Democrats on Iraq: what, us worry?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know whether it shocks you, but it still has the capacity to shock me that the Democrats don’t seem to care about the consequences of their current stance on Iraq.

Perhaps that’s the best indication that they are not actually interested in implementing those policies, and that their real goal is to position themselves as antiwar in order to win the 2008 elections.

As the very liberal LA Times points out (registration necessary to read the article), advocates of precipitous withdrawal have failed to devise a strategy for the bloodbath that even they acknowledge will almost surely follow.

There are many among you who say that I shouldn’t be surprised, and that my reaction is the mere tattered and naive remnant of my lifelong liberal Democrat allegiance. And naivete is hardly in short supply right now among the Democrats when looking at how to deal with the consequences were we to withdraw before calming the situation down in Iraq (this naivete, by the way, was matched by some on the other side who failed to plan for the scope and viciousness of the postwar battle there).

According to the article:

Many congressional Democrats also say that a U.S. withdrawal would encourage Iraq’s neighbors, such as Iran and Syria, to play a more constructive role in resolving the conflict.

“I believe, if we leave, the region will pull together,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma), a founding member of the influential House Out of Iraq caucus. “It’s important to them that Iraq stabilize.”…

But aside from broad calls for a diplomatic effort to work with Iraq’s neighbors and more involvement by international organizations, such as the United Nations, most Democrats have no “Plan B,” should a withdrawal yield chaos.

My favorite Democratic “leader,” Harry Reid, has another solution:

Some proponents of a withdrawal declined to discuss what the United States should do if the violence increases.

“That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

Okay, Harry. Next question?

More congressional theater on Iraq: the Senate’s all-nighter

The New Neo Posted on by

Surprise, surprise! The Senate pulled an all-nighter, but the Democratic leadership failed to garner enough votes to change anything in Iraq.

That “surprise, surprise” comment of mine was, of course, sarcastic, because it could not possibly have come as a surprise to Reid and company that they lacked the sixty votes necessary to force the proposed movement on the issue of troop withdrawal.

But actually succeeding was probably not the point for the Democrats; if they did, they might start looking a lot worse than they do now—although that’s bad enough—when the withdrawal becomes real (and dirty) rather than imaginary (and clean).

The Democrats have gone forward and put antiwar bill after antiwar bill to the vote, hoping perhaps for the magic formula to reach that all-important number: sixty. But so far the math just won’t parse.

That hasn’t stopped the flow of bills, however, because the secondary agenda (or come to think of it, maybe it’s the primary one, after all) is to force members of Congress to go on record as pro or con, and also to pressure Bush (or to get the Republicans to pressure him) into making concessions.

Perhaps that latter goal has now been abandoned as impossible; I’ve written here about how little likelihood there is of its ever happening. Whether you love Bush or hate him, or are somewhere in between, you have to admit the guy stubbornly sticks to his guns.

But, according to Harry Reid, this latest Senatorial pajama party (including cots and pizza–sounds like fun!—as well as toothpaste, toothbrushes, and deodorant) had another goal. In addition to showing the Democrat antiwar base the Party has their interests at heart, “[I]t will focus attention on the obstructionism of the Republicans.”

Of course, it also focuses attention on the willingness of the Democrats to push for what Republican Orrin Hatch called the “political abandonment . . . of the biggest threat we face of the 21st century.”

So, which Republicans abandoned their “obstructionist” ways last night and joined up with the Democrats? Here’s the list: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Gordon Smith (Ore.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine).

Not exactly news. Hagel and Smith have a long history of joining with the antiwar crowd, and Mainers Snowe and Collins (Collins is billed as the “surprise” vote) are hardly an astonishing duo to join the Dems. Understand that Maine—a state I know quite a bit about—is hardly Republican any more, despite its two Republican Senators. Both Snowe and Collins are RINOS—as well they might be, because otherwise they could never be re-elected, much less elected in the first place.

