Posted on 12/22/2007 5:37:27 AM PST by rhema
I remember the excitement. It was the week before Christmas a year ago, and I had lazily picked up my copy of Time magazine. And there it was: Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is "You."
Wow! We deserved credit, Time judged, "for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game." Thanks, Time!
And thanks for not choosing the obvious alternative--Nancy Pelosi, who had led the Democratic takeover of Congress. That takeover, Time editors and many others hoped, heralded our withdrawal from Iraq. However much they may have desired that outcome, Time was lucky not to select Pelosi. In the subsequent 12 months, she and her colleagues failed to impose a defeat in Iraq. Instead, President Bush announced a new strategy and a new commander, General David Petraeus, in January 2007. And all the real achievements of this year belong to them.
We are now winning the war. To say this was not inevitable is an understatement. Even those of us who were early advocates and strong supporters of the surge, and who thought it could succeed, knew the situation had so deteriorated that success was by no means guaranteed. Two military experts told me early in 2007 that they thought the odds of success were, respectively, 1-in-3 and 1-in-4. They nonetheless supported the surge because, even at those odds, it was a gamble worth taking, so devastating would be the consequences of withdrawal and defeat. We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD thought the chances of success were better than 50-50--but that it remained a difficult proposition.
Petraeus pulled it off. The war is not over, of course. Too quick and deep a drawdown--which some in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush administration are, appallingly, pushing for--could throw away the amazing success that has been achieved. Still: It is as clear as anything can be in this world, where we judge through a glass darkly, that General David H. Petraeus is, in fact, America's man of the year.
Time ludicrously chose to make Russia's ex-KGB agent-turned president Vladimir Putin its cover boy. They just couldn't make Petraeus man--oops--person of the year. Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending. It would mean giving credit to George W. Bush, for one. And it would mean acknowledging American success in a war Time, and the Democratic party, and the liberal elites, had proclaimed lost.
The editors couldn't acknowledge their mugging by reality. That's fine. Nonetheless, reality exists. And the reality is that in Iraq, after mistakes and failures, thanks to the leadership of Bush, Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno--the day-to-day commander whose contributions shouldn't be overlooked--we are winning.
The reality is also this: The counterinsurgency campaign that Petraeus and Odierno conceived and executed in 2007 was as comprehensive a counterinsurgency strategy as has ever been executed. The heart of the strategy was a brilliant series of coordinated military operations throughout the entire theater. Petraeus and Odierno used conventional U.S. forces, Iraqi military and police, and Iraqi and U.S. Special Operations forces to strike enemy strongholds throughout Iraq simultaneously, while also working to protect the local populations from enemy responses. Successive operations across the theater knocked the enemy--both al Qaeda and Sunni militias, and Shia extremists--off balance and then prevented them from recovering. U.S. and Iraqi forces, supported by local citizens, chased the enemy from area to area, never allowing them the breathing space to reestablish safe havens, much less new bases. It wasn't "whack-a-mole" or "squeezing the water balloon" as some feared (and initially claimed)--it was the relentless pursuit of an increasingly defeated enemy.
That defeat has implications far beyond Iraq. In 2007, Iraq's Sunni Arabs fought with us against al Qaeda, and Iraq's Shia Arabs joined with us to fight Iranian-backed Shia militias. So much for the notion that Americans were doomed to fail in their efforts to mobilize moderate Muslims against jihadists. The progress in Iraq in 2007 represents a strategic breakthrough for the broader Middle East whose importance would be hard to overstate.
One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in counterinsurgency because Americans were not tough and bloodthirsty enough. They said that brutality was essential in subduing insurgents and our humanity would be our downfall.
They were wrong. The counterinsurgency campaign of 2007 was probably the most precise, discriminate, and humane military operation ever undertaken on such a scale. Our soldiers and Marines worked hard--and took risks and even casualties--to ensure, as much as possible, that they hurt only enemies. Compared with any previous military operations of this size, they were astonishingly successful. The measure of their success lies in the fact that so many Iraqis now see American troops as friends and protectors. Petraeus and his generals have shown that Americans can fight insurgencies and win--and still be Americans. For that and so much else, he is the man of the year.
I bet they didn't do that in 1994 when Newt and the Replublicans took over Congress for the first time in a long while.
Time's agenda isn't hidden very well.
Maybe Petraeus will pull an Eisenhower and run for POTUS.
We could sure use another IKE right now!
Semper Fi,
Kelly
Vlad Putin as MOTY - I can imagine Henry Luce is at 10,000 RPM.
bump
Time’s perverts pick another pervert as “man of the year.”
I understand it was tough call over "We" and "They".
God bless our brave troops, President Bush, General Petraeus and his staff.
God bless America and Amen to VICTORY.
There weren't too many arm-chairs for the troops out there who were pushing for the current strategy for years. There's ample evidence that Sec. Rumsfeld was quite clearly told what we were facing and willfully chose to ignore it--recall when he changed the wording of Gen. Pace to try to deny there was any counterinsurgency?
But even after the Administration's period of counterinsurgency denial ended, the officers I spoke with personally often pointed to books that were available to those with armchairs. It's not like this is the first counterinsurgency ever fought, and the Brits especially have had lots to say on the matter. In fact, we used to base our counterinsurgency operations on the Malayan experience of the British. They have known quite well that you can't just hit an area and then move on to another without maintaining a sufficient presence in subdued areas; the insurgents just melt away and come back (Tal Afar is a prime example).
I am also quite aware that the rate of deaths has been a lot lower than in hot battles (and our wonderful battlefield medical folks have turned many would-be deaths into amputations and recoveries). I've visited the wounded at WRAMC and elsewhere, and the dead at Arlington, and I honor them all...but that doesn't mean I don't wish there were fewer--and I'm sure that President Bush feels the same. Re-read my comments, and you will find that I am giving him praise both for loyalty and for finally giving in and listening to those in the field.
Selecting General Petraeus--a man whose actions had varied somewhat from Sen. Rumsfeld's plan but yielded results--was the act of a man who was willing to change tactics to achieve a victory for America. The humor and irony is that the Left couldn't slam Pres. Bush on his change of direction itself (Headline: "Bush admits his mistakes!"), as the surge came along as part of the Gen. Petraeus package and they had to fight against that! :-)
Link?
Not sure what you are asking for link to... I think that it's all pretty much accepted information. What are you questioning...?
“Time is written by a bunch of morons.”
My sober, considered opinion is that they are in the service of Evil. Literally, in the most medieval sense.
There needs to be more alternatives to Time and Newsweek.
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