Abu Wabu

Austin Bay describes the ramifications of the new Free Iraq with an interesting comparison between today's surge in Baghdad and the FBI's fight against the KKK in the American South. Short version: the KKK would have thrived, and its victims further suffered grievously, had the FBI "redeployed" as Murtha, Pelosi et al would have it in Iraq.

Caution: Idiots and Democrats may not understand Colonel Bay's logic:

In January 2003, I argued that toppling Saddam's tyranny in Iraq would do two things: begin the process of fostering political choice (democracy) in the Middle East and bring al-Qaida onto a battlefield not of its choosing. Moreover, that battlefield would be largely manned by Muslim allies, exposing the great fractures within Islam and the Middle East that al-Qaida's strategists tried to mask by portraying America as "the enemy."

Credit the Iraqi people with taking the opportunity by conducting three honest, open, democratic elections.

In May 2006, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a democratically elected, consensus-seeking government not simply in Mesopotamia but in the heart of the politically dysfunctional Middle East.

That's an astonishing achievement.

Al-Qaida's now-deceased emir in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, understood the stakes. In a message to al-Qaida (intercepted by the Coalition in February 2004), Zarqawi wrote that after Iraqis run their own government, U.S. troops will remain, "but the sons of this land will be the authority. ... This is the democracy. We will have no pretexts." Iraq's new army and police will link with the people "by lineage, blood and appearance."

The terrorists and tyrants understand. It's a shame America's chatterers don't.