The rock-ribbed Republicanism of Maine is long gone. In recent years it has joined virtually all of New England in the solidly Democratic ranks on both the state and the national level (see this and this). Snowe and Collins may indeed be sincere in their alliance with antiwar Democrats, but it is also in their own political interests (Collins is up for re-election in 2008) to officially go on record as doing so.

These four are hardly typical of Republican lawmakers. Nor do they represent the persuasive powers of Democratic rhetoric. Bush isn’t the only stubborn one, apparently; both parties are hanging tough in their respective positions.

[ADDENDUM: See this for another example of Bush’s stubbornness–or his steadfastness.]

Seat belts in Iraq: an oxymoron?

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I had lunch with Michael Totten during one of his rare moments in this country. He’d just returned from a recent visit to Iraq and Kurdistan, and was telling me what it was like to travel there.

One of the things he mentioned was that the cars he rode in invariably lacked seat belts. No, it wasn’t because the automobiles were old. According to Totten, it’s because the Iraqis had purposely ripped out the seat belts. Why?

Apparently it’s a point of honor (as in honor/shame culture; see this and this) in many Arab countries to do away with the protection afforded by seat belts. In their eyes, this shows bravery.

According to Totten, some taxis still sport seat belts. But they are somewhat like vestigial organs; the drivers take it as a personal insult if you put them on or even indicate a desire to wear them. “What’s the matter,” they say, “don’t you trust my driving?”

Although my personal experience of Israelis is that they can be mighty macho, too; according to Michael, Israel is the only Middle Eastern country where seat belts are widely used. Somehow, that’s not a surprise.

[ADDENDUM: Yes, yes, I know that not everyone in this country wears a seat belt, either. Some of my best friends (you know who you are!) refuse to wear one; something about having once been in an accident and having survived by being thrown clear of the wreckage. In this country, seat belt usage in lowest in young males (a telling fact; they tend to be higher risk-takers than other segments of the population), but most people of all ages wear them; the costs and annoyances seem small compared to the possible benefits.]

Amending the Constitution: protection from the tyranny of democracy and republicanism

The New Neo Posted on by

In the many posts I’ve written attempting to explain the basic neocon attitude towards the spread of democracy-(see this and this) I’ve tried to be careful to use the term “liberal democracy” to describe what is advocated. Why? Because democracy alone is not enough.

Democracy can devolve into tyranny almost as easily as a powerful central government can. The genius of our system is that it makes it exceptionally difficult for tyranny to occur by making it extremely hard to change our Constitution or to give up the basic rights guaranteed there (absurdly hyperbolic discussions of the Patriot Act notwithstanding).

This is not to say that some encroachments can’t, and don’t, occur. But they have been relatively minor compared to what is possible; so far, our system has worked to insure that we are among the freest people on earth.

Not only are we a republic rather than a pure democracy, but our republican form of government is designed with an exquisite system of checks and balances in place among the three different branches. But that’s not all. Our Bill of Rights establishes that certain basic liberties will be protected, and the mechanism for amending the Constitution and changing that system (including that Bill of Rights) is made almost fiendishly difficult to implement.

History teaches that the Bill of Rights was adopted with an eye to limiting the power of both the executive and the legislative branches, as well as to make clear that all powers not specifically listed in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. But what would prevent the people from voting away any of those rights? History also teaches us that crowds are strange and fickle things, subject to persuasive demagoguery as well as coercive threats, and that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor wasn’t lying when he said that humankind is often willing to lay down the burden of freedom for easy answers and the promise of protection from its responsibilities.

As Lincoln wrote, our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But the overwhelming power the people would wield in a pure democracy is limited by the powers and balances among the three branches, the fact that we have a representative republican form of government rather than a pure democracy, and by the aforementioned difficulty of amending the constitution.

