Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

It becomes more apparent every day that the reactionary progressive Democrats that pinned their hopes of a future ascendancy upon a defeat in Iraq are psychologically unable to come to grips with the reality on the ground in that nation.

This was demonstrated again today by Senator Russ Feingold in the Huffington Post:

Over in Iraq, our troops get up every day and risk their lives in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. They have to do their job, no matter what the risk, and no matter what the cost. They do what they are asked to do…and so should Congress. Congress’s job right now should be to bring our troops home safely, and we can’t turn away from this issue just because it’s tough going. The only way we will ever get our troops out is by putting constant pressure on supporters of this disastrous war. Let’s make them vote again and again, so that they have to go back home and explain why they keep voting to keep our troops in Iraq. When they feel the heat for their vote, that’s when they will change their vote, and that’s how we will bring our troops home.

I have news that will no doubt come as an absolute surprise to Senator Feingold: the Iraqi civil war never materialized.

As a matter of fact, Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki formally stated that even the threat of a civil war in Iraq has been averted. Like many Democrats, Feingold seems mired in a past that could have been, instead of the reality of what Iraq is today.

al Qaeda bombers intended to trigger a civil war with the bombing of the revered al-Askari “Golden Dome” Mosque in Samarra in February of 2006, but though nearly 200 hundred people were killed in retaliatory strikes in the days that followed, Shia leaders refused to be pulled into a full-scale civil war. The civil war was trumpeted as about to happen or happening by Democrats and in the press, but despite these constant calls and hype here in America, it simply never occurred (as opposed to the Palestinian Civil War in Gaza, which the media stubbornly refused to admit there was a civil war until it was all but over).

Nor does Feingold seem to have a grasp of what American voters signified in the 2006 elections:

The message from the voters last November was clear — safely redeploy our troops out of Iraq.

Actually, what voters indicated they wanted in exit polls and interviews after the election was a change in our Iraqi policy. They got that, and the change they got was immediate.

One day after the 2006 midterm elections, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down and was replaced by Robert Gates.

In January, just two months later, President Bush nominated General David Petraeus to become the commanding general of all American forces in Iraq, and was unanimously confirmed to that postion by the Senate after testifying about the revised counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine he supported implementing, including how he would use a “surge” of troops already planned for Iraq before his nomination. The American people got precisely what they wanted–a change in strategy–even if it wasn’t the defeatist strategy of withdrawal favored by Feingold and others.

But Feingold, safe in his own community-based reality, continues:

Telling ourselves “we don’t have the votes now, so what’s the point” doesn’t cut it. I understand that we may not get to 67 or 60 or even 50 votes on Feingold-Reid right now. But remember, when I first proposed that Congress use its constitutional power of the purse to end the war, support was scarce at best. Now, the majority of Senate Democrats, including our leadership and presidential candidates, are firm supporters. If we give in to the defeatist “we don’t have the votes” attitude, we’re playing right into the hands of the president and supporters of his war who cannot wait for the day they don’t have to talk about Iraq. If supporters of this war are going to vote to keep our troops in a situation that is hurting our military as well as our national security, they should be prepared to defend it every day.

The calendar tells us it is October 3, 2007.

Even after the assassination of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the “Awakening” movement continues to spread from al Anbar across Iraq. In police patrols in Fallujah and in food drops in Ramadi, we see American Marines patrolling with police and militiamen that were once former insurgents, but who now see their hope for the future in political reconciliation instead of war.

The same has occurred in Diyala, where 1920 Revolutionary Brigades fighters–former insurgents–now go out on patrol with the U.S. Army.

Diyalal Province, Iraq: U.S. Army M-1 tank behind 1920s fighters heading back to their neighborhood.
(Photo courtesy of Michael Yon)

Just yesterday, Bartle Bull published an essay in the U.K. Prospect Magazine, offering the clear picture of the actual state of the war in Iraq, a reality that Feingold and his fellow defeatists would rather ignore. He follows up today in the Wall Street Journal with a variation of the same theme, The Realignment of Iraq.

Feingold goes on to mutter though the rest of his “Vote on Iraq Again and Again,” sounding very much like a threadbare street-corner shouter as he insists that we look at his shaded remembrance of November of 2006, instead of the reality of October, 2007.

He, like Harry “the war is lost” Reid in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha in the House and their allies, are desperate to salvage at least the appearance of a defeat from a war that the Iraqi people and embedded journalists all seem to understand is still on-going, but quite possibly already decided.

The national media, with fewer car bombs to exploit or pending possible nightmare scenarios to trumpet, are quietly slipping Iraq out of the spotlight. “If it bleeds, it leads,” has always been the newsroom battle-cry, but the corollary that peace doesn’t sell papers, and so it doesn’t fill them.

The war in Iraq is quietly becoming the peace-keeping and nation-building operation for an ally, and yet Democrats still try to call it a quagmire and ignore the dramatic successes of the past year. One must wonder how much longer Democrats can continue to pretend we are at another place in time, and how much longer they can continue to cheer for defeat in a war all but won.