An Essay for the 2008 EO/Wheatstone Academy Symposium

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost is hosting the 2008 EO Symposium, sponsored this year by Wheatstone Academy. Joe explains the central topic of this year’s Symposium:

While the current political cycle has sharpened our focus on the role of religion in the public square, we often fail to reflect on the role of the public square upon religion. Increasingly, when Christians engage others in public forums, we do so using tools that we did not develop. Whether through movies, music, or new media, we tend to start with a pre-existing cultural forms and incorporate the Gospel as best we can.

As communication theorist Marshall McLuhan argued, the tools we use to communicate a message can shape that message in ways we may or may not intend.* If this is true then Christians have a duty to critically evaluate the effect of our media choices on our message. Do our choices of media forms allow the message to remain Christian? Or are the tools with which we communicate at odds with the message of the Gospel?

If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

Joe graciously extended an invitation for me to contribute an essay for the Symposium, and the following is something of an answer to this question.

Wary of Insularity

Introduction

Theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase and elaborated on the concept, that “The Medium is the Message” (TMITM). McLuhan in his lifetime created prolific and elaborate works, combining philosophy and a fair amount of artistic invention. After his death, his family, followers, and business associates have architected around McLuhan’s ideas an impressive edifice of business and educational resources.

I’ve never read McLuhan, but from years of exposure to the many ubiquitous riffs and references to TMITM, it resonates. If nothing else, this year’s Symposium compelled me to read enough background synopses of what McLuhan seemed to be communicating to understand TMITM, at least a little.

It’s a great organizing concept in thinking about creative and expressive acts, and the entirety of consequences that flow from them. Enough to know that I don’t think I’ll take Mark Federman up on his well-intended instructional curriculum for understanding McLuhan. My guess is that summaries like those produced by Federman and his colleagues at the McLuhan Program can convey in two thousand words 95% of the explicit content (if not the implicit media) that McLuhan attempted in two million. (I suppose that’s one way TMITM, too.)

That said, the Christian needs to confront the New Media, and how it might affect the Christian message. More critically, God compels the Christian to consider the fullest range of consequences that result from their own creative and expressive acts, and those of others. This remains true for the Christian, whether in the context of New Media, or in the old, established media of church traditions. I suggest it’s Scriptural.

As I understand him, McLuhan adhered to a definition of media that includes within its scope any extension of ourselves, any tool or utility of matter or expression. A hammer represents a media, as does language, or any act of expression that allows the “‘outering’ of our senses,” to quote Federman, or “anything from which a change emerges.” McLuhan thought of media in this sense as something that grows, and seemingly takes on a life of its own. Federman further asserts that, “since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions, innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.”

McLuhan’s conception captures the idea of the individual as a Change Agent, media as the action catalysts, and the message as any and all changes affected.

Many committed Christians will testify that, as a follower of Jesus, they experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, however imperfectly or inadequately that is oftentimes reflected in their walk and practice. For us, that means we acknowledge conflicting truths: that He who is in us, is greater than he that is in the world; that in our carnal nature, the old sinful man, we do what we do not want to do; and that the Spirit and our carnal nature remain in constant struggle. It also means that for us, the Holy Spirit can make our expressions in media a joint effort between us and God – if we let His will be done. Certainly this can be so with Christian use of new media.

The Internet as Medium

The internet serves as an excellent source of information. It makes a remarkable breadth of tools and resources available in ways both immediate, efficient, and amazingly adaptable to a tremendous range of uses. The simple acts of cut and paste, link and google have entered not only our lexicon, but the almost unconscious habits of increasing automation.

We live a wired, electronic life, often virtual, but seemingly more familiar than much of the natural, physical world. We discover, explore, and often thrive in networks of connection and community. Within these virtual communities, alternative media, new media, flourish and grow. The internet serves as an electronic commons.

Certainly the internet, the many new media outlets and the virtual communities they reflect, stand as vivid examples of the kind of phenomena that McLuhan sought to examine.

The virtual world of the internet creates a moral tension between traditional understandings of reality, and the evident, real consequences that derive from the “unreality” of virtual constructs. Still, the worlds reflected by the internet are merely some from all possible worlds.

