The Gainesville Sun included a link to the June 12^th Letters to the Editor in today’s “Your Daily Headlines from Gainesville.com” email for today. Why…I haven’t a clue, but this jumped out at me:

 Gary Denton of Micanopy writes:

John McCain, in his June 3 “Change” speech, cited recent developments as progress in the war in Iraq.

 

Me: If accuracy is important on any level the preceding sentence is as close as Gary gets to it in the entire piece, but let’s go to the actual words McCain used to avoid any further confusion:

 

I disagreed strongly with the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq. I called for the change in strategy that is now, at last, succeeding where the previous strategy had failed miserably. I was criticized for doing so by Republicans. I was criticized by Democrats. I was criticized by the press. But I don’t answer to them. I answer to you. And I would be ashamed to admit I knew what had to be done in Iraq to spare us from a defeat that would endanger us for years, but I kept quiet because it was too politically hard for me to do. No ambition is more important to me than the security of the country I have defended all my adult life.

Senator Obama opposed the new strategy, and, after promising not to, voted to deny funds to the soldiers who have done a brilliant and brave job of carrying it out. Yet in the last year we have seen the success of that plan as violence has fallen to a four year low; Sunni insurgents have joined us in the fight against al Qaeda; the Iraqi Army has taken the lead in places once lost to Sunni and Shia extremists; and the Iraqi Government has begun to make progress toward political reconciliation.

None of this progress would have happened had we not changed course over a year ago. And all of this progress would be lost if Senator Obama had his way and began to withdraw our forces from Iraq without concern for conditions on the ground and the advice of commanders in the field. Americans ought to be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who says he’s ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang, but hasn’t traveled to Iraq to meet with General Petraeus, and see for himself the progress he threatens to reverse.

 

Back to Gary: “He stated that our troops and Iraqi government troops were now working with Sunni’s to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Did he forget that it was Sadam Hussein’s primarily Sunni troops that we took the Iraqi government away from, and that al-Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq before our invasion? So now we are working with the ones we overthrew to fight enemies that are there because of our mistakes.”

 

Me: McCain stated Obama was dead wrong about the change in our strategy announced in Jan 2007. He stated that Obama is happy to meet with dictators, but not with the General officer whose strategy is responsible for the conditions on the ground in June 2008. Yes, Saddam was Sunni and the Sunni…20% of the population did prosper at the expense of the other 80% in a brutal regime, but it’s almost cliché for an Obama supporter to side with real world dictators. Apparently Gary is unaware of the “Awakening” of the Sunni in Anbar which continues to spread in the Arab World. He no doubt remembers when the press hailed Anbar Province as being lost to some organization that the US Military claimed was Al Qaeda in Iraq. One might legitimately come to the conclusion that in 2006, the time that Anbar was declared lost, that the US strategy being employed wasn’t working there. That conclusion might account for the “change of strategy” in Jan 2007. That was then…this is now. Over the last two years the Sunni of Anbar decided that America was a better ally than those using them name…Al Qaeda…with a goal of establishing a Caliphate and tactics of oppression like  slicing the faces off of children…using piano wire…in order to control the parents. The “too few, too late” surge troops apparently gave them the confidence that America wasn’t going to cut and run, leaving the Sunni of Anbar to be slaughtered by Sunni Al Qaeda and their Sunni insurgent allies. So what began in the late summer-early fall of 2006 and progressed with the failed strategy of 2007 has resulted in the lost Sunni Province of Anbar being the latest province to be handed off to the control of the legitimately elected government of Iraq.  

Gary: Great. Hussein was a tyrant, but he had the people of Iraq united under one flag and living in relative peace. We disrupted that and have no chance of making the situation better.

 

Me: Yep, he only had a million or so dead on his resume when we threw him out of the last country he had his peaceful army invade and plunder. We spent the next 10 years begging him to comply with his terms of surrender while actively keeping him from peacefully slaughtering more of his own people in the Utopia on Euphrates. Now we have a fledgling democratic ally with an elected leader willing to face down every illegitimate power structure whether it is Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Iranian, Syrian or merely criminal. There is an Iraqi Army made up Sunni, Shia and Kurd that is enforcing the laws written by the representatives of the people.

Gary: “We should withdraw our troops, let the Iraqis fight it out, and promise not to topple any more leaders of sovereign states with no real plan to replace them.”

 

Me: You should get down on your knees and thank God every day that you live in a place where your freedom to display your ignorance is protected by the men and women that are responsible for keeping this nation safe for the last 7 years while at the same time creating the things you take for granted for another 50 million or so folks on the planet. You aren’t living or understanding the existential struggle against a brutal ideology. You apparently don’t have a problem with the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The Sunni of Anbar did have a serious problem with it. They freely chose to risk their lives to fight against Sunni Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents with the help of Americans. So, yea…it is a big deal that the Sunni insurgents no longer want to be insurgents, but rather the citizens of a sovereign Iraq that have “Awakened” to the concept that Al Qaeda and all their ideological fellow travelers are the enemy of civilized existence. You clearly have fallen for Obama’s past positions, but what will you say when Obama, tacking hard to the right for the general election, makes the claim that things are going well enough in Iraq that his arbitrary timelines for withdrawal are no longer valid?

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