Bush gave this whack an award a few weeks ago

December 3, 2007
A Few Good People
by Victor Davis Hanson


In the last few years, it has become popular to say that history is determined largely by sweeping inanimate forces of technology, the environment, gender, class or race. We play down the role of individuals — as if the notion that one person can shape history is old-fashioned. But that's hardly the case. <-- really? since when is gender or race even mentioned without some reactionary asshat like this guy screaming and yelling about it? Did Hanson miss the entire 2004 election?

Okay sorry ---read on


Sarkozy isn't the only one defying the odds and questioning conventional wisdom.

By early 2007, critics swore that the American effort in Iraq was doomed and the war lost. But Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander there, outlined a different, risky path of sending more Americans into Iraqi communities while radically changing tactics to ensure better security.

In response, prominent members of Congress suggested that his testimony about the surge's good progress was neither candid nor credible ("creative statistics," a "Petraeus village," "facade," "fiction," and "a suspension of disbelief.")

No matter. He kept with the surge strategy when casualties spiked as Americans took the offensive against al Qaeda and reclaimed urban centers. The verdict is still out on whether the new calm and optimism in Iraq will prove permanent. But the highest compliment now given to Gen. Petraeus is the growing consensus that if he cannot secure Iraq, then there is no other military commander around who can.

---Patreus was "questioning conventional wisdom" by simply implementing THEIR military (but mostly political) policy or what passes for policy with this crowd??? The rest of his assessment of the the rebel General really builds and builds (on very shakey ground) until it just sort of fizzles.

Enjoy the award.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120307.html

Now Patraeus just gives us the best chance

:eyes:

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson111907.html

There's an old expression about war: "Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan." But in the case of Iraq, it seems the other way around. We've blamed many for the ordeal of the last four years, but it is the American victory in Anbar province that now seems without parents.

Over the last few months, the U.S. military forced Sunni insurgents in Anbar to quit fighting. This enemy, in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, had been responsible for most American casualties in the war and was the main cause of unrest in Iraq. Even more unexpectedly, some of the defeated tribes then joined in an alliance of convenience with their American victors to chase al Qaeda from Iraq's major cities.