Iraq - What's needed to succeed?

Yesterday I posted what one of Iraq's most powerful leaders, Adel Abdul Mahdi, had to say.

So what is the solution? "Time -- that is it," Mahdi replied. "A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system. We can't import ministers to Iraq.

That's where we're helping out, giving the Iraqis time to build their country.

The Bellmont Club notes U.S. Central Command, Gen. Abizaid saying that's about all the military can do, is buy the Iraqis time.

In an interview in Iraq later, he was even blunter about the limits of U.S. firepower. "Military power can gain us time...but that is about it," he said.

So, a top Iraqi and the top general agree that time is needed and the military can provide that. But time for what? Time for Iraq's government and security forces to get their act together. But time against what? And since Iraq is the center of the war on terror, what are we racing against? It's not the terrorist were racing against the clock to beat.

"In the end, I don't think it can be. To be successful the "General's 'New Plan' to battle radical Islam" must be consciously pursued by all the organs of national strength. However, it will not. Not until America reaches a broad consensus on the need to wage a struggle of culture, politics and arms against Islamic fascism. Until then it will be inadequately though valiantly waged by the only agency which a Commander in Chief can directly wield. Maybe the best use to which the President can put the remainder of his term is to turn his efforts inward. America will have gained the strategic upper hand only when the majority of its population, including its opinion leaders, can read articles like Greg Jaffe's not with surprise, but with familiar approval."

We are racing against the clock to beat the left and the left wing media before, once again, they can snatch defeat from victory, just as they did in Vietnam.

Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.

And...

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was "essential to our strategy."

Today, the anti-war movement is led by communists. The left and the anti-war movement have joined forces with Islamists and they have the backing of the left wing media.

This is what we are racing against, stopping the left before they can turn the tide of public opinion, once again, in favor of our enemies. So desperate are the left to do this, that many of the reports out of Lebanon were either faked or staged. Several CNN reporters admit this. Others were exposed by bloggers.