David Petraeus on Iraq's progress is an effective counter to the doom and gloom of the Kerryites. Petraeus is the commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq and, among many other things, he says this:
[T]here are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.
Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January, in time to help with security missions during the Iraqi elections at the end of that month.
Iraqi National Guard battalions have also been active in recent months. Some 40 of the 45 existing battalions - generally all except those in the Fallujah-Ramadi area - are conducting operations on a daily basis, most alongside coalition forces, but many independently. Progress has also been made in police training. In the past week alone, some 1,100 graduated from the basic policing course and five specialty courses. By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course, which stresses patrolling and investigative skills, substantive and procedural legal knowledge, and proper use of force and weaponry, as well as pride in the profession and adherence to the police code of conduct.
There will be more tough times, frustration and disappointment along the way. It is likely that insurgent attacks will escalate as Iraq's elections approach. Iraq's security forces are, however, developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition - and now NATO - support, this trend will continue. It will not be easy, but few worthwhile things are.
There are a couple of thoughts which come to mind when reading this article. First, it seems evident that time is on the side of the coalition. The longer things go, the more trained forces the Iraqis will be able to deploy against the terrorists in Fallujah and elsewhere and the less of a threat they will be. The worst thing we can do at this point is to pull out.
Second, no great thing has ever been accomplished by those who are always looking for reasons to justify their belief that it can't be done. Great deeds require men with vision and a positive spirit. They require leaders with a "can-do" mentality, men who see the goal and have the stamina, strength, and courage to pull the rest of us with them to that objective. Winners are optimists. They are cheerful and confident in the rightness of what they are about.
Senator Kerry offers us nothing but retreat, criticism, defeatism, and the politics of pessimism. According to him everything we're doing is wrong. We are, he asseverates, fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way. Such an attitude certainly does not inspire our troops to strive for successful completion of their mission. It only discourages, disheartens, and demoralizes the people who hear him. His gloomy negativism makes him the wrong man to serve as our commander-in-chief in these momentous times.
