mudwhistle

January 2, 2008 -- AS 2007 drew to a close, embarrassed journalists sought to play down American military successes and avoided questioning Democratic presidential contenders about their predictions of inevitable failure in Iraq.
Magically, Iraq disappeared from the headlines - except on those rare occasions when a problem could be reported. At the close of a year of stunning progress, media stories on New Year's Eve leapt to report that 2007 had been the deadliest year for US troops.

You had to read deep into the columns to learn that those casualties occurred in the first half of 2007, as we battled and defeated the terrorists and militias - or that, in recent months, American and Iraqi casualties have plummeted as a relative peace broke out.

Still, all that was just hushing up dirty family secrets in the media clan and an effort by left-leaning journalists and editors to protect the politicians they favor.

The greatest media story of 2007 was the one you never read (unless you read The Post): The year was a strategic catastrophe for Islamist terrorists - and possibly a historic turning point in the struggle against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

While al Qaeda in Iraq can still launch suicide missions, such acts now serve only to further alienate the Iraqi people, who've come to hate the grisly foreign interlopers with a passion you have to encounter first-hand to appreciate.

That fundamental change in outlook, especially among Sunni Arabs, may well mark last year as Islamist terrorism's high-water mark, the point at which fellow Muslims by the tens of millions publicly rejected the message and methods of self-styled holy warriors who revel in the slaughter of the innocent.

Tens of thousands of fellow Muslims, previously allied with al Qaeda, turned their weapons against the fanatics. It was the biggest global story since 9/11. And it was buried on Page 14, if mentioned at all.

Many factors came together to transform Iraq, including the fierce and incisive leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, the effectiveness of a new breed of subordinate commanders honed by war, the psychological impact of the troop surge and the pervasive Iraqi weariness of violence and destruction - a strategic mood swing.

Yet, for all that, the greatest strategic development - which will reverberate for years to come - was the Arab-Muslim repudiation of al Qaeda, an organization that claims to be the champion of Sunni Islam.

Islamist terrorism isn't going to go away, of course. Countries from Algeria to Pakistan are newly endangered as fanatics turn from futile attempts to defeat America to punishing local populations. We'll still see decades of bombings and assassinations.

But Islamist terrorism is no longer viewed as a solution by the masses of the Middle East.

That self-tormented region will struggle for decades with its religious civil wars. And terrorists may still muster the ability to strike the American homeland again in the hope of reinvigorating their cause.

But 2007 may have been to the struggle against Islamofascism what 1943 was to the Second World War: the year in which it became clear that, no matter how long the war lasted, civilization's enemies couldn't win.

The lack of attention paid to the disaster that befell the terrorist cause - essentially acknowledged by Osama bin Laden's "holiday" audio tape - is as if, in 1943, the Allied media hadn't reported any Axis defeats.

Instead, as Iraq improved, we only heard how things were turning bad in Afghanistan. Political and media critics of our efforts to defeat Islamist terror attempt to discourage the American people (and voters) by downplaying progress anywhere and by raising the bar for success impossibly high.

As this column has maintained for years, Afghanistan is never going to become Iowa. Much of the country is still decades away from the electric light. Impoverished, backward and torn by three decades of war, it just isn't going to meet civics-class norms anytime soon.

But the essential question regarding Afghanistan isn't how closely Kandahar resembles Des Moines this week, but simply this: "Is Afghanistan a better place today, for the Afghan people and for our own security, than it was 9/10/01, when religious fanatics ruled the country and al Qaeda had a homeland?"

The answer, of course, is "Yes!"

But that won't do for journalists or pols who've staked their reputations and careers on America's failure. And now we're seeing a shift to declaring all our efforts in vain because of the rising terror threat in Pakistan.

Well, we helped create that situation - not because we supported Gen. Musharraf, but because we undercut him by insisting that his government share power with some of the most corrupt politicians in the world, including the cynical, unscrupulous and incompetent Benazir Bhutto.

(How many chances does a political leader deserve to wreck his or her country? Bhutto had two and left an astonishing legacy of malfeasance.)

The bottom line on 2007 is simply this: While many in the media want you to believe it was another disaster for the United States, it was the worst year for the terrorists since 2001.

Much could still go wrong, of course, in Iraq and elsewhere. We should never underestimate the genius for self-destruction ingrained in Middle-Eastern mentalities. And Islamist terror, to some degree, will be with us throughout our lifetimes.

But in 2007 we saw how superficial Muslim support really was for al Qaeda and its ilk. We learned that bloodthirsty fanatics who invoke religion can - and will - be defeated.

And we should have learned the utility of fighting, instead of letting liberal-elite America-haters inflict their defeatist agenda on our country and the world.

If the forces of civilization and freedom do as well in 2008 as they did in 2007, we'll all have a great deal to celebrate next New Year's Eve.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01022008...run_136042.htm

lucytalk

lol ~ new york post

if it ain't on page 6 pretend you don't read it

mudwhistle

Ralph Peters served in military intelligence for ten years.

Kanadesaga

What this says to me is that the Generals, the ones the retard fired, were right in the first place. We needed 500,000 troops to do the job effectuively from the beginning. I was against the war from the beginning, but if you are going to put American lives in peril, then you owe it to them to bring overwhelming numbers and firepower to bear to make it a quick and lasting victory. Not on the cheap as this criminal administration has done.

and shuffled uncounted BILLIONS into their cronies pockets.

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CosmicRocker

violence is picking up again. bombings every day.

still no national political progress.

still no recncilliation amoung the sects.

The surge will end soon -then what? oh! and al-sadar is gonna end his truce soon.

I think this is just a lull in the storm

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Traveling Wilburys (l to r)

Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison

Heretic

Typical right wing traitors selling out our country to communist China and terror supporting two-faced theo-feudalist governments like Saudi Arabia. Right wingers have shit to say about fighting terrorists, because they in fact enable them. Treason in the most vile form.

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

mudwhistle

The American military succeeds and liberals can't stand it. Way to show your true colors. This is how you keep losing national elections.

Kanadesaga

Show me the successes. the Iraqi gov't functioning? Electricity for more than 2 hours a day? Working sanitary systems? Less violence throughtout the country? the billions of contractor dollars that actually accomplished their goals? free movement throughout the country?

Please show me the success.

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mudwhistle

Curator

Well go ahead and declare mission accomplished. What's keeping ya?

For all of the positive reports concerning Bush's escalation, Iraq remains no closer today to a political solution than it was before.

Please enlighten us with your bullshit.

Nothing that has been accomplished so far remotely approaches a solution to what the realities are in Iraq.

1. A largely disaffected Sunni population which finds the current Shiite-dominated "purple finger" government of Iraq unacceptable.

2. A fractured Shiite population torn between an Iranian-dominated government on the one hand (controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) or a nationalist firebrand, Muqtada al-Sadr.

3. A false paradise in Kurdistan, where the dream of an independent Kurdish homeland and autonomy is threatend daily by Turkish military intervention.

If you look at Iraq from a genuine national security perspective, there is no threat worthy of the continued sacrifice of our Military.

The only policy option worth consideration is bringing our troops home in a reasonable manner. Republican hacks like yourself who embrace Bu$h's policy are simply using the sacrifice of our service members as a shield behind which you hide your ignorance of the issues. Your as much a coward as the Right Wing politicians who enable Bush to get more of our military killed.

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“I truly believe that at this point in America’s history we need a president who will not just continue ... basically the policies we have followed in recent years. We need a president with transformational qualities.”

"For that reason, I will be voting for Barack Obama.”
- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell

“You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”
Gov Palin explaining her national security credentials.