And perhaps well reflective of McLuhan’s contemplations, the internet also creates many unanticipated consequences. The internet allows and encourages without much constraint a widespread exhibitionism, however seemingly anonymous. The internet represents the media greenhouse for all manner of crime, exploitation, manipulation, theft, confidence games, frauds and corruption.

Further, many people succumb to an intoxication with online virtual reality. They immerse themselves in activity, thought, the exchange of ideas, and all manner of social networking. Unfortunately, for too many, that community participation comes at the expense of any near equivalent with the physical, external, reality-based world. And it’s not just phenomena of youth.

Many people rely on online community as a crutch, or alternative to real world community. Anonymity and the artificiality, the “virtualness” of the online experience allows people to define themselves, structure their interactions and relationships on individual terms. They have control, power, or influence, in contrast to what they perceive elsewhere. Others just get wrapped up for a season, and sometimes lose perspective.

As a MILBLOGGER, I’ve seen and experienced this firsthand. I find myself so involved at times with online communities, that I lose perspective on how narrow and encapsulated that world can be. Not everyone, maybe not even a significant minority of people read Instapundit, or Real Clear Politics, or Daily Kos for those of a different bent, or even the estimable Evangelical Outpost, and surely not my blog. But many of us who dwell in that world are often confronted with puzzled looks and blank stares even at the mention of blogs or blogging. We are still a tiny microcosm of the online world.

But other than accessibility, visibility, and differences (perhaps) in societal constraint, how is this different than the physical, non-virtual world? Don’t we as Christians run the same risks of cloistering or isolation in the “real world?”

God’s Call to Evangelize

Jesus calls on his followers to go and spread his Gospel, the Good News of God having sent the world His son, so that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus led by example, seeking out sinners, as they had most need of the Physician. He walked among the lost, He lived life among them, He sought to reach them, and healed those who sought His mercy. He celebrated weddings, provided wine, dined with tax collectors and gave encouragement to the shunned and ignored.

He went where many religious leaders of his day would not go, He exhorted against dead religious observance, and He decried the elevation of man and tradition over the timeless heart and commands of God.

God also admonishes His children to be of the world, but not conformed to it.

The Great Commandment challenges us to serve as vessels for what He has poured into us: that Greatest of all Loves that He has shown to us, we are to share with others. Not when they come calling, not when they make themselves acceptable in His eyes, not under conditions we consider ideal in time and place. Go, He said, and make disciples of all the nations.

I dare to presume He would intend us to make disciples in all possible worlds, the virtual as well as the physical.

Christian New Media

There are excellent examples of Christian use of new media, and flourishing Christian online communities. Leading ministries reach contemporary audiences with new media, and the sometime difficulties of finding Christian publications and resources have been erased thanks to the adroitness of Christian publishers and the explosion of Christian internet sites. Christian bloggers abound, forming communities and blogging collectives. Some, like EO, are making significant inroads in traffic and exposure. No doubt, they reach many unsaved, and start conversation and debate. Some of these, by search and curiosity, then yearning and yielding, eventually find faith in Jesus as their savior.

Christians evangelize with new media. They reach the lost. They start conversations. They create relationships, and trust. They provide comfort and encouragement. They share ideas. They build, fortify, and amplify each other in Christian collective expression. They share audience, and thereby extend networks and the relationships they enable.

In every sense, Christians inhabit virtual reality in all the ways they inhabit the physical world. They learn and make use of new and emerging tools. Many churches keep their sermons online. Christian music abounds in music sharing sites, and many Christian families are carrying around I-pods filled with praise and worship music. Christian online dating services have even emerged.

Just as Christians used radio, and then television, as a media for evangelism and outreach, so too Christians have taken to the Internet to attract seekers and searchers, to proselytize, to evangelize, and to more flexibly and creatively serve their congregations, physical and virtual.

Cloisters of Fellowship

Does that mean that any and all Christian use of the internet and new media is holy, righteous, or in keeping with God’s purposes? Of course not.

