By Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack,
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
Read the whole thing here.
Note that the authors make no mention of the role played by the NYT in undermining the credibility of the administration.
The authors, both with significant "street cred" among the Bush haters, note important successes being racked up by U. S. forces in a number of areas and urge that Congress get behind the program, at least through next year.
This doesn't sound like much -- conditional approval of the current policy being pursued in Iraq and an urging that Congress give limited support to the war effort, at least for a while -- but for the New York Times and other Bush haters, this is a major concession. Liberal Democrats (with the possible exception of "Hillary!") have bet the farm on failure in Iraq. The NYT piece can be seen as a warning that they might have made a big mistake in doing so [as well as being a tacit endorsement of the stand taken by "Hillary!" regarding the war].
At long last the successes of the "surge" are beginning to be felt here in America. The debate is beginning to shift, and the Democrat Left is in danger of being left high and dry.