Without these guarantees, democracy can mean “one person, one vote, one time.” The Ayatollah Khomeini was given dictatorial powers in a process that began, after the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s triumphant return, with a nationwide referendum that was passed with an extraordinary 92.8% percent of the vote. This established the theocratic dictatorship that exists to this day, with the constitution of Iran being totally rewritten shortly afterwards.

Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness—under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship. This did not even require the vote of its people, merely a two-thirds majority of its legislature. Therefore it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers—or else! We want the bill—or fire and murder!”

And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature—which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote—demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”).

One has only to look at the makeup of our own Congress, with its power-hungry politics-playing on both sides, to understand that we would by no means be immune from such a vulnerability if our own Constitution were similarly written. But, just as our checks and balances work to protect us from one branch of the government easily gaining ascendance over the others, and our Bill of Rights works to protect our liberties from encroachment by any branch, the entire edifice rests on the difficulty of changing any of this. The framers purposely built such roadblocks into the Constitution itself when they implemented the amendment process.

I haven’t done an exhaustive search, but my guess is that our constitution just might be the most difficult on earth to change. Yes, the first step is a vote by two-thirds of the legislature (with a never-used alternative form of proposal, two-thirds of the state legislatures calling for a special convention for the purpose of making an amendment), just as in Germany and Venezuela. But that, fortunately, is only the first step. The next one is approval by three-quarters of the states, either their legislatures or special conventions.

These hurdles placed in the way of easy amendment do not, of course, assure that our liberty will be protected. But they certainly make it more likely than it is in most countries. In the end, of course, even the constitution only rests on the general social contract and the consent of the governed (and, by the way, this is where the guarantee of the right of the people to bear arms comes in handy; at least it gives them a fighting chance against a possible runaway military).

How does this apply to the attempts to spread democracy to a country such as Iraq? It makes it clear that democracy itself is a highly flawed “solution” without the guarantees inherent in a liberal democracy, and that none of it is of much use if the constitution of a country is too easily amended or suspended.

Blog week in review

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that the Sanity Squad is on summer vacation, those of you who may have been aching for the sound of my voice can listen to this week’s “Blog Week in Review,” in which I discuss the recent Live Earth concert and the phenomenon of rockstars advocating political causes, as well as the advent of the iPhone and its cultural ramifications, with host Austin Bay and fellow guest Jeff Goldstein.

Jewstalgia: after they’re gone, you may even start to miss them

The New Neo Posted on by

This NY Times article was both touching and disturbing, almost in equal measures.

It describes a phenomenon in present-day Poland that might be described as philo-Semitism, the opposite of anti-Semitism. Now that there are virtually no Jews in that country—a land in which one in ten citizens had been Jewish, pre-WWII—there’s a movement to revive and revere the Jewish culture that was lost. It’s an illustration of the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

In the Poland of today, especially among the trendy young:

“Jewish style” restaurants are serving up platters of pirogis, klezmer bands are playing plaintive Oriental melodies, derelict synagogues are gradually being restored. Every June, a festival of Jewish culture here draws thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish dances. The only thing missing, really, are Jews.

Poland is not alone in its Jewstalgia. Russia seems to be experiencing something of the sort as well, and a year or two ago I read an article describing a similar (and even more ironic, if such a thing be possible) longing in Germany, in connection with an article about the opening of the new Jewish Museum there.

The museum is apparently the most well-attended museum in the country. And I also recall a story—perhaps apocryphal, since I can’t find any links for it—that there was a conference a few decades ago in Germany on its population’s lack of a sense of humor, and the conclusion was that the country destroyed all its comedians when it murdered its Jews—an example of the law of unintended consequences, no doubt.

It all puts me in mind of some of the lyrics to the Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi:”

They took all the trees
Put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till its gone…

But Poland itself has a mixed history regarding the Jews (as does Germany, by the way). Why were so many there in the first place? Because Poland was originally one of the most welcoming and tolerant nations in Europe for the Jews. The history of Poland’s long and relatively intimate relationship with its Jewish population includes a golden age in which the Jewish community there flourished.

