POTUS Gets Tough
By Oliver North
January 12, 2007
So he didn't take my advice. Despite recommendations to the contrary in this column last week, President Bush announced Wednesday night that he's "committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq." That's the headline. But there's a lot more to the story. It's rife with risk -- and great opportunity.
First, the good news: The most important statement of the speech was an accurate description of the present situation. Said Bush: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time." The president went on to acknowledge that "only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people," and that "failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States." He's dead right on all counts.
His new strategy for using U.S. forces in Baghdad follows a model now being effectively employed in Al Anbar Province. There, as we reported last month from Ramadi for FOX News, Sunni police officers, Shia Army troops and U.S. military personnel have been building police stations and driving Al Qaeda terrorists out of the provincial capital one neighborhood at a time. The administration's "New Way Forward" also concedes the need for the Maliki government to apply the rule of law equally, the necessity for provincial elections and recognition that local leaders -- like Sheikh Abdel Sattar -- are crucial to rallying the minority Sunni population in defending Iraq from foreign intervention.
Bush promised more "embedded" advisers to accelerate training Iraqi police and Army units, less onerous "restrictions" on U.S. troops and a desperately needed emphasis on Provincial Reconstruction Teams to improve economic resuscitation and new laws ensuring equitable distribution of Iraq's vast oil wealth. And though the masters of the mainstream media and our professional punditry generally ignored the point, instead of coddling Iran and Syria, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group, the president is choosing to confront them, promising to "destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
In a clear signal to Iraq's neighbors who have been reading U.S. public opinion polls and listening to anti-war activists like Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the commander in chief announced the dispatch of "an additional carrier strike group to the region," and promised our allies -- read Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- additional Patriot ballistic missile defense systems. And in a straightforward appeal to Congress to relieve the very real stress on our weary military, Bush urged an increase in "the size of the active Army and Marine Corps so that America has the armed forces we need for the 21st century."
If all of these changes, not just more U.S. troops in Iraq, materialize as Bush described them on Wednesday evening, they could well help to ensure "the survival of a young democracy that is fighting for its life." Unfortunately, many of the ingredients for success are not in his hands. And therein are the great risks in his "New Way Forward."
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