Keeping Iraq in perspective

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 — An independent commission of military experts, created by Congress to assess Iraq’s military and police force, presented a finely nuanced report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 — An independent commission of military experts, created by Congress to assess Iraq’s military and police force, presented a finely nuanced report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

For Mr. McCain, the report provided powerful support for his long-held position that it would be a mistake for Congress to set a firm deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. When retired Gen. James L. Jones of the Marines, who led the commission, told the committee, “I think deadlines can work against us and I think a deadline of this magnitude would be against our national interest,” Mr. McCain could not have been more satisfied. “I thank you,” he said.

For Mrs. Clinton, the commission’s finding that there had been little political progress in Iraq buttressed her view that a firm deadline was crucial.

“How do we get the appropriate pressure on the Iraqi government to do what we know they must do for the Iraqi people to have any future and for us to, you know, withdraw?” she asked General Jones. “If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines. What is the urgency that will move them to act?”

The contrasting positions of the two senators provided a stark example of how Republicans and Democrats are maneuvering to shape the discourse on the Iraq war amid a cascade of studies, reports and analyses leading up to reports next week by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, the top Americans in Iraq. With much new information at hand, there is little sign so far that lawmakers in either party are changing their views.

One of the things that irritates me to no end is this tendency to see Iraq as primarily a political issue whose principal importance is how it makes one or the other political party look at any given time.

The Iraqi people are real live flesh and blood human beings. To pull out prematurely would subject them to a bloodbath approaching the level of genocide. It would condemn them to an eventual totalitarian theocratic state either closely aligned with or merged into Iran.

The Left doesn't care. They are willing to see any amount of blood spilled anywhere on the planet (as long as it isn't their own personal blood) as long as it makes Bush look bad.

But most of the people in this nation, even the registered Democrats, aren't that genuinely evil. Most of us hope for a good outcome for Iraq and are willing to support any effort that has a reasonable chance of achieving that goal. I would suggest that there is ample reason to hope for that good outcome.

I urge all of you to look at the news coming from Iraq. Now filter out the left-wing mainstream media bias, the political calculations of elected Democrats (who know that victory for America means defeat for them) and the insane ravings of the BDS addled moonbats and you will see that progress is being made.

It might not be as much progress as we would like and it may not be moving as rapidly as we would like, but it is happening.

How much sense does it make to abandon Iraq when things are improving - in the full knowledge that what will rise up after our departure will be a Shiite terror-state? Especially a terror-state which will be sitting on what many oil geologists consider the world's largest oil reserves and all the wealth that implies?