Neville Chamberlain's blog

I’d bet you’re enjoying your busy summer with the whiff of sandy infields in your nose and visions of little kids with huge helmets and oversized bats in your eyes. I hope everyone is fine and that you‘re having the time of your life. It‘s funny when I think about my first encounters of you. I’m sure your son is making similar first impressions on other boys; “heavy hitter at the plate, move back!”

It has been a while since I received an impassioned note from you in support of Barack. I take your lack of defense of Obama in this forum to mean that you’re starting to see that he’s a lot of flowery talk and he’s not really what he says he is or that what he wants to do isn‘t really a good idea for America. I suspect you’re driven to support him chiefly by your opposition to the war. You probably have been torn by mixed emotions about the last year’s incredible progress in Iraq and you surely can see now that there might be a different and more promising outcome possible than what Obama has convinced many Americans is the only way to proceed in region.

Each day we are in Iraq, we get closer to the goal of having a stable republic ally in the heart of the Muslim world and simply put, this is undeniably a great development. Many very intelligent and respected conservatives agreed with you and were against invasion from the beginning, thinking it was an unnecessary war even if we‘re winning it now. I assume this because although I know have said you don’t think we should have never invaded, you’ve may have never answered what you think would happen if we withdrew now or years ago like Obama prescribed.

I wanted to send you a note that may give you a different perspective. When deciding my vote, I usually don’t consider the endorsements for POTUS from people who are not Americans but their endorsements always gave me a perspective of what foreigners think about America and the global issues of the day. For example, when Reagan walked out on the nuke talks with Gorby, Old Europe and the American left squealed like a pig and excoriated Reagan for being a unreasonable cowboy. No doubt Reagan was right and the naysayers were wrong. Back then, occasionally we‘d get a news story about the opinions from the people in the neighborhoods behind the iron curtain who risked retaliation and fully supported America‘s tactics in dealing with the fascists.

What are the leaders in the neighborhoods of Iraq saying today about America’s involvement in their future? Gone is the mainstream news coverage of what’s happening in Iraq, primarily because most of the news is outstanding. It was barely mentioned when the new Iraq army fought bravely on its own and took back territory held by Sunni and Shi militias. Hardly a word was spoken about their triumphs in Basra or the fact that for weeks now, it looks like Iraq new government and their army have won in the home of the holdouts, Sadr City. The descendent from whom that city is named hasn’t been heard doing anything but reconciling with his fellow Iraqis and handing the city over to the new Iraq military with full support and without bloodshed.

But the news from Sadr City isn’t reported anymore than the America casualty numbers which are significantly improved. 196 service men have made the ultimate sacrifice this year. April being the high-water mark this year at 52 whereas last year’s deadliest month was April when 126 were killed in a year of the surge’s heavy battling in which 900 U.S. servicemen lost their lives. Hopefully there will be even fewer American casualties as more soldiers in the Iraq military come on line (over 100,000 new enlistments last year alone), their police force improves (70,000 new cops in the last year too!), important reconciliations with tribal factions continue to be numerously forged and al Qaeda is cleared out of the neighborhoods they terrorized.

-Enough of my set up. Please read the following article about the concerns about Obama’s plans for Iraq from four key provincial Iraqi leaders who are both Sunnis and Shiites.