Regardless of whether you think we should be there or not, we're there. And regardless of what promises are made by the rapidly triangulating Obama campaign, it will be easier to get out of there if things are going better there. So it might make sense to acknowledge progress when it happens, especially if you want out sooner rather than later.
The Democrats seem to have a color blindness when it comes to the ink on news from Iraq. No matter what color it is, they see red. When the President announced his surge policy, they were pretty much unanimous in declaring failure in advance. When spectacular progress followed that policy, they did everything their imaginations allowed to ignore it. When it couldn't be ignored, they changed the goal posts: what counts is political successes in the Iraqi government. Democrats jumped on the earlier report that most of the political "benchmarks" set for the Iraqi government were not being met. That of course was bad faith. The war in the neighborhoods was always the most serious problem, and that is a war we and the Iraqi government have been winning.
But now tide has turned on that second front. See how USAToday puts this:
No matter who is elected president in November, his foreign policy team will have to deal with one of the most frustrating realities in Iraq: the slow pace with which the government in Baghdad operates.
Iraq's political and military success is considered vital to U.S. interests, whether troops stay or go. And while the Iraqi government has made measurable progress in recent months, the pace at which it's done so has been achingly slow.
The White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq's efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are "satisfactory" — almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by the Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks — enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues — are unsatisfactory.
That is a marvelous job of yellowing the story: my God it took them a whole year to make political progress! This in a country that is trying to reconcile diverse ethnic groups while suppressing a civil war in the streets. By any reasonable standards, this was lightening fast, not "achingly slow." But whatever you think of the pace, if the failure to meet the benchmarks was important a year ago, success in meeting them now ought to be equally important. Apparently not. See Fox:
He criticized the report for looking at whether progress on a goal was "satisfactory" rather than whether the benchmark was fully met. He estimated that only a few of the 18 benchmarks were fully achieved.
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who requested the administration's updated assessment following a report 12 months ago, scoffed at the new findings.
Of course the Administration was merely reporting according to the standards that Congress itself had set. Never mind that. Rep. McIntyre is committed to defeat. Democrats like to point out that Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until after the invasion. That's a very strong point. But precisely because it is, isn't it kinda nice that Al Qaeda got creamed? Now that Iraqi President Maliki looks like a hero, locally, for defeating Iranian surrogates, he might have the clout to make his government work a lot better. Isn't that kinda like progress? Wouldn't it be kinda nice if a functioning democracy is achieved in Iraq, stable and friendly to the United States? Of course that raises a terrible prospect. What if it turns out that the war was a success? What if, years from now, we look back and are forced to say that, however ill-advised and ill-executed the war was in its beginning, it in fact achieved a stable and decent government in one of the oil-rich countries of the Islamic world? What if Iraq becomes a model for reform movements in neighboring countries? I wouldn't bet good money on any of this, but then the present level of success was unimaginable two years ago. George W. Bush might end up getting credit for a greater progress in the Middle East than any other president has ever achieved. I'm guessing that Rep. McIntyre is a lot more worried about that than he is about al Qaeda or Iran.
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