"Progress There, Idiocy Here"
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
EDITORIAL Progress There, Idiocy Here In order to preserve the cosmic harmony, it seems the gods insist that good news in one place be offset by misfortune elsewhere. It may well be that Gen....
...If by July 1 the president could not certify any progress, U.S...
...If the karmic price of success in Iraq is utter embarrassment for senior Bush officials in Washington, D.C.—well, in our judgment, the trade-off is worth it...
...Iraqis have not seen such a prolonged and continuous planned increase of U.S...
...He is certainly off to a good start...
...The price tag exceeds the president’s war request by $24 billion...
...The continued, increasing presence of U.S...
...Here’s what the Democratic legislation does, according to the Washington Post: “Under the House bill, the Iraqi government would have to meet strict benchmarks...
...It certainly deserves to...
...Obviously, it’s too early to say anything more definitive than that there are real signs of progress in Baghdad...
...In any case, withdrawals would have to begin by March 1, 2008, and conclude by the end of that summer...
...Republicans can insist on a clean supplemental—no timelines to reassure the enemy that if they just hang on, we’ll be gone before long, and no pork...
...Last week, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have restricted the use of U.S...
...The cocksure defeatism of war critics of two months ago, when the surge was announced, does seem to have been misplaced...
...They can win this fight—and if they do, combined with progress in Iraq, the lasting news from March 2007 will not be Bush administration haplessness...
...This sense of momentum is confirmed by many other reports in the media, and from Americans and Iraqis on the ground...
...So much for an emergency war appropriations bill...
...and Iraqi forces have deprived al Qaeda of the initiative...
...If Bush did certify progress, the Iraqi government would have until Oct...
...As the Post explains, “Included in the legislation is a lot of money to help win support...
...Some of the extra money goes to bail out spinach farmers hurt by E. coli, to pay for peanut storage, and to provide additional office space for the lawmakers themselves...
...Meanwhile] in Ramadi, in the belt south of Baghdad stretching from Yusifiyah to Salman Pak, and northeast in Diyala Province, . . . U.S...
...A big advantage of a “rolling surge” is that the population and the enemy sense the continuous pressure of ever-increasing forces...
...On the same day, on a mostly party-line vote, the House Appropriations Committee reported out the Democratic version of a supplemental appropriations bill for the war...
...it will be that we are on the way to success in Iraq...
...1 to meet the benchmarks, or troops would begin withdrawing then...
...troops in Iraq and set March 31, 2008, as a target date for removing U.S...
...Oh yes, in addition to the arbitrary timelines for the removal of troops, there’s pork...
...It will not long remember the gang that couldn’t shoot straight at the Justice Department—or, for that matter, the antics of congressional Democrats—unless either so weakens the administration as to undercut our mission in Iraq...
...troops would begin leaving Iraq, to be out before the end of this year...
...David Petraeus is going to lead us to victory in Iraq...
...forces from combat...
...William Kristol...
...forces appears to be having an important psychological, as well as practical, effect on the enemy and the people of Iraq...
...They’re being beaten back—in part thanks to the fighting spirit of stalwart congressional Republicans...
...It was an odd piece of legislation—an appropriation to fight a war replete with provisions intended to ensure we lose it...
...The world will surely note our success or failure in Iraq...
...The legislation may collapse on the floor of the House this week...
...forces before...
...Got that...
...The latest Iraq Update by Kimberly Kagan (available at weeklystandard.com) summarizes the early effects of the new strategy backed up by, as yet, just one additional U.S...
...But back in Washington, congressional Democrats are still mired in the fall of 2006 and seem determined to be as irresponsible as ever...
...brigade deployed in theater (with more to be added in the coming weeks): This “rolling surge” focuses forces on a handful of neighborhoods in Baghdad, and attempts to expand security out from those neighborhoods...
Vol. 12 • March 2007 • No. 27
