Victory in Iraq Day 22 Nov

A number of people shook off the infection of pessimism and the sand the media has been pouring on them long enough to notice something:

We won the war in Iraq.

Don't expect the President to mention it. Especially don't expect the President-elect. He was hired on the theory that he was right to oppose the war and to oppose fighting it properly (i.e. masterfully opposing the "surge" while congratulating the troops who effected it). He's not going to change his tune now, especially since it isn't necessary. He gets the incalculable benefits of the U.S. having removed a dictator and placed something like the rule of law and democracy in one of the world's political and economic centers of gravity, while keeping his anti-war reputation, and at a pretty low cost as wars go. I don't begrudge him this. Just sayin'.

Just to check my sanity (which some would argue I checked years ago and never bothered to reclaim) I did a quick Google News search on "Iraq". I saw headlines about:

Iraq to vote on security pact
Iraq warns of consequences of early US pullout
In Baghdad, debating post-US outlook

This and the usual tension of civil (i.e. largely unarmed) debate. Conspicuously absent: Relentless terror attacks, Iranian troops interfering, a never-ending civil war, mass unrest. Indeed, war correspondents are returning to find the place relatively peaceful.

"There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything." -- Michael Yon

There is one dire warning from many quarters if the US pulls out to soon: Pirates. Yep, that's the worst we have to worry about now: That the Gulf will follow the example of the Horn of Africa. And we know it won't. Except when using them against each other, I'm sure even the Iranians and the Saudis would cooperate against piracy.

I had a reader in times past who continuously called me an idiot for refusing to see that the Bush / Cheney plan was really to drop Iraq into perpetual war so that Western oil companies would always have leverage in the Gulf. I'm glad to say he was wrong all along, and that I suspected it all along. Not that I would necessarily put it past Royal Dutch Shell to be pulling strings with blood-soaked fingers. But sometimes you have to look at the world as the executives do and not the writers of paperback thrillers.

In recent months I've also been glad to see emerging validation of my instinct not to be political fashionable, but to follow my own vision. I've never backed off my support for the Iraq War. I've learned of the lies and the subterfuge and the crimes committed by the Bush Administration, and I have no interest in defending them and I certainly wouldn't push for a pass on prosecution or, in the end, for amnesty. Fuck that. Crime is crime, and as we saw recently with Prop 8, clever use and abuse of the law can do real evil.

But looking at the big picture -- turning away for a moment from Bush's crimes just as we turn away from Lincoln's, from Wilson's, from Roosevelt's -- Saddam's regime was an octopus of caustic influence and direct interference, and something like what we did had to be done. 9/11 provided political capital that Bush had to spend, and overspend, quickly, and overspend it he did. "Squandered the good will," he did, and the world is a better place for it.

Now the once long shot candidate whose campaign was built in part on a strongly opposing view will take the reigns. In the see-saw world of a functional democracy this is no surprise. What's emerging as kind of a surprise is the centrist, indeed hawkish, aspect of his first cut at a cabinet. But only kind of a surprise: I've said all along Obama is damn smart.