Good Ole Kristol

I will try to be quick with this one. Yes, I am writing about Bill Kristol again. While my main argument for supporting his new column at the times was for diversity of view points, I also realized there would likely be a few times when I agreed with him. I didn't realize though that it would be so soon.

When Obama was asked in the most recent Democratic presidential debate, “Would you have seen this kind of greater security in Iraq if we had followed your recommendations to pull the troops out last year?” he didn’t directly address the question. But he volunteered that “much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar Province, Sunni tribes, who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what? — the Americans may be leaving soon. And we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias. We should start negotiating now.”

But Sunni tribes in Anbar announced in September 2006 that they would join to fight Al Qaeda. That was two months before the Democrats won control of Congress. The Sunni tribes turned not primarily because of fear of the Shiites, but because of their horror at Al Qaeda’s atrocities in Anbar. And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces.

[Edit]

Yesterday, on “Meet the Press,” Hillary Clinton claimed that the Iraqis are changing their ways in part because of the Democratic candidates’ “commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009.” So the Democratic Party, having proclaimed that the war is lost and having sought to withdraw U.S. troops, deserves credit for any progress that may have been achieved in Iraq.

That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!

Kristol is right. The recent improvement in Iraq is due in large part to the troop surge. The role of Sunni Iraqis turning on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia also contributed greatly to the increased security. The credit belongs with both of those developments and has nothing to do with Democrats vapid positions on Iraq. The only place I would differ with Kristol is that McCain deserves the credit, not Bush. It took Bush four years to realize he needed more troops, McCain knew from the beginning.

More on Hillary's Experience

There have been two really good articles lately, one by Nicholas Kristof (back from book leave!) and the other by Timothy Noah, that basically get at the experience issue as it relates to Hillary Clinton. The interesting thing though is that after I read their pieces, I read the NY Times article that talks about her experience as First Lady. While the article does have a dismissive tone of her experience, I did come away feeling better about it than I did before. Based on the article, she does seem to have experience from her time as First Lady that Obama hasn't had yet.

That doesn't mean I am changing my vote though. While I do believe more now that she does have an experience edge over Obama, it still isn't significant enough for me to outweigh the negatives. The bottom line is that it still comes down to the fact that I don't want four (or eight) more years of the Clintons. They didn't do a good enough job to deserve more time.