Poland is a country with a past that includes multiple and lengthy occupations by foreign powers. Russian, German, and Austrian-Hungarian influences dominated the nineteenth century there, and anti-Semitism and violence against Jews increased during their reigns. Then the Nazi occupation, of course, resulted in the effective destruction of Polish Jewry, and the Communist takeover that followed drove the remainder away, leaving Poland essentially Judenfrei.

But “Judenfrei” is a German word; the Poles themselves had a much more complex relationship than that with their Jewish citizens. And in fact, although many Poles participated in the Holocaust with an attitude of enthusiastic cooperation, Poland was also home to a large number of what Israel calls “Righteous Gentiles,” those who risked their lives to save Jews.

Their varied motivations are delineated in a remarkable book entitled When Light Pierced the Darkness, by Nechama Tec. Some did it for money, some out of political or religious conviction, and some for personal reasons related to the good relations they had previously enjoyed with their Jewish neighbors and friends.

When I write that these people risked their lives, I don’t think the phrase conveys exactly what that meant. But I’ll add an anecdote that might illustrate the situation more graphically (unfortunately, I can’t find a link to it, nor can I recall the source). When the Nazis entered a Polish village and caught someone who had sheltered or aided Jews, they called a meeting of the town. It was compulsory to attend, and villagers were treated to a spectacle guaranteed to discourage further such assistance: a public execution of the offender and his or her family and relatives, including the children.

Effective, no? I would challenge all of you to ask yourselves how brave and noble you would have been in the face of such a threat; I’m by no means absolutely certain of my own answer.

And yet, even under such circumstances, quite a few Poles considered it their duty to help the Jews who had been part of the fabric of their lives. This is not to whitewash the Polish history during the Holocaust. As I said, there were many enthusiastic participants, and it wasn’t just Nazi coercion that caused this behavior. One of the saddest and most horrific chapters of Polish-Jewish history were the killings that occurred after the war, when some Jewish-Polish Holocaust survivors who had somehow managed to return home were murdered by their former neighbors in a pogrom sparked by that standby of anti-Semitism, the blood libel.

In the Poland of today, the Judeophiles are mostly the young, people who are finally becoming free of both the country’s Nazi past and the Communist yoke that followed it. As such, they may represent the original Polish spirit of tolerance that flourished in most of the early years of the Jewish presence there.

It is deeply ironic, of course, that this is only happening in the absence of the Jews of Poland, like a sort of museum diorama in tribute to the vanished passenger pigeon. But nevertheless, it is to be welcomed.

Neocons and Sowell’s vision of the anointed

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been reading an extremely thought-provoking book by Thomas Sowell entitled The Vision of the Anointed. In it, Sowell attempts to describe the differences between the liberal/Leftist (“the anointed”) worldview and that of the Right.

The book is far too rich in thought to be summarized easily, and I’ve only just begun reading it. But I’ve read enough to know I recommend it.

Here’s Sowell’s main thesis:

The vision of the anointed may stand out in sharper relief when contrasted with the opposing vision, a vision whose reasoning begins with the tragedy of the human condition…The two visions differ in their respective conceptions of the nature of man, the nature of the world, and the nature of causation, knowledge, power, and justice….All these particular differences between the two visions turn ultimately on differences about human limitations and their corollaries….Clearly, those who assume a larger set of options are unlikely to be satisfied with results deriving from a smaller set of options.

In general, liberals assume that human capability to understand, correct, and therefore eradicate basic problems in society is vast, and that the only real impediment to their solution is will. Conservatives assume that many such problems are inherent in the human condition, and that at any rate our state of knowledge can never be complete enough to “solve” them without conjuring up unforeseen results that often cause more difficulties than the initial problems they set out to solve.

