This week alone from Iraq, we see strong evidences of success in our fight against al-Qaeda (Sunni) and against the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army (Shi’a). Both developments provide encouraging news in our slow upward climb to victory.
Also encouraging is that our fellow countrymen may be beginning to take notice. Results of respected national polls taken before this week’s developments already show some noteworthy changes in American public opinion concerning Iraq. Far from the Left’s loudly-touted “mandate” to the new Democratic Congress to get our troops out of there right now, only 20 percent of Americans favor this approach. Fifty-four percent believe immediate withdrawal would leave Iraq in worse shape, and 71 percent recognize that it would open the door for an al-Qaeda takeover.
Just over half (51 percent) say the surge strategy is improving the situation, and considerably larger percentages of the American populace view the war as having been the right course of action and that things tend to be going well. Remarkably, 80 percent trust General David Petraeus’ judgment, and about 60 percent support waiting on his September report to decide on the next course of action. What a bummer for the Left-wing defeatist propaganda machine!
Of course, a little caution is in order: The American people well may be more satisfied with the way things are going in Iraq. This fact is important insofar as mustering domestic political will is essential to accomplishing the mission. Have we passed the ebb of American public opinion on the war? I’d like to hope so, but we certainly have no guarantee. Regardless of popular sentiment, though, this much is clear: Let’s give General Petraus’ new counterinsurgency strategy a chance to continue to work.
Don’t forget to keep visiting the Victory Caucus website.
Thanks Ben for keeping this news moving. While there have been many set backs in the war, I truly believe if the media had been presenting it as it was really happening, the good, bad and ugly, the success stories, the human interest stories, the public would have a much different view and Harry Ried would have been tarred and feathered for his idiotic comments about losing.