E.J., Slow Joe, and Kerry of Kabul.
Posted by Hugh Hewitt |
E.J. Dionne does his best to perk up Democrats by attempting to argue that the vice president had called for the suppression of contrary views on the war --as opposed to underscoring their quite real impact on the enemy-- and by encouraging his readers to consult recent speeches by Joe Biden and John Kerry.
Really. He did. Biden and Kerry. That's the ticket.
Seems both failed presidential candidates from the past are pointing to "what should be a central element in the debate, the potential disaster looming in Afghanistan." E.J. must have penned that graph just hours before Coalition troops nabbed another big terrorist fish in Afghanistan, but it is doubtful that any news from Afghanistan counter to the meme being developed by the left --Afghanistan good but bungled; Iraq bad and bungled-- will get much play. The whole "Tora Bora" meme fell flat in '04, so the new meme appears to be "Afghanistan in peril!"
So, where to find these great orations from Joe "I hate Princeton" Biden and the windsurfer?
Senator Biden was at the National Press Club last week, and while he did propose a tax hike on millionaires, it is hard to garner any specifics about foreign policy from his speech, and Joe's assessment of Afghanistan is hardly comprehensive: "Because we diverted our energy and resources from Afghanistan, it is on the verge of failure." That's it. Exhausted by this argument, Slow Joe moved on.
Tell that to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Or to Coalition forces that continue to kill great numbers of Taliban and rebuff every new "offensive." Just because Dem pols talk down the competence of Coalition forces in Afghanistan in order to talk up their candidacies doesn't make it true, though it does make the speaker a dishonorable impugner of American and allied forces.
Here's Biden "plan" for Iraq, btw:
It would keep Iraq together by providing each group breathing room in their own regions, getting Sunni buy-in by giving them a piece of the oil revenues, creating a major jobs and reconstruction program to deny the militia new recruits, and bringing in Iraq’s neighbors to support the political process. If we do all that, we have a chance to bring most of our troops home by the end of 2007, without leaving chaos behind.
Ah, cut-and-run becomes "carve, cut, and run" under the cover of imposing the partition that the Iraqis themselves rejected in their new constitution.
Slow Joe's got other big ideas: "I would hire 1,000 more FBI agents and 50,000 more cops across the country." That's it. Plus a tax hike.
Now, to Senator Kerry, who spoke to what must have been a captive audience at Faneuil Hall at it was the fourth time he'd been there this year to deliver a speech. Four Kerry speeches? Have the merchants complained, or are they comatose? Some key excerpts from his most recent, Dionne-smiting yarn:
It is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict without a strategy that can work – on a mission that has not weakened terrorism but worsened it.
Hmmm. That certainly is vintage Kerry. When on the comeback trail, it is best to stick to the tried-and-true routines.
It is immoral to lie about progress in that war to get through a news cycle or an election.
It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn – and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost that day. They were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.
And it is deeply immoral to compare a majority of Americans who oppose a failing policy and seek a winning one to appeasers of Fascism and Naziism.
Why is it "immoral" to describe Congressional Democrats as appeasers when in fact they are proposing appeasement? Senator Kerry does not explain.
On Afghanistan:
Neither can the Administration pretend that the war in Afghanistan is over or that the peace has been secured. On Thursday the president said we’re on the offensive against terrorists in Afghanistan, even as the American NATO commander on the ground showed the opposite is true by making an urgent plea for more troops.
The truth is -- the Bush-Cheney Administration has engaged in a policy of cut and run in that country. This Administration has cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. The Administration has cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. They cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan – yes, from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.
To avoid repeating the terrible mistakes of the past, we need to send significant reinforcements to Afghanistan: Start with at least five thousand additional American troops –more elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists. And more reconstruction money so that the elected government in Kabul, helped by the United States, not the Taliban, helped by al Qaeda, rebuilds the new Afghanistan.
That’s how you win the hearts and minds of the local population, that’s how you win a war on terror, that’s how you show the world the true face of America.
Kerry's grand strategy: Withdraw 145,000 troops from Iraq and send 5,000 to Afghanistan.
But don't call him an appeaser.
A lot of Democrats are just flat confused about the size of the American deployment in Afghanistan, and many, including Kerry, are distorting the recent remarks of NATO Commander James Jones, which were directed at NATO countries, not the US, and which reflect an international commander's desire that the mission in Afghanistan be an international one, not just another draw on American power, though US troops are deployed at a level almost equal to all other Coaltiion forces.
And while General Jones did describe the intense fighting underway with Taliban forces, he did not in any way indicate a danger of collapse or even of significant losses --only a prediction of intense fighting.
Kerry, per usual, was as dishonest as he was in the course of the 2004 campaign; E.J. as careful a scrutinizer of Democratic rhetoric as we have come to expect him to be.
So what's really going on in Afghanistan? I asked General John Abizaid that a few weeks back (something E.J. might want to try before running off to carry the water of discredited candidates of elections past):
HH: Backing away from Iran for a second, and Iraq, General, what's the situation in Afghanistan, which too often escapes prolonged study nowadays?
JA: Afghanistan has a lot of fighting going on in the south, where the Taliban, in the Kandahar area, has contested the new NATO forces that are moving in there. NATO has taken over the southern area. That gives them about 3/4's of the country in which they operate militarily. They've got around 23,000 forces, and it was very clear that as they came into that region, that the Taliban would contest that region. It's also being contested because it tends to be a big drug growing region down in the Helmand Province region, and they don't like having NATO troops down there for obvious reasons. So there's a lot of violence in Afghanistan, and in the east, where American forces primarily operate, there's cooperation between the Taliban and al Qaeda, although very seldom do you see al Qaeda operating openly in Afghanistan these days. The Afghan national government has put together an army of about 70,000 with our help, of course. It's maturing, it's a lot better than it used to be. It's participating in a lot more different actions, not only with NATO, but with us. And we're confident that while there'll be a lot of fighting in the Afghan area, that the...President Karzai's government will continue to stabilize.
HH: General Abizaid, as you look out five years in both Afghanistan and Iraq, what's the best case scenario that you see for those countries, as we turn into the new decade?
JA: I think five years from now, Afghanistan is continuing to stabilize. There's an awful lot of work, as you well know, that has to be done in Afghanistan. It's a country totally devastated by too much war, too much civil war, too much production of poppies, et cetera. And so, it will need the international community's help for a long time to get on its feet. Iraq, I believe, will begin to stabilize, slowly but surely, and you'll see the Iraqi government taking on much more of what needs to be done. And in five years, Iraq will be responsible primarily for its own external security, and you'll see probably American trainers and NATO trainers remaining there to help them. I also see a growing problem with Iran's internal stability, as people there become less and less satisfied with the quality of life that their government's given them. And of course, you have the other traditional problems in the region that require some progress. The Arab-Israeli issue requires, I think, some progress in the peace arena, and some international help there. And you certainly will see continued instability in places where the extremists continue to operate, such as in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In many ways, the long term health and prosperity of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are bigger strategic problems for us, and we need to do all we can to help the legitimate governments there fight against the extremists the way that they've been doing.
Somebody should tell John Kerry and Joe Biden that we are winning in Afghanistan. And their columnist puffers.
It is wrong to disparage the successes of American and other NATO forces in Afghanistan, wrong to suggest we are losing when we are not, wrong to minimize the steady build up of the Afghan Army, and wrong to demand the collapse of Iraq's democratically-elected government as a means of winning elections in the US.
But the voters know that. They knew it in 2004, and they'll reach the same conclusion in 2006, even if John Kerry address a small crowd at Fanueil Hall and the columnists of the Washington Post forty times.
hughhewitt.townhall.com
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