If the US Wins in Iraq, Will the MSM Report it?

From Captain Ed at Frontpage Mag:

 

The Washington Post, among other news outlets, made a stink last week about the lack of a publicly-stated Plan B in the event the surge strategy failed to make a difference in Iraq. However, with preliminary indications showing success, Robert Kagan wonders whether journalists have a Plan B for themselves:

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect. ...

Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."

It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.

The defeatists have received large boosts from journalists all too willing to write about the successes of the insurgents but mostly silent on the successes of the Coalition. This may have been especially true in 2006, which did not go well for the Coalition, but got portrayed as an unmitigated failure in the American media during the 2006 election campaign. It made little difference in the end -- the Republicans did more to ensure their defeat domestically than anything that happened in Iraq -- but the result has left the media screeching like harpies that the mission in Iraq is doomed. Democratic leadership has taken the ball and wants to run with it in Congress, but only if they can do so without actually accepting responsibility for the retreat they demand.

If the surge succeeds, journalists won't be the only people who need a Plan B.

Wars occasionally produce negative, short-term results -- occasionally as in "frequently". The point of a war isn't to win every gun battle and force a surrender within 30 minutes. Iraq is not Grenada, and if it were, it wouldn't matter nearly as much to our national interests and global security.

The mission in Iraq is critical, and failure fatal. The collapse of Iraq would create a terrorist haven exponentially more dangerous than Somalia or Afghanistan, with oil revenues gorging terrorists on the hard currency they need to launch attacks all over the world. That's the reality now, the one we have to face, and that means we have to find ways to defeat the insurgencies and allow the elected, representative Iraqi government to gain enough strength to take control on their own.

Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy seems to be showing remarkable results. Talking about defeat and retreat while we have not finished playing out our hand would represent an unprecedent capitulation by the US to an enemy in the field -- and not an enemy like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviets, with a military that should frighten us -- but an enemy that has so little support and so few combatants that they dare not show their face to American troops in the streets of their own cities.

Plan B should be victory by another means, not defeat by surrender to terrorists. 

The Answer is More Islam

More from Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

 

As I show in The Truth About Muhammad, this is a belief that goes back to the Battle of Badr, the first great victory in Islamic history. And if losses follow, they will not lead to a reexamination of the assumption that faith and victory are tied together, but will be ascribed to lack of faith, and more Islam will be prescribed as the remedy.

From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

KANDAHAR - Top Taleban commander Mullah Dadullah says faith and popular support will see his men fight off an offensive in southern Afghanistan by NATO and Afghan troops.

The troops Tuesday kicked off what NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) called their biggest offensive yet against the Taleban and their allies, focused on the lawless northern part of Helmand province.

Coalition war planes struck Taleban compounds and armouries and dropped "precision-guided munitions" on a Taleban militant who had been helping move anti-aircraft weapons, military statements said.

Two British soldiers and an unknown number of rebel fighters have died in various clashes.

Dadullah, who is reported to be the Taleban's military operations chief for southern Afghanistan, acknowledged the superior might of ISAF in a telephone interview Saturday with AFP but said he was undaunted.

"No one in the world has better weapons than NATO. They have got better weapons, but we will defeat them with the power of faith and belief," Dadullah told an AFP reporter who has spoken to him several times and knew his voice.

"The entire nation is with us: the people give us food, fruit and money. The people are fed up with infidel, invading troops and their puppets," he said.

He claimed to be in Helmand province.

"We have enough men to fight this battle," he said. "Some foreign mujahedin (holy fighters) are also fighting alongside our mujahedin.

Dadullah said Taleban fighters were being backed by Al Qaeda-linked foreign jihadists, including from Chechnya and the Palestinian territories.

"We have relations with Iraqi mujahedin—we send fighters to them, they send to us," he added.

Hamas Still Seeks Destruction of Israel

From Jihad Watch:

 

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas rejected on Monday criticism by al Qaeda's second-in-command and said it was still committed to Israel's destruction despite a power-sharing deal with the Fatah faction.

"We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine," Hamas said in a statement, in a clear reference to Israel as well as to the occupied West Bank.

In an audio recording posted on the Internet on Sunday, al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahri accused Hamas of serving U.S. interests by agreeing to respect past Palestinian peace accords with Israel in a recent Saudi-brokered unity government deal with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

The coalition agreement fell short of meeting demands by the Quartet of peace mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the
United Nations and Russia -- to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Zawahri said the Mecca accord, which calmed weeks of Hamas-Fatah warfare in which more than 90 Palestinians were killed, was part of an attempt by Washington to offset Muslim anger at what he described as its bias toward Israel.

"It is an American scheme to hit the Islamic jihadist resistance against the Crusader-Zionist campaign. America wanted a sham solution to the Palestinian issue to remove the biggest reason for Muslim hatred (of the United States)," he said.

The biggest reason for Muslim hatred of the U.S.? Hmmm. I thought we were supposed to believe that that was Britney Spears and Survivor.