Sunday, December 20, 2009

Seeing Victory

An NBC/WSJ poll shows that Americans have a good view of our achievements in Iraq:

57% say the Iraq war has been successful, versus 40% who say it has been unsuccessful.

I don't understand by what standards you'd claim the war was unsuccessful. You might say the achievements weren't worth the price we paid, but unsuccessful?

I imagine that 40% includes those people who thought we couldn't win before we crossed the border, believed Baghdad would be a modern-day Stalingrad that crushed us, and then believed that Iraqis wanted us out and that it was impossible to defeat those insurgents who just wanted foreigners out. Sheesh. They can see dead people but they can't see victory?

Fortunately, enough Americans wanted to win--or at least didn't want to lose--to give our outstanding troops the opportunity to win the war against a series of enemies inside Iraq.

We won the war. Let's win the peace by staying engaged in Iraq.