God’s people aren’t always very Godly. We fail our Creator, we fall short. Tragically, one of the most damaging ways we fail in our faith is that we isolate, we stick to ourselves, we focus inward, we shrink away from a difficult world, from dangerous and hurting people, and we turn away from the Greatest Commandment. Worse, many of us never see the slide from grace for what it is. We don’t acknowledge our failure of responsibility. We convince ourselves, just as the fallen do, that we’re pretty good, or good enough, or the good we do outweighs the bad, and certainly outweighs the good we never get around to doing.

In modest tribute to McLuhan, I devised a media (expression) of the all too common trajectory of Christian zeal for evangelism. Think of it as the Bell Curve of a too common Christian maturation process:

God

God’s Call

God’s Call upon the Christian

God’s Call upon the Christian to Evangelize

God’s Call upon the Christian

God’s Call

God

We start with an awareness, then acceptance of the reality of God.

We then hear God’s call to us.

We accept and acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior, and by the Holy Spirit, begin to walk out God’s plan for our lives.

At its fullest expression, our understanding of God’s call leads us to evangelize, in fulfillment of the Great Commandment.

Sadly, some never make it that far, and the power of their faith ebbs like retreating tide. Even many who get there, retreat anyway.

The Cloistered Online

I submit that the greatest danger the internet and new media poses for the Christian (practitioner or evangelist) is the same danger posed by more traditional Christian community. Fellowships that turn inward, Congregations that self-serve, church bodies that exclude or separate or find more division with other Christians than unity, all of these stray from God’s call.

I don’t suppose this potential is any greater via new media than in the easier ways we isolate ourselves in the physical world. I certainly have witnessed enough isolation and cloistering behavior in churches to think the very act of stepping out online represents something of a hopeful sign, denoting an attempt to reach beyond the comfortable or known, seeking those who are lost.

In dialog such as those encouraged by Evangelical Outpost, and this Symposium, and the emerging communities of Christian bloggers, I also see a breaking down of denominational and doctrinal boundaries which have far too often stifled and stunted, than protected believers from error or bad doctrine.

I’ve read Catholic and other Orthodox church theologians, and serious students of Protestant faiths, and lots and lots of Christians who have tried to remain unaffiliated on doctrine, doing their part to confess the One Church of Jesus Christ.

We all bring a perspective of the faith experience, and if new media accomplishes little else, it encourages all of us to get out and about, and meet some of our neighbors. We walk past walls and through gates which in the physical world, remain tightly closed.

By seeking a broader, virtual community of Christ, we have the opportunity to more easily advance the purposes of God, and the advancement of His Kingdom.

That, and I kind of like the idea that God’s people can transmit the power of the Holy Spirit in the electronic dimensions of the internet. Not that He needs our help, not that He can’t find any way He wants, but there are far too many people who hide out in their virtual neighborhoods, hungering for freedom in faith, and the Truth that will set them free.

In important commentary today, David Ignatius at Real Clear Politics buttresses Petraeus and Crocker pointed testimony about Iranian trouble-making in Iraq, and makes a sober assessment of what awaits the next President:

Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against them in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse. The best argument for keeping American troops in Iraq is that it increases our leverage against Iran; but paradoxically, that's also a good argument for reducing U.S. troops to a level that's politically and militarily sustainable. It could give America greater freedom of maneuver in the tests with Iran that are ahead.

Somehow, the next president will have to fuse U.S. military and diplomatic power to both engage Iran and set limits on its activities. A U.S.-Iranian dialogue is a necessary condition for future stability in the Middle East. But the wrong deal, negotiated by a weak America with a cocky Iran that thinks it's on a roll, would be a disaster.

I think Ignatius has this just about right, but I’d take it to the next logical conclusion. John McCain certainly recognizes the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as Iranian proxy sponsorship of terror groups, terrorists, and militia adversaries of both US forces and Iraq (however often he stumbles around trying to correctly label all the players).

Obama, on the other hand, never reveals a thorough understanding of the threats we face, or how seriously they threaten. I have great certainty that Obama would be more than capable of serving as proximate cause of a “weak America” negotiating the “wrong deal” with a “cocky Iran that thinks it’s on a roll.”

If the Bush Administration can be plausibly accused of over-simplifying threats and enemies to the point of caricature, its critics and opposition should be likewise accountable for thinking they can dispatch them like cartoon villains. To foreign policy neophytes like Obama, our sworn enemies will always act rationally, behave in farsighted self-interest, deal honestly, and respect conventional norms. (Or be quickly beaten or bombed into submission, if only a Brilliant Democrat takes on the task.)

