Collegiate Times

On Tuesday night, a politically beleaguered President Bush delivered his State of the Union address to Congress, speaking on an array of issues, but none more important than the way forward in Iraq. The president tried to rally members of Congress behind his plan for an increase in troops in Iraq while reminding them that declaring defeat and disengaging in war will result in an unparalleled geopolitical crisis and humanitarian disaster. Many still don’t seem to grasp, or simply prefer not to admit, this fact and will renew their calls for surrender. The reality is, whatever the rhetoric, leaving now is parallel to defeat, and defeat in Iraq spells disaster.

It has been clear all along that most Democrats and their liberal allies have little conscience whatsoever on Iraq, instead playing politics with the situation from the get go. For a good example of how Democrats continue to play politics with Iraq, look no further than new House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes. As reported in Newsweek magazine, Reyes said, “He wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to ‘dismantle the militias.’”

Once Bush proposed a similar plan, Reyes, in an act of unabashed hypocrisy, told the El Paso Times that, “We don't have the capability to escalate even to this minimum level.”

This episode bares out what so many have been saying all along: The Democrats have no coherent strategy for Iraq other than retreat. Having throttled Republicans in the midterm, can’t they find it in themselves to put national security ahead of politics? Blustering persists among Democrats about cutting off funding to send more troops to Iraq. It seems unlikely that they will. After all, that remains risky politically despite the mission’ seeming unpopularity with the American people.

Why not give Iraqis another chance to achieve peace, stability and a better life before plunging the whole nation into civil war and leaving all those who have tried to make democracy work in Iraq to the whims of terrorists and radicals? Most of Iraq remains peaceful to this day and Iraqis have demonstrated time and again their thirst for democracy.

Bush has now made clear to Iraqis that the American commitment is not open ended and the Iraqis must do more to secure their own future. To assist them, U.S. force strength will increase by 21,000, and with the assistance of more Iraqi troops, Baghdad will be cleared of terrorists, death squads and militias, and then held for a year by American and Iraqi forces to get life back to normal while aid is distributed and jobs are created.

The troop surge already seems to be yielding some positives. In advance of U.S. troops moving in, Jack Kelly of RealClearPolitics.com reports that al-Qaida is retreating from Baghdad, glum about their chances in the city given the new U.S. plan. Even if al-Qaida temporarily leaves with hope of returning, it will be much more difficult once security and government control is reasserted for them to return. Maybe more importantly, Kelly notes, it deprives al-Qaida of the media attention Baghdad provides, something essential to making their efforts successful. Kelly also points out that Shiite militias are cooling their rhetoric and scaling back operations while, “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is putting more distance between himself and al Sadr, upon whose bloc of votes in parliament he had relied for political support.”

While the plan may not be perfect, no one can deny that it is far better than the alternative. Many defeatists don’t seem to want to face what capitulation will look like. Maybe these defeatists are holdovers from the Vietnam era who still see compelling U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam as a good thing while ignoring the horrors that stemmed from the last great humanitarian success of the Left in neighboring Cambodia, where estimates range from one and a half to three million deaths as a result of a Communist takeover.

Whatever the case, if the United States withdraws from Iraq now, it is withdrawing from the central front in the war against Islamic terrorism. Putting aside the civil war that will likely explode between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, dragging numerous other Middle Eastern nations into the fray, it will present ample opportunity for al-Qaida and other homicidal regimes in Iran to advance radical Islam in the Middle East. The human toll alone could easily be in the millions. Those who die though might be the lucky ones. The rest will quite likely face the dark cloud of totalitarianism that Islamic extremism spreading across the sands of the Middle East will inaugurate.

Numerous mistakes have been made since Saddam Hussein was removed from power, and President Bush has admitted that. But mistakes are hardly a justification for retreat. The fact of the matter is that the United States cannot retreat from our responsibility in Iraq now. The Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein now, but will they be in the future if morally bankrupt leftists and so-called humanitarians persuade poll obsessed, shortsighted politicians to retreat from Iraq? Additionally, as we fight Islamic terrorism, how can we ask those who struggle with us to risk their lives and their treasures when there is no guarantee we’ll be there when they need us? How can we ask our troops, who overwhelmingly support the mission and are winning militarily, to continue to fight in Iraq when there is no guarantee politicians will let them finish the job? The decision confronting us isn’t pretty, but given a choice we must choose to continue the struggle while a political solution is forged rather than retreating from the central front in the fight against terrorism, emboldening our enemies, bringing more terror to our shores, and tarnishing the reputation of the United States. Retreating from Iraq now simply is not an option.