Dour assessments notwithstanding, there's enough good stuff in the "surge" to justify continued military efforts in Iraq.
First, we note that the American offensive against insurgents holed up north of Baghdad is showing early signs of success, thanks to tactical adjustments from earlier engagements. Yes, we know we had Al Qaida bottled up and Osama got away, so we'll wait for the dust to settle before drawing conclusions. In the best case, this isn't going to lead to a formal surrender aboard an American aircraft carrier. But we like it when we hear that lots of bad guys are all in one place that is now encircled by good guys with things that go boom.
Second, we are pleased to know that in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the folks who used to support the bad guys are turning against them and fighting with the good guys. This is classic counterinsurgency.
Ralph Peters at the NY Post is lauding and contextualizing such developments. His column deserves a good read. What he demands, as the title of our post suggests, is that we all settle down and wait. This thing is too big and important to give up, and it should be expected to take awhile.
We'd also recommend a reading, for a different reason, of Democrat Carl Levin's appropriation of Abraham Lincoln's stance on the Mexican-American War. Levin dons the Lincoln stovepipe hat by claiming the the young Congressman from Illinois did what he is doing by objecting to the war but voting to fund the troops. Well enough, Senator. But we think the better analogy is Lincoln's dogged determination to finish what became a hugely unpopular and terribly brutal war (only the former point is the relevant comparison to Iraq, by the way) because of his conviction that to do so was important for the long-term survival of democratic ideals. In any case, Levin's I-always-knew-it-was-bad rhetoric on the Iraq War is starting to sound a little out of date. But if he keeps the funds flowing, Petraeus and company may get enough time to show how wrong he was.
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