Fatally for such who harbor these illusions, enemies in the real world are not so easily vanquished. Pity, Sen. Obama’s first hand experience with NY’s junior Senator, doesn’t better inform his understanding of adversaries in conflict.

(Via Memeorandum)

Phillip Carter’s Intel Dump has been picked up by the Washington Post, where he posted commentary on yesterday’s Congressional testimony from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Phillip Carter is a Veteran of OIF who supports Barack Obama and serves in a quasi-official capacity as an advisor to Obama’s Campaign. He’s also been a longtime and consistent critic of our efforts in Iraq, albeit an honorable and principled one, who makes his arguments on the basis of logic and personal experience, largely without rancor or insulting rhetoric towards those with whom he disagrees.

I’d rather have someone like him blogging for the Washington Post than many other potential candidates, but still, I think Carter is the one overplaying his hand, here.

Carter’s take-aways up front:

They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission -- a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge's success -- downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today's improved security conditions. While their "Anaconda" strategy looks cool on a PowerPoint slide, it confuses the issues of control and influence, putting too much stock in America's ability to engineer success in Iraq. And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don't stay the course.

Origins of Violence

Carter asserts that Al Qaeda cannot rightly be held accountable for the lion’s share of violence in Iraq:

The vast majority of Iraqi violence over the past five years has been caused a) by ethno-sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites; b) intra-sectarian fighting amongst Sunnis and Shiites; c) fighting over scarce resources (oil, fuel, water, food, control over ministries with responsibility for the same); and d) fighting by Iraq's homegrown Sunni insurgency and homegrown Shiite militias. AQI has played an important role as catalyst and spoiler -- stoking the fires of sectarian violence (as with the 2006 mosque bombing in Samarra), and keeping them going whenever peace threatened to emerge. But that is a supporting role, and it is a mistake to cast AQI in the lead role and to characterize U.S. efforts in Iraq as a counterinsurgency against AQI.

Clausewitz once wrote that the most important challenge for a commander was to visualize the battlefield -- because all plans and actions flow from his understanding of the situation. Our skewed visualization of Iraq -- and overemphasis of the AQI threat -- has pushed us to adopt an extremely risky strategy of standing up Iraqi security forces and local partisans that will, if we ever withdraw or downsize our forces, create the conditions for a massive civil war.

Carter summarizes the violence in a way that confirms that for Carter, Iraq has been a Civil War in the making from the start, and will devolve into sectarian violence under any scenario, resulting from any action we took to date, or will take – except of course, for the vague policy direction suggested by his preferred Presidential Candidate, Sen. Obama.

I would argue that Carter’s invocation of Clausewitz more accurately explains his (and Obama’s) “skewed visualization of Iraq.”

Al Qaeda aggressively sought to portray their terrorist plots and factions, as well as the resulting violence, as indigenous and homegrown. They created Iraqi puppets for what were otherwise foreign terrorist operations, all of which has been repeatedly revealed as designed propaganda in captured Al Qaeda documents. Yet, Carter acknowledges AQI as “catalyst and spoiler,” but relegates AQI to a minor, “supporting role.”

Yet even the example Carter cites, that of the 2006 Samarra Mosque bombing, undercuts his argument. That seminal event, engineered to create the impression of sectarian conflict, is widely regarded as having provoked much of the resulting violence, and that was just the most obvious example of years of steady provocation. That’s pretty central to the instability and violence of what happened, yet Carter fairly implies that it had no material impact, against intractable (and pre-existing) ethnic strife. No doubt Al Qaeda spinmeisters are pleased that analysts like Carter – and policy makers like Obama – have so thoroughly bought into their deceits.

Nor does Carter make any mention of Iranian war-and violence-making, or the degree to which Iran has supported multiple factions (Shi and Sunni alike), as well as Al Qaeda itself. By adopting the view that the great majority of the violence is internal and domestic, Carter in effect aligns himself with those stubborn analytic reactionaries (including many at the CIA and State Department), who stubbornly refuse to accept the possibility that Shia Iran could ever find common cause with Sunni Al Qaeda. This repeats the same analytic conceit that refused to acknowledge that an irreligious secularist like Saddam Hussein could ever support or sponsor or find common cause with radical Islamic terrorists. (In the face of much evidence to the contrary.)

