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Democrats soften criticism of troop surge in Iraq
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(AP)
U.S. Army troops cross a street during an operation in the Amariyah neighborhood of west Baghdad Tuesday. Seven months ago, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said President Bush’s surge of troops into Iraq “cannot be successful.” The surge was also opposed by Democratic White House hopefuls Barack Obama, who said it “makes absolutely no sense,” and John Edwards, who pronounced the idea “dead wrong.” But now even some Democrats are saying the surge is working. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who initially opposed the surge, told reporters after a visit to Iraq this month that surge troops “are starting to have an impact” by “making real progress” in “routing out the al Qaeda.” A turning point in the conventional wisdom occurred three weeks ago, when Democratic scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times headlined, “A War We Just Might Win.” “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq,” they concluded after visiting Iraq. “We were surprised by the gains we saw.” They noted that administration critics “seem unaware of the significant changes taking place” in Iraq. Shortly after the article was published, O’Hanlon ran into Clinton, whom he is supporting in the presidential race. Asked on Fox News whether she had any reaction to the article, O’Hanlon was circumspect. “She is admirable in her willingness to take in a lot of different viewpoints and that’s probably as much as I can say,” he said. “Left-leaning politicians have been fair. A lot of them haven’t liked what we’ve said, but they’ve read it and they’ve tried to digest it.” Days later, at a labor forum in Chicago, Clinton appeared to acknowledge that the surge is bearing at least some fruit. “If it is a possibility that al Qaeda would stay in Iraq, I think we need to stay focused on trying to keep them on the run, as we currently are doing in Al Anbar province,” she said. Such concessions could complicate plans by liberals to attack next month’s surge progress report by Gen. David Petraeus. The White House is hoping the report is given a fair shake by Democrats. “We kind of know what their early position is,” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “So if you want to put together a critique of the war, what you need to do is to assemble some of the facts, rather than your predispositions coming in, because ultimately, success in Iraq or success as a superpower depends not on your wishes and not on your hopes and not on your ideology, but on what’s true.” bsammon@dcexaminer.com |
