Listen to the Generals

The Democrats in Congress are currently doing everything possible in their power to undermine our war effort in Iraq while claiming to have the moral high ground because they are doing - as Majority Leader Harry Ried is fond of saying - "the will of the people". While I cannot and would not try to mitigate the large body of evidence indicating that there is a massive and growing portion of the country who now favor ending the current War in Iraq (nor would I generally want to suppress the will of the people), it is incumbent upon our political leaders to not only listen to their electorate -and indeed to all who are effected by their policy decisions- but at times to also stand up and actually be the statesmen that they pretend to be. This is especially true at such times when either the people have a misunderstanding or are just plain wrong. It is in those cases that a good leader will, rather than be blown with the political winds, make an argument and attempt convince the people of what the right course of action is despite any perceived political consequences. This incidentally is exactly what Joe Lieberman has done and despite the fact that I disagree with the man on almost every issue, I have the utmost respect for the true Statesman that he is.

The fact is that the people of this country do want the war to be over because they are weary and because they see no signs of improvement nor any hope for success. They have not thought (at least not in any great detail) about the consequences of leaving nor do they see any prospect for any of this changing except in the number of the troop body count reported each evening on the news.

I am therefore ashamed of our Democrat leaders in the US Congress who despite a recent course change in Iraq, continue bullheadedly to try to arrange an immediate troop withdrawal - that is to say surrender - without either understanding the consequences of said withdrawal or listening to what General Petraeus (who took over command of our forces in Iraq in February) has to say about what our prospects are of actually winning the war. They do this because either it is the easier thing to do (as it is easier to agree with someone than it is to convince them of something) or because it is the most politically advantageous thing to do(although I suspect the latter). Neither of which are marks of Statesmanship. And while I generally refrain from assuming that someone is not acting on the best of intentions, in this case I must present the following evidence that our Democrat leaders are acing on one of the two aforementioned reasons in these words of General Petraeus himself during an Interview with Hugh Hewitt:

The Surge has not been given time to achieve it's goals:

[The Troop Surge has been going] about a month now , Hugh. We received the final Army brigade, the Marine expeditionary unit, and the combat aviation brigade in June, and they all went into operation about the mid part of last month. So it’s about a month that they’ve all been on the ground, and all of our forces have been engaged in what is a pretty comprehensive offensive operation in just about all of the belts and Baghdad, as they’re called, and then in also several neighborhoods in Baghdad that are of particular concern because of the activities in those neighborhoods of al Qaeda, or in some cases, of militia extremist elements.

General Petraeus will be giving a report to congress in at which time it may then be appropriate to draw conclusions about our current strategy:

I have always said that we will have a sense by that time [September] of basically, of how things are going, have we been able to achieve progress on the ground, where have their been shortfalls, and so forth. And I think that is a reasonable amount of time to have had all the forces on the ground, again, for about three months, to have that kind of sense.

Even if neither of the above were true we have a responsibility to the people of Iraq:

I think just first of all, we have an enormous responsibility, because of course, we did liberate this country. And so right off the bat, a lot of us feel, certainly, that degree of responsibility.

If you want to know what is going on in Iraq and what responsibilities we have there so that you can have some semblance of what we actually should be doing, you absolutely must do more than simply read the opinion polls and listen to the evening news. You have to listen to our Generals about what is being done, how it's going, and candidly contemplate the consequences of failure. It is not enough to simply shroud yourself in "The Will of the People".

So Read the whole Interview if you really want an understanding of the war other than the main stream news headlines

Read more commentary by Hugh Hewitt