Of Senators and Soldiers
EDITORIAL Of Senators and Soldiers Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, and John Warner of Virginia have together served more than a century in the...
...It was a fascinating account of how young American soldiers are executing Gen...
...The sacrifices are real...
...They used religion as a ploy to get in and exploit people's passions,' said one [Iraqi], who gave his name as Haidar...
...Perhaps our elected officials should stop thinking of our soldiers as victims, but rather do them the courtesy of understanding them as fighters in a just and necessary cause...
...They were Iraqis and other Arabs from Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt...
...Richards is making real progress against the terrorists...
...William Kristol...
...Neither speaks of the fact that, in Iraq, we are fighting al Qaeda...
...The tip was accurate...
...They are pre-9/11 Republicans...
...Now is the time for them to stand against the defeatism of the pre-9/11 Republicans and to stand with Capt...
...The key is the surge—and sustaining the surge: "Captain Richards's soldiers arrived in Buhritz [a neighborhood in Baquba] in mid-March as part of a battalion-sized operation...
...Historians will remember their time in public office for Reagan's challenge to the Soviet Union, for the success of pro-growth economic policies, for welfare reform, for the reinvigoration of a constitutionalist approach to the courts, for the framing of a foreign policy for the post-9/11 world...
...They praise and embrace that group's recommendations—ignoring all the evidence that those recommendations are neither feasible nor desirable, and in any case have often been overtaken by events...
...They're deployed in and around Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, an area northeast of Baghdad that is a center of the fight against al Qaeda...
...Domenici seems to have been genuinely moved by a conversation with a father who had lost a son fighting in Iraq...
...Nor do they discuss the fact that we are fighting a proxy war in Iraq against Iran...
...Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy, is routing the "insurgents...
...There are obstacles, in part posed by recalcitrant and incompetent elements in the Iraqi government...
...Unlike many earlier operations, the Americans showed up in force and did not quickly withdraw...
...Perhaps they could be given a chance to succeed...
...Richards, following the lead of Gen...
...combat operations are undeniable: The American military is trying to expand the alliance into the western sector of the city, which a Stryker brigade recently wrested back from Qaeda militants...
...As Gordon explains, [Al Qaeda] had a firm grip on the city, the provincial capital of Diyala, which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi made the center of his self-styled Islamic caliphate before he was killed in an airstrike near Baquba last year...
...The protagonist of Gordon's story is a 31-year-old Army captain, Ben Richards...
...They would shoot people in front of their houses to scare the others.'" Capt...
...When al Qaeda had controlled the area, it "raised funds by kidnapping local Iraqis, found accommodations by evicting some residents from their homes and killed with abandon when anyone got in their way, residents say...
...The account of the efforts of Richards and his men to rally Sunni tribes in the area against a deeply entrenched al Qaeda enemy is encouraging...
...Domenici, last Thursday, focused on the failures of the Iraqi government...
...They started kicking people out of their houses and getting ransom from rich people...
...But the troops are also fighting, and winning...
...Incidentally, now that even Sunni tribes are turning on al Qaeda, can we stop calling the enemy "insurgents...
...Lugar, in particular, seems upset that the war in Iraq is undermining our diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Middle East...
...Ben Richards and the 9/11 generation, who understand why we fight, and how we can win...
...Can't we just call them terrorists...
...EDITORIAL Of Senators and Soldiers Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, and John Warner of Virginia have together served more than a century in the world's greatest deliberative body...
...Now, working with his Iraqi partners, Capt...
...An Iraqi seemingly emerged from nowhere, announced himself as a member of the 1920s Revolution Brigades and warned the soldiers that insurgents could be found on the far side of a sand berm around the corner...
...But the successes of the U.S...
...As Gordon reports, "Collaborations like the one with [residents] in Baquba are slowly beginning to emerge in other parts of Iraq...
...They would like an exit strategy, a respectable exit strategy, along the lines of the proposals of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group...
...None of these men played a leading role in any of these major developments...
...Richards commands Bronco Troop, First Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment...
...In striking contrast to the Domenici story was a report from Iraq on the same page by Michael Gordon...
...Lugar, Voinovich, Domenici, and Warner are not the future leaders of the Republican party, or of the country...
...The militants' hold on the region was facilitated, senior American officers now acknowledge, by American commanders' decision to draw down forces in the province in 2005 in the hopes of shifting most of the responsibility for securing the region onto the Iraqis...
...Friday's New York Times led with the news of Domenici's endorsement of (partial, gradual, and unspecified in any of its details) withdrawal from Iraq...
...Such considerations seem not to enter even slightly into their calculations...
...David Petraeus's new strategy on the ground, and how they're fighting and defeating al Qaeda...
...Lugar mentioned al Qaeda once in his 50-minute Senate floor speech...
...Domenici seems not to have mentioned al Qaeda in a conference call Thursday...
...Now they are following conventional wisdom again, in their stately way, in turning against the Iraq war...
...Obviously, we have a long way to go in Iraq...
...During the recent American assault in the western sector, soldiers from Blackhawk Company got a glimpse of an alliance the Americans hope to see...
...And Domenici commented, "We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress...
...Nor do they see that we have a strategic interest in changing the status quo ante in the Middle East...
...The young soldiers believe in their mission...
...Now is the time for those who wish to be leaders to step forward...
...They have been followers of conventional opinion, not leaders...
Vol. 12 • July 2007 • No. 41
