Gen. Lynch Pushes Back
Democrats used to criticize President Bush for not listening to the generals on the ground. Now that Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch has said that it’s imperative to keep fighting, I wonder how they’ll spin this. I’m betting that they’ll criticize him for being ‘Bush’s mouthpiece’ who’s only saying this because he’s been ordered to say it. Here’s what Gen. Lynch said:
A senior U.S. military commander warned on Friday against cutting the number of troops in Iraq, saying the Iraqi security force cannot fight on its own and a U.S. reduction would cede progress to the insurgents.
“It would be a mess,” said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces in an area stretching from Baghdad’s southern suburbs through a region known as the “Triangle of Death.”
He said the additional 30,000 troops sent to Iraq over the past four months had given commanders’ the ability to reach areas controlled by insurgents and provide greater security.
“If those surge forces go away, that capability goes away. And the Iraqi security forces aren’t ready yet to do that,” he said, speaking to Washington reporters by video link from Iraq.
“So now what you’re going to find, if you did that, is you’d find the enemy regaining ground, re-establishing a sanctuary, building more IEDs, carrying those IEDs in Baghdad and the violence would escalate,” he said, referring to the improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, used to deadly effect by insurgents.
Let’s see Democrats rebut each of those points. (They won’t try but it’d be fun watching them try twisting this information to their advantage.) The fact is that Republicans should be sprinting to the nearest microphone to tout the progress being made. Instead, several have joined Democratic defeatists in the fetal position, saying essentially that they don’t have the political willpower to agree with the generals that are making Iraq a safer place.
As I said here, it’s time we gave these defeatists a spine transplant so they do the right thing.
Something else that’s missing from this debate is what our cutting and running would mean to the patriotic Iraqi people, many of whom are giving the MNF-I tips on where AQI and AQM terrorists are hiding. Just 30 short months ago, Iraqis voted despite death threats from AQI terrorists, Saddam loyalists and Iranian proxies. Now Mssrs. Warner, Domenici, Voinovich, Alexander and Lugar are going to tell them we don’t care if they die? I think not.
Let’s also acknowledge reality of what happens if we abandon our Iraqi allies. We ‘gain’ friends in Egypt, Iran and Syria while tossing Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan under the proverbial bus. We also throw away all of our credibility within the region and throughout the world. What nation in their right mind will trust us when we ask them to fight these terrorists? Foreign political leaders wouldn’t trust us because they’d point to our abandoning the Iraqi government when they needed us the most.
[Gen. Lynch] also said current operations had uncovered 41 weapons caches and 54 roadside bombs. He said 1,000 buildings had been cleared and 45 boats used to transport insurgents had been destroyed.
Asked how long it would take Iraqi security forces to assume security responsibilities, he said he did not know. “Everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take,” he said. “I spend no time thinking about the political clock. I spend all my time focused on killing or capturing the enemy forces.”
It’d be a shame if a bunch of arrogant Washington politicians said that they knew better than generals like Rick Lynch and David Petraeus. In fact, I’d call it a tragedy, not just a shame. Any politician that votes to undercut Gen. Petraeus’ offensive should be made to wear that vote as a badge of dishonor.
Technorati Tags: Rick Lynch, David Petraeus, Victory Caucus, Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich, IED, Terrorists, AQI, AQM
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
July 6th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Military, National Security, Iraq, Iran, Senate, Terrorism, President Bush, Subversives, Appeasement, Election 2008 | [...]
July 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
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July 6th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
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July 7th, 2007 at 12:06 am
A flawed premise results in this sort of dilemma.
Now the democrats have to accept Lynch’s word or be seen as vile worms manipulating the military for partisan purposes.
July 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I saw the press conference Maj Gen Lynch gave too, CC, and thought it very good information. He’s right, too, if we withdrew the place would become a mess.
Two observations from this; one is that we would see a repeat of SE Asia, whereby more people were killed by the communists after we withdrew than were killed during the war. The leftists today who demand our withdrawal will probably react to an Iraqi bloodbath the same way they reacted to the Vietnam/Cambodian bloodbath; with a big yawn. When they do mention it, it will be to blame Bush.
Two, it’s terminally frustrating why the Iraqis cannot stand up on their own. Charles Krauthammer said last November that “we have given the Iraqis a republic and they do not seem able to keep it”. Unfortunately, he might be right.