Victory is starting to panic the left

Just One Minute:

Via Memeorandum I come to this from some Kossack:

As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: "Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?"

Panic? Dean Barnett, writing at The Weekly Standard, has fun and facts in response....

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Blackfive provides a personal view of "the surge":

The Surge is not our strategy and he is correct that it is not responsible for the tremendous success in Baghdad, the surrounding belts, Al Anbar, Diyala and now even in some of the Shia tribal areas as well. Our strategy is Counter-Insurgency (COIN) and the additional troops, known as the Surge, are simply part of that effort along with every other military member and civilian over there. Read LTC Kilcullen for an elegant primer on COIN in the Small Wars Journal.

COIN is completely different than the nation-building and national institution-building that we had been doing since toppling Saddam and up until the beginning of this year. We had hunkered down on the FOBs heading out on patrols and then back inside the wire. Now we cleared areas and then stayed and lived side by side with the Iraqis, and once they saw that we were staying they "awakened" and determined that al Qaeda brought death and destruction and the Americans brought electricity and water, not to mention security.

Friedman's main point is that it was Sadr's announcement of a 6 month cease fire that is responsible for all this peace breaking out, not the Surge. Well I explained that the Surge is a straw target, and while Mookie's announcement was a net positive, let's look at why he did it. Once we began shining a bright light on the fact that Iran was responsible for a good bit of the slaughter in Iraq, they had to start being a little cautious. They talk a big game, but they don't want to be caught in any particularly heinous casus belli, since they know W has an itchy trigger finger.

Sadr's and the other Shia militia served a purpose when Iran was working hard to cause an outright civil war that would eject us from the country. Unfortunately for them we managed to shift fire and engage in COIN before they managed to get a hot war going. Sadr announced his cease fire in August after thousands of his thugs and every other flavor of scumbag in Iraq began dying in bunches. We began offensive operations in many places we had simply left to fester before and many brave and foolish gunmen became dead tangos. Hurrah!

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Blackfive has the analysis correct. I would add that Mookie started backing down as soon as the surge was announced he boogied out of Baghdad for Iran. Just as al Qaeda left in large part for Diyala province when the surge was announced. Both knew they could not go toe to toe with US forces who cleared and stayed in an area. After the surge forces were in place and the COIN operation was taking hold, we then had the additional forces to chases the bad guys out of Diyala. At the same time the COIN operations did a good job of persuading Iraqis to rally to our cause and overthrow the oppressors from al Qaeda in other areas of the country.

The left has good reason to be in a panic over this victory because they have been dead wrong about the Petraeus strategy and they left themselves no wiggle room. The left's shameful attack on the General when he came to testify about the progress only made their situation worse and they were the ones who wound up with less credibility.

What is needed now by supporters of the war is an exploitation phase to rout the enemies of victory in this country.