Democratic leaders cannot join in sharing the good news, because what is good for the United States and what is good for the citizens of Iraq is not good for Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama.
How sad this day must be for Democrats that are more loyal to their nation than the spite-based political ideology of their fellow travelers.
Update: Peter Wehner, writing at NRO's The Corner, concludes:
Iraq has gone from broken to fragile and slowly mending. Even now, though, leading Democrats seem wholly uninterested in the outcome in Iraq; all they care about is withdrawing American troops. It is a commitment they hold with ideological and theological intensity – and if they are ever allowed to act on their convictions, misery and death and defeat would follow.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
01:47 PM
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1
This is progress. Not stagnation. Not mired in a quagmire. Not caught in the middle of a civil war.
Tis a sad day when the Democrats feel they can benefit more from their country losing a war than they can from their country winning a war.
They are Democrats first and somewhere down the list, they are possibly Americans.
Posted by: SouthernRoots at June 24, 2008 02:22 PM (EsOdX)
2
They are the NeoCom wing of the Democrat Party and represent as much as 1/3 of the D votes. We can only hope that the good democrats of classical Liberal mind will wake up and leave this horrible anti freedom party that has been taken over by the NeoCom anti americans.
Posted by: Moultrie at June 24, 2008 02:45 PM (0Pp69)
3
Since The Supreme Court seems intent on taking over the battlefield, and making the conduct of this war a legal quagmire, at what point will Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. haul the traitorous Democrats before an Inquisiton of Treachery? The Democrats deserve to be physically and fiscally punished for their abandonment and demoralization of American military personnel and their families in a time of war. Shame be upon them all. Let it be so, Lord.
Posted by: twolaneflash at June 24, 2008 05:02 PM (05dZx)
4
It would seem to me that the news peg here would be when power is actually transfered over to the Iraqis this Saturday, not the fact that there was an announcement of the fact. If I were an editor, I'd wait until Saturday to run a story because then there would be some eye-catching photos from the ceremony to run with the story. (Right now, there's no media to run with the article.)
We'll see if the story runs on Saturday. Personally, my guess is that they'll be a smattering of articles then, but they'll all be buried deep in the paper or a couple clicks from the various sites' main page. Nothing on the front page...
Posted by: Juan Manuel de Rosas at June 24, 2008 05:49 PM (IVQmE)
5
Juan, it's entirely possible that there may not be any ceremony. Such an event would be a prime target for the terrorists. It'll probably happen very quietly without a lot of pomp and circumstance.
No ceremony, no nice pics for the papers. I suspect that even if there is a story, it'll be buried on page G97 or something like that.
Posted by: C-C-G at June 24, 2008 07:41 PM (Hc4y8)
6
What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.
The many voices that rose in favor of the invasion, that have now claimed some sort of buyerÂ’s remorse or insanity in the aftermath, have learned nothing. ItÂ’s easy to be a wimp.
When Bush started the adventure into Afghanistan (before Iraq), the first thing that the local partners in the region asked is whether America was in this for the duration, or would they be left with an American mess to clean up. Clearly, Bush said what he meant and meant what he said.
FriedmanÂ’s column can be read to say that finally, in the last year or so, the Iraqis believe Bush meant it too. Beleived it enough to take on UBLÂ’s al Qaeda that planned to make Fallujah the capitol of the caliphate. Believed it enough to take on their Shia brothers from Iran. Believed it when the Democratic leadership in the Congress showed none.
Posted by: Neo at June 25, 2008 11:55 AM (Yozw9)
7
"More than half of the country will be under the control of a democratically-elected Iraqi government, the first freely-elected Arab government in modern history."
Does
this this sound anything like a sovereign nation to you?:
5o American bases;
complete legal immunity from Iraqi law for US military/contractors;
right to launch deadly attacks anytime, anywhere in the country;
right to launch attacks on other nations from Iraq;
total control of Iraqi airspace; etc.; etc.
Small wonder no one believes 'the good news' when it comes.
Posted by: j at June 30, 2008 02:56 AM (Lo7Nc)
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