At Least One (Foreign) News Outlet Gets It

From The (London) TimesOnline:

We’re winning this War on Terror
Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited.
Not a bad haul.

……these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier’s dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let’s retreat!”

That’s the Democrats to a “T”.

Since it is remarkable how pervasive this pessimism is, it’s worth recapping what has been achieved in the past few years.

Afghanistan has been a signal success. There has been much focus on the latest counter-offensive by the Taleban in the southeast of the country and it would be churlish to minimise the ferocity with which the terrorists are fighting, but it would be much more foolish to understate the scale of the continuing Nato achievement. Establishing a stable government for the whole nation is painstaking work, years in the making. It might never be completed. But that was not the principal objective of the war there.

Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan’s status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.

In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart. Thousands of its activists and enablers have been killed. It’s true that Osama bin Laden’s forces have been regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan but their ability to orchestrate mass terrorism there is severely attenuated. And there are encouraging signs that Pakistanis are starting to take to the offensive against them.

Next time you hear someone say that the war in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility ask them this: do they seriously think that if the US and its allies had not ousted the Taleban and sustained an offensive against them for six years that there would have been no more terrorist attacks in the West? What characterised Islamist terrorism before the Afghan war was increasing sophistication, boldness and terrifying efficiency. What has characterised the terrorist attacks in the past few years has been their crudeness, insignificance and a faintly comical ineptitude (remember Glasgow airport?)

The second great advance in the War on Terror has been in Iraq.
……The “surge”, despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday’s bombings, the streets of Iraq’s cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.

The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

……There ought to be no surprise here. It’s only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It’s right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?

The right response to the loss of brave souls such as Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first British woman to die in Afghanistan, is not an immediate call for retreat. It is, first of all, pride; a great, deep conviction that it is on such sacrifice that our own freedoms have always rested. Then, defiance. How foolish is the enemy that it might think our grief is really some prelude to their victory?

Finally, confidence. We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too.
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4221376.ece

Very few media organizations in this country acknowledge the facts about Iraq and Afghanistan; the history of Islamic fanaticism, what led up to the war, why we are there, and that we have won.

Can you imagine if the current bunch of enemy collaborators at the New York Times, had been around in World War II?

The frightening possibilities are endless.

Taliban Tries Ambush, Gets Ass Kicked

More Hadjis get sent to hell.

From Bill Roggio’s Long War Journal:

US and Afghan forces fought a major battle with the Taliban and “inflicted heavy casualties” on the force just miles from the Pakistani border on June 20, Combined Joint Task Force - 101 reported.

More than 55 Taliban fighters, including three senior leaders, were reported killed, 25 were wounded and three were captured by a combined air and ground counterattack after a Taliban force ambushed a patrol in Paktika province. “Patrols in the ambush area continue to report additional enemy casualties,” the US military reported.

The attack occurred in the northeastern corner of Paktika province, close to the Pakistani border on a road between the districts of Zirok and Orgun districts. The US Army maintains Forward Operating Base Orgun-E in the region to interdict Taliban cross border raids.

The region borders the lawless Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan, where cross border incidents are on the rise. On June 21, six rockets and mortars were fired from North Waziristan into Paktika province, killing one Afghan woman and three children.

The Pakistani Taliban maintains a stronghold in North Waziristan. The powerful Haqqani family is based in the region. The Haqqani family runs several mosques and madrassa, or religious schools, near Miramshah. The Pakistani government closed down the radical Haqqani-run Manbaul Ulom madrassa after the US commenced Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, but the school was reopened in 2004. The Manbaul Ulom madrassa has been described as a center of jihadi activities, where top Taliban and al Qaeda commanders meet.

Siraj Haqqani, the son of renowned Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, is one of the senior Taliban leaders in North Waziristan. He has close ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. He has embraced al Qaeda’s tactics and ideology, and has recruited foreign terrorists to act as suicide bombers and operatives inside Afghanistan. Siraj is believed to be running the Haqqani Network in eastern Afghanistan and has become a focal point of Coalition operations. The US military has put out a $200,000 bounty for Siraj’s arrest. Taliban commanders Hafiz Gul Bahadar and Sadiq Noor also operate in North Waziristan.

