Austin Bay [1], who I quote far too little:
Realclearpolitics.com [2] featured last week’s Creators Syndicate newspaper column and the gents at Powerline commented. [3] As the column attests, I saw the Basra and east Baghdad counter-militia operations very differently from the NY Times, etcetera. I don’t even want to bother with the various links logging the defeatist assessment, other than this typical herd-media column by Trudy Rubin. [4] She labels Basra as a “debacle.” Hey, she wrote it. It’s dated April 7.
Quote:
Petraeus and Crocker did not expect that their testimony would be preceded by the debacle in Basra. As I wrote last week, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initiated a major Iraqi military operation without prior consultation with the Americans. This has now been publicly confirmed by Crocker and other top administration officials…
(If the first link doesn’t hold up, try this one, entitled “Basra Blunder” in [5]her home newspaper, the Philiadelphia Inquirer. It’s an earlier column, from March 30, which displays an even more reactionary negativism. What her analysis amounts to is anti-Bush Administration polemicism.)
Well, heck, Austin, did you expect any more than that?
I wonder how the coalition military did not know about the operation — there are coalition advisers in Iraqi brigades. Trucks move on roads watched by both Iraqi and coalition troops. I realize “prior consultation” is the important phrase — in my view, that’s a positive. The Iraqis planned the operation and carried it out on their own, without consulting Petraeus and Crocker. Good deal. In the long run that plays well politically in Iraq and it corners Sadr — the US did not tell Maliki to go after Sadr. If the US had, Sadr could tout that “prior approval,” maintaining that Maliki is a puppet, etc. Instead, you have an elected democratic prime minister who happens to be a Shia ordering his nation’s troops to strike a Shia gangster. Did Rubin miss that? Judge for yourself. I’d say she did.
What you say is true, here right up to the end. I’d say she didn’t miss a thing. She simply can’t admit what she saw, because if she does her whole argument falls apart. Here we have yet another case of the left trying anything it can to declare defeat in Iraq. The only way they can do that is to bend and stretch the truth until it’s no longer recognizable.
The left has been complaining we’re not doing enough to win politically. Here’s the proof that reading is dead wrong…. and the left and the press (A redundancy) predictably ignore it. What is this but a political loss for Sadr, and a major victory for Maleki?