Iraq "Re-Liberation"

With all of our hoping for change, you think that we would appreciate the change that we are seeing in the long, tiring Iraq war.

This time last year, the Iraq war was the failed actor on the world stage, however, now things have changed for the better and it seems as though the Iraqi citizens are happy for an encore. Reporting from Iraq, Richard Lowry of National Review argues that we are winning the physical and the ideological wars. In an election year where liberals voice disparagement for the US presence in Iraq, even going so far as to argue that our presence is the primary source of turmoil in the Near East, it seems as though Iraqis are of a different opinion:

At the village level, the War on Terror is less a grand ideological struggle than an elemental fight to replace men with guns who want to prey on the local population (al-Qaeda) with men with guns who want to help it (us). No romanticism about human nature is required to see that most people will prefer the latter.

For all of the American liberal's concern about imperialism and the imposition of our culture on foreign nations, it should not be surprising to a reasonable observer that Iraqi's would much prefer the ills brought on by Brittany than those brought on by Bin Laden. Perhaps one of the most poignant observations for Americans voting on a war that is being defined more by slogans than by working solutions is:

Iraq is a mind-bogglingly complex country that defies generalizations, except this one: Where U.S. troops have a substantial presence, there is more security, more grassroots political activity, and more economic progress. Hence the success of the surge, and the imperative not to draw down from it too quickly.

Our excellently trained soldiers and highly advanced military equipment have been very useful to bringing about this success. However, more important to the success than those benefits of being a world superpower is something much more basic and fundamentally human; we have gained the trust and support of local citizens:

There are about 30,000 CLCs [concerned local citizens] in Baghdad, and they have been key to securing the city. The CLCs have “thickened” U.S. forces on the ground and helped the U.S. get to roughly the force-to-population ratio recommended in the counterinsurgency manual. They provide crucial intelligence — in one town, they even went out in the morning and put out orange traffic cones to warn where the IEDs had been placed.

Despite one's opinion on the initial decision to invade Iraq, our moral obligation to the Iraqi's should remain at the forefront of our minds this election season. More than oil, Iraqi (and largely Arab) trust in America is the most valuable commodity in which we are investing our blood and treasure. If we do not see the war through to victory, our loss will be great; almost as great as the loss which would be felt by the Iraqi's:

Before he lets his American visitors leave, Hassen Nssaif Jasim insists — fixing us with a glare and twice asking if he can rely on us — that we take home a message: “We are very serious, and we are going to go all the way to the end of the path. We don’t want you to leave.”

It seems that Iraqis hope for change as well; let us not bring about change that will extinguish their hope.

*Note: This essay was originally posted at the Near East Update blog, a blog specializing on issues in the Middle East.