California Conservative

That’s the title of John McCain’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post. Suffice it to say that it lives up to its headline. Here’s the opening paragraph of McCain’s op-ed:

I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003, and my first since Gen. David Petraeus’s new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad. For the first time, we met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who are working with American and Iraqi forces to combat al-Qaeda. For the first time, we visited Iraqi and American forces deployed in a joint security station in Baghdad, an integral part of the new strategy. We held a news conference to discuss what we saw: positive signs, underreported in the United States, that are reason for cautious optimism.

There’s bound to be alot of outrage over this op-ed because the Agenda Media won’t like it that they’re being exposed for not telling the whole truth about the improving conditions on the ground after the start of the Petraeus Offensive. It likely won’t get criticized by Harry Reid and Damascus Nancy because they don’t want to talk about anything positive that’s happening in Iraq. In other words, Reid and Pelosi will ignore it altogether.

For truth-seeking Americans, though, they’ll soak this information up like a sponge. If the Reputable Right Blogosphere has taught us anything, it’s that democracies that are information-starved soak up information from credible sources. Having just returned from a trip to Baghdad, including the Green Zone and Anbar Province, John McCain certainly qualifies as a credible person.

I observed that our delegation “stopped at a local market, where we spent well over an hour, shopping and talking with the local people, getting their views and ideas about different issues of the day.” Markets in Baghdad have faced devastating terrorist attacks. A car bombing at Shorja in February, for example, killed 137 people. Today the market still faces occasional sniper attacks, but it is safer than it used to be. One innovation of the new strategy is closing markets to vehicles, thereby precluding car bombs that kill so many and garner so much media attention. Petraeus understandably wanted us to see this development.

The sooner the number of car bombings is dramatically reduced, the more positive the coverage will be. The reality is that car bombings contributed the most to the doom and gloom about Iraq. Certainly there were other things happening that contributed to the bad news but car bombings were the biggest contributor. The thing that I like about Petraeus’ strategy is that is shows an understanding on his part that winning the ‘nightly news’ war is as important as winning the gunfights or killing terrorists or jailing insurgents.

I went to Iraq to gain a firsthand view of the progress in this difficult war, not to celebrate any victories. No one has been more critical of sunny progress reports that defied realities in Iraq. In 2003, after my first visit, I argued for more troops to provide the security necessary for political development. I disagreed with statements characterizing the insurgency as a “few dead-enders” or being in its “last throes.” I repeatedly criticized the previous search-and-destroy strategy and argued for a counterinsurgency approach: separating the reconcilable population from the irreconcilable and creating enough security to facilitate the political and economic solutions that are the only way to defeat insurgents. This is exactly the course that Petraeus and the brave men and women of the American military are pursuing.

What Sen. McCain is saying is that Gen. Petraeus has implemented a new strategy and that that strategy is working thus far. McCain’s also saying that he’s can be trusted in his appraisal because he’s consistently been critical of past strategies.

I strongly recommend that you read the entire op-ed. Unless you’re a daily reader of the milbloggers, it’s a picture of Iraq you won’t see.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, David Petraeus, Green Zone, Anbar Province, Car Bombings, al Qaeda, Iraq War

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iraq, Media, Military, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.