Moments of doubt on the anti war left

Lanny Davis:

...

But ... then came my first moment of doubt.

I saw on TV in early 2005, in their first preliminary democratic elections, long lines of Iraqis waiting to vote under the hot desert sun with bombs and shrapnel exploding around them. Waiting to vote!

And then there was that indelible image - an older woman shrouded in a carpetlike cape, smiling gleefully and holding her purple finger in the air for the TV cameras, purple with ink showing that she had voted.

Smiling! In the middle of war! At U.S. troops standing nearby!

Wow, I thought. Is it possible I was wrong?

Is it possible, I wondered, that Iraqis truly did want democracy and freedom and the right to vote and government of the people, just as we Americans do? And were willing to fight for it, with our help?

Wouldn't that be a good thing? Even a great thing?

...

And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the antiwar left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong.

The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders.

It did allow the Shi'ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shi'ite extremist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and from the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.

This willingness by the Shi'ite-dominated al-Maliki government to move against the Sadr Shi'ite extremists won crucial credibility for the government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who joined together with Shi'ites to turn against the al Qaeda in Iraq and other Taliban-like extremists.

These are facts, not arguments.

I think there are a lot of antiwar Democrats who, like me, are impressed by these facts and who now see a moral obligation, after all the carnage and destruction wrought by our military intervention, not just to pick up and leave without looking over our shoulders.

...

Lanny Davis is showing integrity on the issue that most of his colleagues on the left have yet to demonstrate. It is certainly absent from its Congressional leadership. Reid and Pelosi are still willfully ignorant or dishonest on the subject. Obama is still dissembling and dishonest on the subject. MoveOn and the Kos Kids are still desperate for a defeat to validate their earlier positions. There are just not enough honest people on the left who are willing to admit the obvious facts.