Last month 21 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, 17 from hostile fire. In May 2007, there were 127 causalities in Iraq. The "surge" is working and bringing with it a measure of military and political success that must be a surprise even to its most ardent proponents.
The surge has given the country the breathing space to begin to do some truly extraordinary things. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the Iraqi Army into Basra where it defeated the Mahdi Army, took the city, and seized the ports from the radicals (something the British Army failed to achieve in four years).
When the Mahdis reacted by starting conflict in other locations, the Iraqi Army routed them in every instance--Najaf, Karbala, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah. Then the Iraqi Army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's stronghold in Baghdad.
The determination and success of the Iraqi Army underscores the fact that 12 uniformed Iraqis (soldiers and police) have been killed defending their country from the death cult seeking to impose a Taliban-type regime on their society for every non-Iraqi coalition solider that has died.
On the political front, the Iraqi parliament has passed a pension law and a de-Baathification law (a major U.S. Democrat "benchmark" for political progress). They have also passed an amnesty law, a new budget, and provided for provincial elections before the end of the year.
Oil revenues are being shared among Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd provinces (another major Democrat "benchmark") and the oil revenues are soaring. Iraqi oil production is at its highest levels since the liberation began five years ago and the soaring price of oil has generated rapidly rising government revenues. Iraq now has an unexpected budget surplus (oil revenues have jumped from an estimated $35 billion to more than $60 billion). Yet the war's critics seem determined to ignore any signs of progress.
When President Bush addressed our troops in North Carolina, he outlined the conditions for "success in Iraq:" the Iraqi government must be able to protect its own people from attack, govern itself democratically with honest elections, and support itself economically.
My question for the critics of the war is this: What part of significant progress do you not understand?
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Diana Butler Bass is a religion scholar and author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith. She blogs at 
Tony Campolo is Professor Emeritus at Eastern University and author of The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice, with Mary Darling. He blogs at 
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"the Iraqi government must be able to protect its own people from attack, govern itself democratically with honest elections, and support itself economically.
But it wasn't able to protect itself from the United States government....even though they did nothing to provoke it. It is well understood that this was an oil grab from an oil administration. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
"My question for the critics of the war is this: What part of significant progress do you not understand?"
The part where 100's of 1000's have to die because....hmmmm....the reasons change all the time. Used to be we would be in a mushroom cloud because of those weapons of mass distruction that US satellites saw from the sky. Then it was......we've got to kill Saddam and his kids. Okay! Mission Accomplished.
What part of significant progess that I do not understand is why chicken hawks like yourself and the children of these oil execs and Cheney's company don't don a uniform and fight the sacred war yourselves.
Ahhhh, yes. It's always easy to tell someone else to go and die with a tear in your eye.....
Washington Post - 3 hours ago
By Ernesto Londoño BAGHDAD, June 22, 2008 -- A female suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, including several police officers, and wounded scores Sunday in an attack in front of a government building in Diyala province, Iraqi and US officials said.
"My question for the critics of the war is this: What part of significant progress do you not understand?"
.....I don't understand the tens of thousands of deaths and the oil for blood idea personally.......
I don't consider 'less dying' to be progress. After all, if the goal was no dying, then the answer to that would've been to not go to war with Iraq at all. Then nobody would've died. We can also accomplish 'less dying' of our soldiers by removing them from harm's way.
Again, if 'dying less' is, at this point, the sole goal of our being in Iraq.
I assume, at some point, we actually had some other goal, though, as previous posts noted, that kept changing. But every one of those mutating goals had been met (some before the war, since they were never at issue in the first place).
So, other than 'less dying', what, exactly, are we progressing toward?
Iraq: When Will Progress Be Acknowledged As Significant?
When the troops are all home. Nuff said!
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