Conservatives rewrite Iraq history
Arthur Herman thinks the Obama administration is responsible for al-Qaeda's resurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Yet this isn't the first time we've been at this fork in the road. The question is whether the American people will rise to this challenge as they did in Iraq in 2006. Then, they backed a strategy to win, not run, in large part because they knew Bush would stay the course and understood the sacrifice he was asking. It's not clear that Obama does.
In 2006, the American people were against the surge in troops into Iraq, so I'm not clear where Herman gets the idea that the American people "backed a strategy to win."
Moreover, as Tom Ricks noted earlier in the week, the surge was a tactical success in that in tamped things down enough to buy the U.S. a decent cover to leave the country in somewhat better shape than it was during the depths of its sectarian violence. But that's a far cry from victory - as evidenced by the fact that Herman insinuates that we need another surge to shore the country up.
(AP Photo)
