The answer is no. In fact in spite of what we hear from Chicken Littles like Chuck Hagel, we are winning. However, with the last three years of “quagmire” drumbeat from the press about post war Iraq it’s no wonder the American public are woefully ignorant about how things are really going. Point of fact, the war in Iraq has been won, as the key objective was to remove Saddam from power, and that was accomplished two years ago. So for clarity (and it’s amazing this point hasn’t be made clear in the argument) we aren’t talking about “winning the war”, but of successfully administering the occupation and restoration phases, and allowing Iraq to govern on it’s own..

Back in 2003 Dr. Rice made a comparison between the post war resistance in Germany and that of Iraq are very different, the time tables for reconstruction and the instituting of a new Government are not.

For instance Iraq had elections (2 years) in a far shorter time than postwar Germany (4 years) in spite of significant post-war support. Germany would be effectively stablized until 1950. In the above link, Slate’s Fred Kaplin walked away thinking he completely destroyed the comparisons which were made mostly from this 1945 interview with Allen W. Dulles, who was the main American liaison with the German resistance and a close observer of the early stages of the postwar occupation.

Kaplin’s ‘assessment’ back in the 2003 was premature to say the least as now a full three years later the comparisons are much greater than thought. Primarily in the institution of an effective and strong government. Dulles noted that one of the key issues of difficulty was that many “qualified” individuals had been excluded from service due to previous affiliations with the Nazis. Note that in post war Iraq we are using many of the individuals who hitherto had served Saddam to run things.

But more than just the historical comparisons there the recurrent problems then as now with how the conditions in Iraq are being reported. You would be hard pressed to have seen a single report from any of the news organizations that didn’t report only the chaos, deaths, car bombings, etc, and completely ignore what are significant facts about post war Iraq. You would think that there is a terrorist attack, car bombing, IED, every five minutes happening in every city and town. But that is simply false and not only that a complete and purposed lie on the part of our media.

However, to clarify everything, I found this interview in November 2006, by Dr. Tadeusz A. Kisielewski , to be quite interesting and on point with what I’m trying to say in this post. It’s a long article, but I’ll quote significant parts as they describe both the “before and after” of the Iraq question.

“The main argument against intervening in Iraq was that it might cause terrorism to increase. This accusation is false. It is true that up to 2003 there were no terrorist attacks in Iraq, which was free of international Islamic terrorist groups. But this does not mean that in that same time period there were no victims of terrorism. Statistics for the years 1968-2003 show that over thirty-five years Saddam Hussein‚Äôs reign of terror caused the death of 28,600 people a year, or 80 people a day. Fortunately the terrorist attacks after the fall of Baghdad have not managed to cause as many casualties, and their activity decreased after the parliamentary elections.

Let us next consider the areas in which Islamic terrorist activity occurs. If you ask a well educated European politician how many names of cities and towns in Iraq he knows, most probably he will not be able to name more than 8 or 10. They would be the cities in which terrorist attacks have occurred which were later publicized by the media. Besides ethnically diverse Baghdad, with its population of 4.5 million people, the rest are mostly cities in the so-called Sunni Triangle. The rest of the territory of this extensive country (435, 000 square kilometers) is calm, and its people are safe. It does not mean that terrorist attacks in these 8-10 cities do not destabilize Iraq, or that people living in these cities are safe. But the exaggerated media reports coming out of Iraq lead to the spread of untruths.

Again, terrorist attacks are not as widespread as the media would have us believe and indeed in comparison they pale in comparison to the relative calm of much of the country.

Continuing on the true benefits of invading Iraq:

” The situation in the Middle East has been widely commented on, and opinions vary. Some commentators believe that the ‚Äúrevolution of freedom‚Äù is already beginning in the region. They can point to such successes as:

– The victory of the moderate Mahmud Abbas in the presidential elections in Palestine.

– The high voter turn out – despite terrorist threats – in the parliamentary elections in Iraq.

– Elections to municipal councils, the first elections ever held in Saudi Arabia. (Although these are only partially free, as women were not allowed to vote, and half of every municipal council is appointed.)

– Spontaneous demonstration by the Lebanese people against the presence of Syrian forces, and the noticeably non-spontaneous counter-demonstrations.

– The announcement that more than one candidate will be allowed in presidential elections in Egypt.

Others think that these are mere superficial changes, with no greater meaning for the future of the region. Neither of the above opinions is correct.

Clearly the monarchies and dictatorships of the region have lost their resilience. Nothing will be the same again. The only questions remaining are how fast the changes will occur, and what their ultimate outcome will be. These changes have been initiated by external factors: namely the oft-condemned intervention in Iraq. The U.S. ‚Äì against the opinion of its adversaries and some of its formal allies ‚Äì understands that democracy, especially in its Western form, can not be simply imported as a finished product. George W. Bush has begun to admit, unnecessarily, that the intervention in Iraq has not fully achieved its goals. The immediate, stated purposes of the intervention: to deprive Iraq of weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to build such; to eliminate a murderous political regime; and to remove Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism, (not just Islamic terrorism), were all true.”

It’s time to begin to challenge the leftist propagada that comes from our established MSM and see it for what it is, a detraction from the truth. The truth is that Iraq is even now, and will be eventually stablized. The truth is that while there are terrorist attacks they aren’t as far reaching nor widespread as the news would tell you. The truth is that in a war that has involved hundreds of thousands of troops in combat operations we have sufferered 3000 casulties (6000 were lost in one training exercise in preparation for D-Day). While not to lessen the sacrifice, the number is astounding and a testiment to the professionalism of our armed forces. On the other hand the MSM uses the deaths only as a “told you so”, prostituting their pain for their agenda.

Yet their sacrifice is not in vain, for the change has begun in the middle east, as the old establishments and ideas are dying a slow and painful death.

In ten years you will see wide spread use of the democracy model and less and less of the theocratic one. You will see more and more voting taking place for leadership where they had never voted before. You will see the people themselves rise up and take their own countries back as they realize – what we did in our early history – their own empowerment through democratic principles.

Look anywhere you want in the middle east and you already see the change spreading. Of course the media nor the left can allow the Bush Doctine to be seen as a success, much as they tried to destroy the legacy and acheivement of Ronald Reagan who brought the Soviet Union to it’s knees.

But they can’t hold it in forever and indeed, the truth is beginning to come out and be known.

We ARE winning in Iraq!

war on terror iraq