Wednesday 9 July 2008

Ssssshhhhh...don't mention the war...

A brilliant article from IBDeditorials that profoundly demonstrates the deep lack of patriotism of most major US papers.
What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

London's Sunday Times called it "the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror." A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.
Al Qaeda has been smashed in Iraq. A mopping up operation is now effectively under way. Does the media mention Iraq? No, it now talks about a resurgence in Afghanistan or the Taliban controlled areas in remote northern Pakistan.
The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.
This, for no other reason, is why George W Bush will be remembered as a great President.
We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.
Remember all of the noise about Anbar? Where is the NYT now? Reduced to publishing pathetic stories on Iraq combat veterans who now struggle with alcoholism. These people are scum.
Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.
Be vewy, vewy, qwiet. We're hunting tewwowists...
Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved "satisfactory" progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks — a big change for the better from a year ago.
Whoops! The media had better go quiet on that, as well...though someone should tell the Democratic Party leadership.
Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad — an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, "the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks" that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.
Which all goes to show what a poor decision it was by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to bring home our combat troops when they had been such terrific contributors to achieving this positive situation by the training the Iraqi military to be able to stand up for themselves. At least he left the navy and our protection forces in place.

What is really amazing, even to people like me who thought that Iraq would be alright and be able to stand on her own two feet at some point in the future, is just how quickly the Iraqi government has come into its own once they managed to get a handle on Al Qaeda.

The surge made it all possible. Well done to David Petraeus, a man who the left pilloried as a puppet of Bush and a man who "betrayed us".

Does the left realise that if Petraues is Bush's puppet and doing his bidding then Bush really must be a smart man.

And who has betrayed whom now? Does the left not want Iraq to be a successful and free nation?

(Nothing Follows)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all, thank you for a sensible and grand blog. I have always particularly admired your "Ten Signs that you're a Moral idiot" essay. It ought to be resyndicated lots.

The left does not want nations, any nations at all, to be successful and free. Why?

Because the very fact of freedom, coupled with success or even relative failure - and most nations fail, just like people - utterly negates any premise that the left (Nazis or other types of left-wing-communists, or "Trotzky-ists" (whatever those may have been) Marxists, Maoists, Polpotists, Sartristas and the like) has any reason for existence, other than in "public-sector" jobs as a bureaucracy.

This latter loophole is the only way they can get "gainful" (yay!) "employment" inside "advanced" (which is broadly to say, liberal capitalist) nations which are peculiarly resistent happily to armed or subversive revolution on the Leninist model.

The "left" is not Mankind's solution: it is the problem, and the main problem. The uncomputable number of deaths and individual sorrow, which it and its musings have caused, is probably water under a bridge by now...but the scenario in former Warsaw Pact countries now liberated - after a fashion - from pre-capitlist barbarism, shows what can be done with little, even half-heartedly, in a very little time.

No. The "left" does not want you - or anybody - to be lifted out of atavistic misery and servility to barbarous, unsocialised beasts masquerading as human beings. Once everybody is free, and has no need to listen to the buggers, they are f****d. Terminally. Good.

That is why they are so, so very very pissed off about Iraq and the results.

Anonymous said...

I was preparing to make my own comment to your terrific post, Jack, when I read the very excellent comments above this one.

I only have this to add. The political lefties have painted themselves into a remarkably smelly corner. That is to say that good news for them must, of necessity, be bad news for America. Similarly, good news for America is pure bad news for the lefties.

This puts them in the remarkable position of rooting for and working for outcomes that advance their political positions at the expense of the US.

Where I come from, those are called traitors.....pusillanimous cowards who, like Oscar Van den Boogaard, had never learned to fight for his freedom. "I was only good at enjoying it.”

-- Krumhorn

Anonymous said...

When engaged in the struggle to create their totalitarian utopia, I imagine most (like our anonymous friend) assume that they will end up as one of the pigs.

Sadly, most of them end up like poor old Boxer.

Jack Lacton said...

David - thanks for an eminently sensible contribution. I sometimes wonder if leftist understands what would happen to them if all of their positions actually got implemented.

Krum - imagine being so miserable that the only satisfaction comes from the Schadenfreude of one's own country's failing? I wonder who gets more ulcers - the left or the right?

Hoppers - I rather suspect that not many of our lefty readers will know what you're referring to. They're too busy spending time forming opinions than learning from history or reading novels like Animal Farm or 1984.

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