Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour." There's a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that's a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.
Of course it's not to say that defeat cannot be snatched from the jaws of victory. The Dems did it once before, in Viet Nam, and the resultant genocide killed 2 million people and created a million or so refugees. In the more populous middle east, a precipitous withdrawal accompanied by speeches declaring the local politics of the area to be none of our business, should bring the Iranian army across the border in no time at all. Half-assed Ah-sod, president of Syria, will soon find out who the junior partner is in his alliance with the Ayatollahs, and Israel will be looking at Iranian rockets on its own border.
It doesn't have to be this way, but to leave some troops in Iraq to help the new democracy would be to do the one thing no real Democrat can being himself to do: Admit that a Republican was right about something.
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