Other Causes

Carter also adopts another Democratic Party talking point, in claiming that other factors have led to the greatly improved security situation in Iraq:

What about the massive flows of displaced people? And what to make of the relative importance of the political deals with Sunni and Shiite political leaders that have kept their partisans out of the fight? These have all had a massive impact on the security situation -- probably more of one than that exerted by U.S. military forces.

These are odd factors to juxtapose. In the first, Carter joins those who claim that a largely completed ethnic cleansing has moved warring ethnic groups far enough apart that they no longer are in (as much) conflict. Again, that is based on a premise that Sunnis and Shia, in their natural state, unmolested, will always be at war.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience in Iraq, as well as trusted sources more knowledgeable about Iraqi anthropology, most Iraqi families reveal a great deal of Shia and Sunni intermarriage. All of the Iraqis I met had Shia and Sunni relatives, and even some Kurds besides. The Iraqi (Kurdish) General who spoke to us at length described the same kind of intermixing. Pre-war Iraq was never particularly religious, other than in (some) Shia enclaves, and the Iraqi Shia (Arab) had been distinctly less religious than their Iranian (Persian) counterparts. That’s one of the points of friction between Iran and Iraq Shia communities, with a fair amount of racism and ethnic stereotyping thrown in for good measure. I find it highly credible that, without external agitation and provocation, Iraq can and will evidence reconciliation from the Baathist years of Sunni domination and Hussein’s acts of genocide, and the signs of such reconciliation are increasing.

I find it also highly likely that the “political deals” that Carter dismisses could not have been possible within the degrading security situation that prevailed prior to the Surge of US Military forces.

What’s Victory?

Carter passes on another Democratic Party talking point:

Seeking a Strategy. So what is our strategy in Iraq? And for that matter, what is "victory?" How does a "victory" in Iraq relate to America's larger national security interests? Petraeus and Crocker effectively punted on these grand questions, as they did last September, offering only that we needed to persevere and succeed to avoid vague Somalia-like predictions of what might happen if we don't.

I can directly attest to this line of rhetoric as a Democratic talking point, as it was echoed all day long yesterday by Democratic Congressional aides as a rebuttal to the personal testimonies of Vets for Freedom members. If what Petraeus and Crocker have been presenting to Congress this past year doesn’t constitute a Strategy, and underscore what the Bush Administration and its critics alike assert would be victory – Iraq taking on the role as self-preserver of their own freedoms and nascent democracy – then no plan or conditions for victory can never be sufficiently articulated.

Competing Democratic Party Presidential nominees have been issuing these kinds of criticisms since our invasion of Iraq. The criticisms evolve, the claims change, each change of policy seemingly in response to criticism, becomes yet another set of mistakes to deride and denounce. They’ve never met a single operation or version of the war plan that ever commends itself. It’s been failure one way or another, from 2003 until today.

Carter concludes, “We owe something more to our men and women serving in Iraq, and to the Iraqis.”

I couldn’t agree more. The Nation and our elected officials owe much to Veterans who have served the country in combat in Iraq, and to Iraqis. I’m hard pressed, and not convinced at all by Carter, how abandoning our mission in Iraq helps pay that debt.

(Via Memeorandum)

Vets for Freedom hosted our Vets on the Hill event Tuesday morning, featuring Presidential Candidate and Senator (Sen.) John McCain. Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham also attended, along with other leading pro-war Congressmen and Women.

The VFF event was extremely well-organized, pulled together by an excellent staff led by Pete Hegseth, VFF Executive Director. VFF covered the travel expenses for over 400 Iraqi and Afghanistan vets, most of whom arrived in DC Monday night and reported for VFF duty at 0530 Tuesday morning. We were addressed by Hegseth, his key staff, and Georgetown Men’s Basketball Head Coach John Thompson III and Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers.

Hegseth and Thompson both made humorous references to Hegseth’s Basketball career under Thompson at Princeton, during which Hegseth never played in a game. Thompson said his goal was always to help his young men achieve their goals, and since Hegseth’s was to serve in the Army, Thompson made sure that happened by keeping him on the bench.

