A week after U.S. forces killed al-Qaida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a week after Iraqi and U.S. forces exploited intelligence gained in the Zarqawi raid to capture or kill hundreds of terrorists, and a week after the Iraqi government was completed with the selection of the key defense, interior and national security posts, Rep. John Murtha hit the talk-show circuit to proclaim we need "a change in direction" in Iraq.
Now, if you think the Pennsylvania Democrat's timing may be a bit off, you don't know Jack, or the others who seem incapable of recognizing any progress in a war they deem unwinnable, illegitimate or both. Any day is a good day to call for the United States to get out of Iraq. The only thing that changes is what to call their pullout. Immediate redeployment (to, say, Okinawa) was Murtha's first euphemism. Last week's euphemism for retreat was "a change in direction," which is certainly what happens when anyone cuts and runs.
It didn't equal Vermont Sen. George Aiken's famous Vietnam-era suggestion to "declare victory and go home," but Murtha's actually being serious. Even about redeploying our troops to Okinawa.
But anyone serious about terrorism should wonder about the history he cites to bolster his stand. Here was Murtha on "Meet the Press" last week: "You just have ... to reassess it like Reagan did in, in Beirut, like, like Clinton did in Somalia, you just have to say, 'OK, it's time to change direction.''
Consider Somalia. After two U.S. helicopters were shot down and the world saw pictures of a dead American being dragged through streets by cheering crowds, President Clinton pulled our forces out. One lawmaker urging this direction change was Murtha. For Americans, Somalia was the subject of a riveting book and movie, "Black Hawk Down." For Osama bin Laden, it was a lesson and invitation.
"The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat," he told ABC's John Miller a 1998 interview. "And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda ... about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."
Bin Laden and his al-Qaida youth discovered they were wrong about the United States after 9/11, but not before 3,000 innocent Americans lay dead.
What will terrorists conclude if we again heed Murtha's call for a change of direction? What will they make of an immediate withdrawal or redeployment, or a calendar-contingent withdrawal or redeployment? Would they see another shameful defeat, even if our troops are on the ready in Okinawa?
No, a withdrawal would be an even bigger lesson and invitation, yet one that might even puzzle al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq, if a document found in al-Zarqawi's safe house is any guide. Its author talks of the "current bleak situation" and "crisis" for the resistance. "[H]ere in Iraq," he writes, "time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance."
Why? Because, the author notes, U.S. forces have succeeded on several fronts. They've stood up Iraqi forces and enabled "them to undertake military operations against the resistance." They've conducted massive arrest operations and invaded resistance strongholds "causing the resistance to lose many of its elements." They've gone after the resistance's finances, ammo and weapons. They've created "a big division" in resistance ranks, jeopardized "its attack operations" and weakened its influence, "thus resulting in a decline of the resistance's assaults."
And this was before al-Zarqawi's death—and Murtha's call for a change in direction.
The al-Zarqawi memo's author sure doesn't seem to think Iraq is "unwinnable" for the United States. But, then, he didn't serve in Vietnam, a la Murtha.
Many, of course, think Murtha's Vietnam service puts his Iraq war musings, no matter how crazy or counterproductive, above criticism. It's a silly notion, but if that's the game, I'll take Republican Sen. John McCain for 100. As the one-time Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war says in arguing against an immediate or date-certain pullout, it's not when we leave Iraq, but how we leave.
David Reinhard
