The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

News I never thought I would see

It must have been painful for the mainstream media to write this.

For years the defeat monkeys have been banging the drum, Iraq is a lost cause. We are wasting lives, we can never win. The violence is up, hope is down, run now while we can.

Now, all very quietly, we start hearing that maybe things are better, way better, in Iraq than we have been led to believe. From the Associated Press...

Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost

BAGHDAD - The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.

This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press this past week there are early indications that senior leaders of al-Qaida may be considering shifting their main focus from Iraq to the war in Afghanistan.
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Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.

Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war — four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.

Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.

What's this? The surge that McCain supported and Bush proposed worked? How could that be, that the strategy ordered by a moron and a war-monger could have actually worked? Maybe it is optimism that Barack Obama, he of hope and change, might be President. Yeah, that's it. It must be a result of Barack's wave of hope, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if his visit alone to the region didn't lead to an amazing reduction in violence and a dramatic uptick in hope.

The American Left seeks to turn every military conflict into the next Vietnam, to recapture that defeat and the self-importance of the "peace" movement. The self-loathing of the American Left prevents them from supporting our troops, beyond calling to bring them home in defeat. Some people need to be dealt with, sometimes the state must wield the sword. For far too many Americans, America is the problem not part of the solution. We can do nothing right, and indeed our only purpose should be to abase ourselves and apologize for our very existence.

Not this cowboy. I still love our land, I still have faith in our nation. Someday history will, if given a fair chance, look back at a free Iraq which I hope will be the first of many democracies in the Middle East, and like the democracies in Europe and in Asia they will owe their freedom to American blood and we will have asked for nothing in return.