Victory in Iraq: An Update

Last November, I published, "Victory in Iraq? The War Has Been Won," drawing on Andrew Bolt's essay, "The War in Iraq Has Been Won."

Well it turns out that Nancy Morgan has an update on victory, in her essay, "We Won":

America, its allies and the Iraqi people have won the war against terror in Iraq. How do we know? Simple. Just follow the money. European and Asian investment companies are beating a path to Iraq, money in hand. Iraqi Airlines is flying high thanks to a colossal $5.5 billion contract with Boeing and the United Arab Emirates just canceled billions of dollars of Iraqi debt as they moved to restore a diplomatic mission in Baghdad.

When foreign countries start investing billions of dollars in a country, its a safe bet they are aware of the risks involved. And, unlike the old news media and our elected Democrat officials, they see a relatively stable country ripe for investment.

The influx of foreign investment is largely due to the improved security in Iraq, which continues to improve even after the withdrawal of nearly 25% of U.S. combat brigades. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recently acknowledged cautiously that security 'is on its way to becoming sustainable.'

American and Iraqi forces have driven Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror. Al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister said that "the government has defeated terrorism in the country." Pretty unequivocal. In fact, things are going so well in Iraq that the discussion has now shifted to a timetable for more troop withdrawals.

The American media is silent on all this good news, possibly out of embarrassment for being so incredibly wrong on pretty much every single issue having to do with Iraq. They would like to forget their near universal scorn for the now successful surge. The Democrats had declared defeat and there was no way they would accept anything more. The media trumpeted their views. Lo and behold, the surge worked. Horror of horrors, Bush was right.

When evidence of the progress on the ground was too overwhelming to ignore, new talking points emerged on the left. Democrats avowed that our military victory meant nothing. (Think about that a second) What really mattered, they intoned with one voice, was the political progress, as measured by Congressionally established benchmarks.

More horrors. It appears that a March 2008 report shows that the Iraqis have met 15 of the 18 benchmarks. The silence from the left, and the old media is now deafening.

Desperate to ignore any and all evidence of our astounding victory, the left, aided and abetted by the old media, continue to desperately search for any smidgen of bad news from Iraq. Not finding any, new talking points are starting to emerge. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the left has moved its focus off Iraq - to Afghanistan. The war has merely shifted, they say. We haven't won, they claim. For shame.

This is an excellent analysis, with more at the link.

Also, check out Morgan's news portal, Right Bias.