That’s why, for example, liberals focus on equality of outcome, which they believe to be both achievable and desirable, and conservatives focus on equality of process and opportunity, which they believe is the best way to justice. That’s why liberals believe in attempting to tackle vast social problem through governmental actions, and conservatives believe in smaller government and smaller changes.

In foreign policy, however, the lines between the two are far murkier. You would think, if both sides were consistent, that liberals would believe in widescale interventions—including military ones—to change other countries and/or our relationships with them, and that conservatives would be more isolationist. And this has sometimes been the case; liberals such as FDR and Truman, and even JFK, were not averse to such action, whereas the opposition to our participation in several wars of the past came in large measure from isolationist conservatives.

This state of affairs flipped to its reverse after Vietnam, when liberals became far more negative towards military operations that were designed to preserve freedom and oppose Communism, or that furthered American interests. This left the bulk of liberal support for only those actions that were seen as strictly humanitarian.

But this anti-interventionist state of affairs had a long tradition, as well, among those of the liberal persuasion, many of whom believed (and still believe) that humans are rational beings amenable to talks, neutrality, understanding, and reason, and that negotiations and diplomacy, if performed correctly, could eliminate war. In contrast, their tragic view of human nature leads many conservatives to concede that evil exists, that tyranny and power will always rise up in human life, that the irrational will continue to be with us despite our best efforts at the opposite, and that military force is sometimes the best way to fight these dangerous realities. Conservatives also believe that any such military victory and the resultant peace is only temporary, whereas liberals believe it possible to achieve the eradication of war as a permanent solution—that’s where the idea that “war is not the answer” originates.

In their foreign policy recommendations, neocons are a strange mixture of these positions. As such, they don’t sit well with many in either group, liberals or conservatives. I’ve written at great length about neocons and their agenda previously (see why neocons are so disliked by so many people, and the neocon stance towards promoting the spread of democracy). I therefore see no need to repeat that discussion here.

But in light of Sowell’s dichotomy, it occurs to me that neocons are also upsetting to people because—in some cases, at least—they appear to have adopted the liberal idea that it is possible to transform societies in ways that are extremely difficult to accomplish, and that some see as likely to cause more problems than they solve.

That’s one of the most valid criticisms of the war in Iraq and its aftermath. As I’ve written in the posts linked above, societies have been transformed for the better in the past by a war and its aftermath—World War II and the subsequent occupation of Germany and Japan. But the details of that conflict were considerably different, and at any rate those wars were not originally fought with that purpose in mind, nor with the idea of the imposition (or, in the case of Germany, the re-imposition) of democracy through a lengthy postwar occupation, although that’s in fact what did occur.

It is my contention that the war in Iraq was not fought only with that purpose in mind, either; it was multiply-determined. Saddam’s defiance of the UN and the terms of the Gulf War armistice, his flagrant human rights violations, and his history of aggression against neighbors were part of it as well. But another part was most certainly the desire to establish an ally in the region, and to have that country become an example of the fact that democracy and human rights are not incompatible with either Islam or the Arab world.

But nation-building of this sort is exceedingly difficult, just as paleoconservatives would always have told you. And it is also my contention that the present administration insufficiently estimated the extreme difficulty of the endeavor they were undertaking, and as a result they failed to plan adequately for it. In this, I’m joined by many on both sides, of course.

In this post I’m not going to revisit the question of whether the task of nation-building in Iraq can in fact succeed, or whether the impediments it faces are inherently insurmountable (it’s been done ad nauseum before; see this for my most lengthy effort to date). But in light of Sowell’s dichotomy, it occurs to me that those neocons who did in fact underestimate the difficulty of the task were falling prey to their susceptibility to the vision of the anointed about the ease of solution of complex societal problems. And it occurs to me that liberals, in criticizing the naivete of some neocons on this matter, are taking the classic position of the Right.