This is what appeasement gets you:

……The Pakistani government signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan in February 2008. The prior agreement, signed in September 2006, resulted in the Taliban takeover of the district and an increase in attack inside both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

……an estimated 500 Taliban fighters took over a series of villages in the Arghandab districtjust north of the city of Kandahar. An Afghan battalion and Coalition forces immediately launched an assault and freed the district. An estimated 100 Taliban were reported killed in the fighting.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/06/afghan_us_forces_kil.php

Since the liberal media hates success in the war against Islamic terrorism, you’ll never read about this in the New York Times.

Liberal Media (WaPo) Forced to Admit Iraq Success

My gawd, this was actually printed in the Washington Post:

The Iraqi Upturn
Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.

Sunday, June 1, 2008; Page B06
THERE’S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

……the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has “unparalleled” public support, as Gen. (David)Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply.

……When Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/31/AR2008053101927.html

Hate to burst the WaPo’s bubble but, we were focused on and engaged in success, in spite of the media and democratic politicians clamoring for defeat. The WaPo has been just as guilty in the ‘lull in news coverage’ department except when there was another American death to exploit for their anti-war agenda. Now that victory can no longer be ignored, they’re being forced to admit it, albeit with the usual ‘too early to celebrate’ caveat. But celebrate we do.

Iraq Victory at Hand, Whether the Liberals Like it or Not

From the New York Post:

June 9, 2008 — AMERICA has won, or is about to win, the Iraq war.

The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army - just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists - forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation’s army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country’s leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul - a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible.

……In a Washington Post interview, CIA Director Michael Hayden said we’re witnessing the “near strategic defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq.”

……The Bush administration has taken heaps of abuse for its Iraq policy, including its decision to launch the “surge” last December. Now the strategy, which our nation’s “best and brightest” regularly dismissed as a failure, has cleared the way for the establishment of a secure democracy in Iraq and a lasting peace.

……Meanwhile, we’re still fighting a vicious insurgency in Afghanistan, and have yet to root out the al Qaeda remnants of along the Afghan-Pakistan border. And the continued threat of home-grown terror cells keeps European governments nervous.

……And al Qaeda’s fugitive leadership is learning that its former safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border is no longer so safe. Thanks to cooperation with Pakistan’s new government, unmanned US Predator drones recently killed two top al Qaeda leaders there.

Once Gen. David Petraeus is confirmed as commander of US forces in the Middle East in July, he’ll be able to apply the same strategy for victory learned in the Iraq surge to the war in Afghanistan.

……We need to acknowledge that the Iraq war wasn’t a “distraction” from the War on Terror, as critics still complain, but its centerpiece.

It’s not mere coincidence that our success against al Qaeda globally comes along with success in Iraq. For all its setbacks and frustrations, the Iraq war drew jihadists into a battle they thought they could win, because it would be fought on their home turf - but which they’re now losing disastrously.

……If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded.

Link: http://www.nypost.com/seven/06092008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/eat_crow__iraq_war_skeptics_114671.htm?page=0

Since McCain will likely win, the Democrats won’t be able to take credit for a triumph they had nothing to do with, nor will they be able to compound the damage they do to this country from the auspices of the White House.

Give Credit Where it’s Due

Note to Nancy (I thank the Iranians) Pelosi:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low—and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

But surely the US military contributed a great deal to the humiliation of al-Qaedists and the bankruptcy of their cause, since it has (1) killed thousands of generic jihadists, and to such a degree that the former Middle East romance of going to Iraq to fight the weak crusaders is now synonymous with a death sentence and defeat; (2) provided the window of security necessary for the growing confidence of the Maliki government whose success is absolutely destroying the Islamist canard that the U.S. backs only dictatorships. Indeed, al-Qaeda’s greatest fear is successful Arab constitutional government; something still caricatured here at home as a neocon pipe dream.

In addition, the grotesque tactics that al-Qaeda in duress developed in Iraq weakened its case throughout the Middle East; while the Americans learned just the opposite lesson under Gen. Petraeus—how to win hearts and mind while mastering the elements of counter-insurgency. In contrast, the terrorists learned how to lose a war while alienating the Muslim population.

Link: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTc1ZjZkMjY1OTBhMWRhYWZkMGRiYjAyYWIwYTQ0ZGE=

David Hanson points out everything the leftist MSM and Democratic cohorts refused to acknowledge, until they could no longer ignore the success being shoved up their asses.

They’ve gone from pro-terrorist/defeatist propaganda to scant coverage, to lame excuses, and finally, grudging respect.

I can hardly wait until they revamp the whole media war history to portray their angle as “we always knew the United States would triumph over the Islamofascist hoards”.

But that’s okay; we won’t forgive or forget.