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Lugar Lunacy
J.D. Johannes, another eyewitness to the current situation on the ground in Iraq, refutes Senator Lugar today in Surging to Defeat over at NRO:
Is it possible to win a war on the ground, and lose it in Congress? Perhaps.
. . . The Indiana Republican (Lugar) endorses a downsizing and redeployment of the U.S. military mission in Iraq as an essential precondition to reasserting [our] vital national-security interests , which he defines thus: 1) To prevent any piece of Iraq from being a terrorist safe haven; 2) To prevent Iraqi sectarian violence from spilling over into any other parts of the region; 3) To prevent Iranian domination of the region; and 4) To prevent a loss of U.S. credibility in the region.
All four of these goals are being advanced, some of them dramatically, by the surge strategy of Gen. David Petraeus — the very strategy that Sen. Lugar would scrap in favor of “downsizing and redeployment.â€
The principal accomplishment of the surge to date is solidifying the “Anbar Awakening,†the significance of which has been under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public. If any piece of territory in Iraq qualified as a “terrorist safe haven,†it was bloody Anbar. This province of little over 1 million people — 4.5 percent of Iraq’s population — has accounted for 34.6 percent of U.S. casualties. (Insurgent activity in Baghdad, with five times the population, has accounted for fewer troop deaths both as a percent (29.5 percent) and in absolute numbers (1,052).
The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province — a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand — represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus.
If you haven’t ordered J.D. Johannes’ documentary “Outside the Wire” do so now.