Residual Forces

Last night I awoke sometime in the wee hours suffering from the aftermath of a gas station frozen pizza that had likely been there since the Clinton administration. I’ll save the rest of the details, but while I was trying to get back to sleep, I was flipping through the channels and came across the replay of Meet the Press. Newt Gingrich was on with Sen. Chris Dodd (D CT) discussing the war on terror, focusing on Iraq.

I did not catch the entire exchange, but I was really quite amazed with Newt’s commentary on the broader war on terror and his ideas for actually winning it.

You can see the entire transcript here. I came into it on page two, and was awe struck with this exchange.

MR. GINGRICH: But notice, there are two things there. First of all, even if you accept that this is a civil war, people have won civil wars. I devoted three novels about winning the American Civil War. And the fact is, civil wars are hard. But we also—I just did a novel on Pearl Harbor and the Second World War. The Second World War was hard. Guadalcanal was hard. If we’d had today’s Congress during Guadalcanal, the number of people who had said beating the Japanese is too hard, let’s find a negotiated peace, would have been amazing.

SEN. DODD: I disagree with that.

MR. GINGRICH: But there’s a course—we are, we are in a worldwide war, and, and I’m going to use a word that seems to be unfashionable in Washington. We need to think about winning this worldwide war. We need to understand that every week that goes by there are more young people recruited into al-Qaeda and into, into the various Iranian terrorist organizations. We just saw a video of a 12-year-old in Pakistan beheading a man.

So let me start with this, because here’s what happened, and this is what, frankly, the Congress does to people. You have a freely elected democratic government in, in Colombia waging a campaign, but it’s, it’s a tough campaign. So the president of Colombia, democratically elected president, becomes persona non grata. Al Gore won’t even appear with him on the same stage because the tone of the government’s inappropriate, OK? So if we were to pull out of Iraq, and you suddenly had the chaos that Tim described, the next battle cry would be cut off the funding because the pro-American side would end up doing things that were “inappropriate.” And then you’d say well, if only somebody perfect were in charge with a perfect government.

Now, let me point out, this is a Democratic Congress, which has not passed a single one of Nancy Pelosi’s hundred day—hundred hour six items. Not a single one’s gone into law. It’s a Democratic Congress, which in its first four months has passed 26 bills, 12 of which are renaming federal buildings. And I think to set one standard for the Iraqi parliament and a totally lower standard for the American government after 225 years of practice is fundamentally flawed. Either we’re for our allies winning, we should do what it takes for our allies to win, we should actually be in the attitude of winning the war—which we did in less than four years in World War II—or we should recognize, after five and a half years from 9/11, we are, in fact, on a worldwide basis, slowly, gradually losing the fight against terrorism and the fight against dictatorship.

MR. RUSSERT: But specifically, how would you win the war in Iraq militarily?

And after Newt’s response to this, I wondered if some mysterious higher being made me crave a pizza last night and be too tired to go to a more proper location to buy one or get one delivered.

MR. GINGRICH: First of all, you, you would empower General Petraeus. You’d pass the supplemental immediately. You’d give him the money. Second, you would encourage the Iraqis to triple the size of their regular army. Third, you would, you would encourage the development of a, of a military tribunal system to lock people up the way Abraham Lincoln would’ve done it. Fourth, you would establish a nationwide ID card with biometrics so you can actually track everybody in the country. Fifth, you would make sure that the State Department actually staffed the embassy with people in favor of winning the war and you actually had your fully, fully equipped intelligence and economic development teams. Six, you would say to the Iranians, “If you don’t cut off everything you’re doing, we’ll begin to bring enormous pressure to bear with you,” if necessary, blockading the flow of gasoline into Iran, which has to import 40 percent of its gasoline because it only has one refinery in the entire country.

So I would take—I would lean forward and say to the world, “We are, by George, going to make sure that the allies of America and the forces of freedom win, and we are the most powerful nation in history, and we have more than enough assets to do this.” And we ought to do what it takes to win, not tolerate legislating defeat.

I think everyone should go plow through the rest of the debate/interview/whatever. Newt was really on fire.  I finally dozed off again, but the stuff Newt said really needs to be heard. We really do have to treat this as a global war, not one confined to borders. We’re the only ones engaged who actually consider Iraq a standalone war.

Wake up America!