Catastrophe?

From The Times Magazine:

The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country. How distant a dream that now seems.

Having left an academic post at Harvard in 2005 and returned home to Canada to enter political life, I keep revisiting the Iraq debacle, trying to understand exactly how the judgments I now have to make in the political arena need to improve on the ones I used to offer from the sidelines. I’ve learned that acquiring good judgment in politics starts with knowing when to admit your mistakes. . .

I initially didn't pay this much attention because it seemed more of the same anti-war bloviation that The Times enjoys filling its pages with. But then I started to think why should this moron's fundamental assertion go unchallenged? Why should he be allowed to get away with describing Iraq as an "unfolding catastrophe"?

Let's look at the facts sans the left-wing hysterics.

Iraq has had lighter casualties than any war in US history. Compare the numbers of killed especially to the Civil War, WWI or WWII, Korea or Vietnam and marvel at how small the price in dead soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines has been. In the Second World War in just the air war over Europe the US Army Air Force lost over 80,000 aircrew. Fewer have died in all the years we have been in Iraq than died in one month on Iwo Jima. This is not a catastrophe. It is a testament to the extraordinary level of training and skill in our armed services and to the quality of our military equipment and the skill and dedication of the military medical establishment.

The war in Iraq has diverted al Qaeda's attention from its goal of carrying out more terrorist attacks in US soil. Thanks in large part to the US invasion of Iraq there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States. Whether or not it intended to the Bush administration moved the battlefield in the terror war from the United States homeland to a Middle Eastern nation. This is something to be grateful for, not condemn as a "quagmire".

Operations in Iraq have resulted in the death or capture of thousands of al Qaeda personnel. Both low level fighters and high level leadership. For example today's Times also carries this report:

BAGHDAD, Aug. 4 — The insurgent who planned the bombing of Al Askari mosque in Samarra earlier this summer has been killed in an air raid, the American military announced Saturday.

Haythem Sabah al-Badri, who was reputed to be the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in Salahuddin Province, was killed in a strike northeast of Samarra, the northern city where two minarets at the Shiite mosque were demolished in the blast, on June 13.

It isn't all that difficult to recruit someone who can point an AK in the general direction of US troops and pull the trigger or learn to plant a landmine, but leaders and planners are a different matter and lots of them are now dead or spilling their guts in US custody because we are in Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq deeply frightened other dictators. As a result of seeing the Hussein regime toppled by US forces Libya's Qaddafi gave up his own attempts to build or acquire nuclear weapons. Weapons which would have had an excellent chance of finding their way into terrorist hands. If the US government is resolute enough to remain in Iraq it will send the most powerful message possible to the despots of the Middle East that they no longer have a free hand to destabilize the region and to America's enemies all over the world that we can be counted on to protect our interests wherever they happen to be. It will signal our friends that they have chosen the right side and influence the fence-sitters that America is the side to bet on.

The invasion of Iraq was and remains the only realistic chance that the people of Iraq will have to gain freedom. Elections have been held in which people risked their lives to go out and vote in larger percentages of their population than turn up for American elections. Saddam Hussein was executed by his own former subjects. The rape-rooms are closed and the industrial shredding machines into which those who would dare criticize the regime were fed are now rusting away in a storeroom somewhere.

Far from "breaking" or "wearing out" the armed forces Iraq is honing them. The Unites States now has the most experienced battle-tested military, led by the most experienced and professional officer corps, of any nation on the face of the earth. Both America's combat doctrine and military equipment has been combat tested and evaluated. What works is known and what does not work is known and replacements for what has failed are being developed.

Taking the above things into consideration I honestly want to know, in what way is Iraq a failure or a quagmire. Especially in light of the recent information coming out of Iraq which indicates that Gen. David Petraeus' plan is working (as even the Times admitted).

So please, someone who isn't:

1. So deep into Bush Derangement Syndrome that they must see the war as a failure because it is Bu$hitler's war

2. Who isn't a partisan Democrat who knows that American victory in Iraq equals Democrat defeat in 2008

3. Who isn't a pacifist loon who thinks that all war is evil.

4. A Libertarian ass-clown like Ron Paul who hates the war because the American government gain more power from it.

5. An aging hippy who sees protesting this war as a chance to recapture the glory-days of their youth when they got laid for the first time at a protest against the Vietnam War.

6. A neo-nazi or paleocatholic like Pat Buchanan who hates the idea of the US being at war with Islamists who hate Jews as much as he does.

In other words someone rational tell me why Iraq is bad?