It Bears Repeating

I hear a lot of foolishness: "Bush keeps changing strategy in Iraq" or "Bush just keeps doing the same thing expecting different results." Really? Some folks seem to be ignorant of the difference between strategy and tactics, and what it means when they see something shift. If strategy is the overall scheme and set of goals, then our President has been firm and unwavering. If tactics are the methods used on the local level to accomplish the strategy, then our military and it's leaders have continued to adapt and overcome, e.g. General Petraeus' COIN operations implemented this year.

Tactics can be tedious. Talking about tactics and procedures involves a lot of "shop talk" that we outsiders to the military or diplomatic circles struggle to keep up with. But the overall strategy is something that every man, woman and child needs to grasp. This has been the single biggest failure of the Bush Administration: who has articulated our purpose and goals like a Winston Churchill or even a Ronald Reagan? Why has it been left up to the MTV generation to just "get it" and agree to go along?

There are some who will regularly spell out for us what has happened and why it matters. Just recently I've read articles like this at Strategypage.com:

Then there's Iraq. The idea of taking down the nastiest dictator in the Middle East had lots of support, until someone actually did it. Few in the U.S. government like to admit it, but this is a very clever strategy. It's known, since antiquity, as "taking the war to the enemy." Setting up a democracy in a region that has none (at least among the Arabs), and suffering nearly 30,000 casualties (so far) to help it get established, is bold. Al Qaeda hates democracy, and considers it un-Islamic. Planting U.S. troops in Iraq, and holding elections put Shia Arabs in power. Al Qaeda howled even louder, as Sunni Moslems (which al Qaeda represents) consider Shia Moslems to be heretics. Now al Qaeda was forced to turn its attention from attacks in the West, and concentrate on its own back yard. That went very badly for the terrorists. Practicing their usual tactics on Moslems, even if most of the victims were Shia, hurt their popularity in the Islamic world. Eventually, even their Sunni Arab allies in Iraq turned against them.

Michael Yon mentioned the disconnect between our strategy and the public perception of it in a recent dispatch:

I watched during the Senate hearings on 11 September 07 as some Senators attempted to corner General Petraeus, insinuating that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda. It was clearly that during the initial invasion, but not today. These photos were taken at the center of what al Qaeda claimed to be their worldwide headquarters. Listening to some of the Senators’ questions, the true magnitude of the gulf between what is happening in Iraq and what people in America think is happening in Iraq became apparent. Some Senators clearly had been doing their homework and were asking smart questions—if negative at times—but others seemed completely ignorant of the ground situation here, which adds nothing meaningful to the debate.

But some folks seem have no concept of how Saddam figured into all of this, except that he was bad somehow. And useful idiots muddy the waters further by pointing out the obvious, "Saddam didn't attack us on 9/11." We know. Nobody thought otherwise; but thanks for adding nothing to the debate in an effort to besmirch what we're really doing. They don't care to know what's really happening in Iraq and why it really matters. They want to humiliate a resolute President, they want to humble a daring and decisive military, and they want America itself to be taken down a peg or two because the the America that is is not the America they want.