RIP Claudia Taylor Johnson, aka Lady Bird

The New Neo Posted on by

Lady Bird Johnson has died at the age of 94. I’ve referred to her by her given name in the title of this post, not just because I always thought her nickname silly, but because she did:

Lady Bird Johnson received her nickname in infancy from a caretaker nurse who said she was as “pretty as a lady bird.” It was the name by which the world would come to know her. She disliked it, but said later, “I made my peace with it.”

Lady Bird met her fate in the titanic Lyndon and embarked on a wild roller coaster ride. I’ve written before about some of the more difficult aspects of their marriage. And take a look here for a fascinating description of their courtship.

It couldn’t have been easy, but I doubt she regretted it. By all accounts, the lady was a real class act.

56-41 and fight: the Senate’s latest vote on Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

It wasn’t really a vote about Iraq, not directly. The bill was a proposal by Senators Hagel and Webb that members of the US military be given the same amount of time at home as they’ve served overseas. If passed, it would have effectively limited the number of troops serving in Iraq at any one time.

But the bill never made it to an actual vote on the merits, because the preliminary poll on the question of limiting debate failed to muster the needed sixty “ayes.” This is an indication that, at least at present, at least in the Senate, the support does not exist to override a Presidential veto (two-thirds), even if the bills in question were to come to a vote and to pass with a simple majority.

This particular bill was a mild one compared to some others; so if it was a trial balloon, it was a bust. And since Bush has recently made it clear he’s not caving—despite many earlier wish-fulfillment articles in the MSM speculating that he might—it seems that current attempts to curtail the Iraqi campaign are probably not going to work.

That doesn’t mean that things can’t change, and momentum build for successful antiwar legislation a bit later in the game.

The jihadis, of course, are probably watching the whole thing with great amusement.

Meanwhile, the almost comatose campaign of the beleagured John McCain limps on. But McCain himself does’t sound beaten, especially on this topic. Yesterday he gave a speech that masterfully summed up the situation in Iraq and in Congress. Read it.

The MSM continues to trumpet every possible Republican defection—or even any Republican voicing of doubt (see this, for example, in which Elizabeth Dole repeats what Bush already has said about the amount of time available to the Iraqi government not being indefinite; see this for a fuller explanation of where Dole actually stands at present and her relatively mild differences with the official party line).

And Harry Reid continues to exist in his own alternate reality:

“If there were real signs of progress or real reason for hope, that might make sense,” he said, before adding: “Mr. President, there is no evidence the escalation is working.”

It’s clear that Reid doesn’t read the Wall Street Journal. Or if he does, he doesn’t believe it. Or if he does read it and believe it, he doesn’t think his constituency does either, so he can safely ignore it.

But Reid and ilk don’t need no steenking evidence, nor do they really want it. What they want is out, and they want it ASAP, before they are left holding a rather large, unwieldy—and steenking—bag.

Reid to Iraqis: do as I say, not as I do

The New Neo Posted on by

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has presided over a legislature that so far has done very little that the Democrats set out to do when they won the 2006 election, except to further political squabbling. The country remains bitterly divided on most issues, and Congress’s approval rating reflects the extreme dissatisfaction most Americans feel for that body.

With that background, you’d think Reid would cut the fledgling Iraqi government a bit of slack. But no. In his haste to deplore the surge before it has a chance to truly get underway, Reid made the following extraordinary statement:

The surge (in troops) was supposed to provide Iraq political leaders the space to make the compromises necessary to unite this nation. It hasn’t happened, despite the bravery of our troops.

I can’t resist pointing out the irony of Reid’s expectations for the Iraqis. In an atmosphere of internecine violence there (much of it perpetrated by outsiders), the country’s lack of a democratic tradition of compromise, and the legacy of decades of torture and a police state, Reid faults that government for its failure to accomplish in just a few weeks of “surge” exactly what he and most other politicians in Washington—under far less pressure and strife—have also failed to do: make the compromises necessary to unite the nation.

