Bad news for the anti-war left

One of their favorite retired Generals, Major General John Batiste, who appeared in an ad for the anti-war Vote Vets website, and who had an op/ed published on the liberal anti-war website Think Progress in August in which he called for the US to “begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq,” has apparently changed his tune.

He, along with Vets for Freedom executive director Lt. Pete Hegseth had an opinion piece published in Saturday’s Washington Post (h/t: Jim Addison) in which they, together, call Iraq the “central” fight in the war on terror, discuss what steps they believe need to be taken in order for us to win the war on terror, and chastize Congress for not being able to move past their partisan differences in order to fund our troops. The key part of the piece which will cause the Nutroots heads to explode:

Second, whether or not we like it, Iraq is central to that fight. We cannot walk away from our strategic interests in the region. Iraq cannot become a staging ground for Islamic extremism or be dominated by other powers in the region, such as Iran and Syria. A premature or precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, without the requisite stability and security, is likely to cause the violence there — which has decreased substantially but is still present — to cascade into an even larger humanitarian crisis.

Third, the counterinsurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus is the correct approach in Iraq. It is showing promise of success and, if continued, will provide the Iraqi government the opportunities it desperately needs to stabilize its country. Ultimately, however, these military gains must be cemented with regional and global diplomacy, political reconciliation, and economic recovery — tools yet sufficiently utilized. Today’s tactical gains in Iraq — while a necessary pre-condition for political reconciliation — will crumble without a deliberate and comprehensive strategy.

Make sure to read the whole thing.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing soon about how Maj. Gen. Batiste “never really was” a war critic in the first place. After all, that was the big excuse the far left tried to use this past summer when critics of the Iraq war started writing about how things were changing for the better in Iraq and how the war was/is winnable.

Stay tuned …

Cross-posted at Right Wing News, where I am helping guestblog for John Hawkins on Sundays.

Great White Rat says:

December 10, 2007 at 1:40 am

Uh oh….this can’t be good news for the anti-American left either. Another Democrat who went to Iraq has returned with more optimism than when he left. In this case, it’s Congressman Ed Perlmutter of Colorado.

Lookee here:

The junior congressman, who just completed his first year in Washington, returned home from the Middle East sounding far less jaded against the chances for U.S. success in Iraq than he had on the campaign trail.

After talking about the real improvement in stability in the last six to eight months, the congressman says this:

There’s three things that have brought some additional stability. One is a different tactic by (Gen. David) Petraeus, which is the surge – to go clear and hold a neighborhood, as opposed to clear a neighborhood and go someplace else. The second key point is the Iraqi army is starting to develop into a legitimate force. And then the third . . . is that the Sunnis and the Shias recognize that we’re not there forever and the cooperation level has increased. So those three things together have given this window of opportunity.

Wait….the Sunnis and Shias are cooperating more? I thought the official MSM position was that we’re in the middle of a civil war there. When’s the last time you heard of the two sides in a “civil war” cooperating??

Anyone care to guess what the over-under is for how long it takes the Code Pinkos and their ilk to denounce the congressman as a tool of the fascist Bush regime?

camojack says:

December 10, 2007 at 3:46 am

Heh, heh…

PCD says:

December 10, 2007 at 8:42 am

Hey, how about letting The Code Pinkos go to Iraq to find out for themselves? AlQaeda doesn’t kill their allies.

Severian says:

December 10, 2007 at 11:15 am

And yet more bad news for the anti-war left:

Redacted Mother of All Flops

Byron York reports that the Mark Cuban/Brian De Palma anti-war film Redacted has earned $60,456 at the box office. Total. That’s for a film that has one of Hollywood’s biggest names and one of the country’s deepest pocketbooks behind it.

To put that earning figure into some perspective, York compares Redacted earnings to films like Beowulf, which is a film that people actually want to see. Beowulf has hauled in about $75 million so far. Another way to size up Redacted’s monster flop is to do a little division. Figuring $10 a ticket, in its entire run Redacted has attracted just 6,046 viewers (rounding up from 6,045.6). Total. To put that into some perspective, that 35-second cute cat video I posted last week has attracted 2.7 million viewers.

Ah, the schadenfreude is sweet this morning.

Oops bungled the link:

LINK

Sister Toldjah says:

December 10, 2007 at 11:21 am

Fixed it, Sev

Thanks for the update on Redacted. Glad to see Americans are still rejecting the left’s anti-war nonsense – at least on the big screen, anyway.

Steve Skubinna says:

December 11, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Nice going, General. It’s under the bus for you! And you can kiss goodbye any chance of getting an invite to Babs’ and Sean’s and Susan and Timmy’s Christmas – oops, I mean Winter Solstice Party.

I just hope that living with the knowledge that you’re intelligent enough to see when you’re wrong and man enough to admit it is enough compensation.