Physician Reid, heal thyself.

Petraeus reports the surge is surging: in time, or too late?

The New Neo Posted on by

The BBC, for all its negativity towards the Iraq war, is reporting that the violence:

…has subsided in Ramadi over the past six months—largely, correspondents say, because tribes have turned against al-Qaeda. The Americans have taken parts of Baquba, but it is still unclear how much they control.

They quote General Petraeus as attributing this success to the surge. He also points out that civilian deaths in Baghdad were down in June, and mentions that increased US troop numbers have only recently reached full strength. Although the BBC surrounds this encouraging news with the usual negative counterpoint, it’s still interesting that they’re even airing an interview with Petraeus in the first place.

Ralph Peters has also reported today on his own interview with Petraeus. It’s clear that, whatever the Iraq war was originally about, the occupation has turned into a fight against al Qaeda there, as Petraeus reports:

Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s key weaknesses are an ideology that does not resonate with Iraqis and an indiscriminate brutality that alienates the people. Popular sentiment has begun to shift against them….Successful operations of this nature have played out in recent months in Ramadi, Hit and Baquba. In each case, Iraqis turned against al Qaeda and sided with the Coalition.

Perhaps a surge such as the present one might have had better results if it had occurred some time ago. But a more chilling thought is that it might not have, because al Qaeda had to demonstrate its horrific brutality in order for the Iraqi people to understand what they are up against and to cooperate with the US troops.

Petraeus goes on to discuss the morale of those troops, the political realities in Iraq, and campaigns in other regions of the country. Read the whole thing, as they say. But it’s a statement towards the end of the interview that most resonates for me:

…if I could only have one [thing] at this point in Iraq, it would be more time.

Time is on our side. But it is, paradoxically, the one thing that seems to be in short supply—because of the political realities in this country and not for any other reason.

I wrote yesterday about what might be behind the extreme impatience of the NY Times and the Left. However, rumors that Bush is about to cave based on wavering Republican support have been scotched by yesterday’s report that he is not considering a troop withdrawal:

…[Tony] Snow said any debate happening right now among Bush and his aides is a continuation of discussions they have always had about the goal the president set from the beginning: bring troops home eventually, but only based on improvement “on the ground, not on politics.”

“There is no intensifying discussion about reducing troops,” he said. “We are continued to be committed to letting the surge work.”

And Harry Reid continues to be committed to refusing to allow it to work. Even the BBC acknowledged that the surge troops have only recently reached full strength, but Reid doesn’t let that stop him from declaring the campaign a failure:

The surge (in troops) was supposed to provide Iraq political leaders the space to make the compromises necessary to unite this nation. It hasn’t happened, despite the bravery of our troops,” said Reid…

Patience is not Reid’s strong suit, nor is history. Contrast this with what General Petraeus has to say on the same subject:

Iraqi leaders are grappling with first-order questions—akin to our own debates at the birth of our nation over states’ rights and so on. And the progress has been less than what all of us—the Iraqis as well as Coalition leaders – had hoped to see.

There have been some encouraging signs, such as progress on some critical legislation and the rise of opposition to extremists in many areas, but, ultimately, the political issues must be resolved by Iraqis in an Iraqi way. Our role is to create an environment in which political compromise becomes possible—by breaking the cycle of sectarian violence and lifting the pall of fear.

Reid can mouth all the platitudes he wants about the “bravery of our troops,” but he has a way to go before he actually understands what is going on there, and the fact that such things cannot be accomplished in a couple of weeks, despite “bravery.”

Reid’s extreme impatience is contrasted with Petraeus’s cautionary words:

None of us, Iraqi or American, are anything but impatient and frustrated at where we are. But there are no shortcuts. Success in an endeavor like this is the result of steady, unremitting pressure over the long haul. It’s a test of wills, demanding patience, determination and stamina from all involved.

General Petraeus and his troops are up to the task. Is Congress—and are the American people?