General Myers gave an excellent talk about courage and sacrifice, and was the first of many speakers Tuesday who said that, as we served our country in war overseas, so the country needed us to continue to serve, in the war for public opinion and policy here at home.

At 0700, we were bused to Senate Park for the outdoor event, to feature McCain, Lieberman, and other congress people and participants in the VFF Heroes Tour, which stopped in DC yesterday and concludes in NYC today.

Numerous mainstream media outlets covered the outdoor event, as did Amie Parnes for Politico:

Several hundred veterans stood in the cold drizzle Tuesday morning for a man they called their hero.

“You can have your Tiger Woods,” David Bellavia, a former Army staff sergeant, told the crowd of pro-Iraq veterans. “We’ve got Senator McCain.” 

Milbloggers and their readers should be very familiar with Bellavia, a Silver Star decorated combat Vet who’s just published a gritty account of his combat experiences in House by House. His reference played off an earlier description of what it means to be a hero, and how often our society views sports figures as heroes and ignores those who risk all in service to their country. I found it astonishing, and gratifying, that John McCain waited patiently as both Pete Hegseth, VFF Executive Director, and Bellavia, gave short speeches before Hegseth introduced McCain. Bellavia is running for Congress, as are several other VFF members, and many people (including Hegseth) are suggesting Bellavia should receive a Medal of Honor.

Just as a quick aside, as Hegseth was amplifying on the Vets for Freedom mission and members, he momentarily could not come up with what was missing from his description of VFF members as Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines. By the time he recovered and added, “Sailors,” McCain had grimaced and made a gesture towards himself, much to the amusement of the Vets assembled.

Parnes summarized McCain’s brief remarks:

John McCain, (R-Ariz.) the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, did not disappoint. At a pit stop at the Vets for Freedom rally outside the Capitol before appearing on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain, called Army Gen. David Petraeus "one of [America's] greatest generals."

He also thanked the veterans. 

“I just wanna say what you know so well,” McCain said. “No one detests war more than a veteran. But the veteran also knows the consequences of defeat means greater sacrifice and greater numbers who are wounded and killed. You know better than any the consequences of defeat.” 

The 480 some VFF members present clearly appreciate the very pro-victory and pro-military stance McCain has always demonstrated, by Sen. Lieberman, who followed McCain, got us all fired up. As Parnes reported:

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), who have both endorsed McCain's candidacy and  joined him on stage, echoed his sentiments. 

“Do not underestimate the contribution you have made on the political battlefield at home,” Lieberman said. “Do we want al Qaeda and Iran to win a victory in Iraq?” 

“No!” the vets screamed.

He followed that by asking if we wanted to win, and the response was deafening. That’s why we took the hill yesterday, to advocate Congress to let us do just that.

But Lindsay Graham got the biggest response with this one liner:

“You want to know who wants you to come home more than anybody?” Graham continued. “Al Qaeda because you’re kicking their ass.” 

Just before the outdoor event concluded, Texas Congressman Sam Johnson, a fellow POW with McCain at the Hanoi Hilton, took his lkarge brimmed cowboy hat off and saluted those of us in attendance.

Then we headed on up the Hill to take the message to Congress: Let Us Win. More on that in Part Two, along with some photos.

(Thanks to Rich Lowry at The Corner, who linked to Politico’s Greg Pollowitz’s link to Parnes.)

Blackfive noted the VFF event yesterday, linking to This Ain't Hell, where Jonn Lilyea summarizes the event with video of the speeches, and plenty of good photos. (Better than the one’s I got standing in the front row. Beer to anyone who can find me.)

Newsbusters Kevin Mooney posts an interview with Hegseth.

Other blog coverage:

http://veteranamerican.info/?p=208

http://www.luoamerican.com/baldilocks/2008/04/rally-for-petra.html

http://bearcreekledger.com/2008/04/08/vets-on-the-hill/

http://www.soldiersperspective.us/2008/04/08/coming-soon/

http://locomotivebreath1901.blogspot.com/2008/04/vets-for-freedom-rally-for-troops-on.html

http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/sacrifice/

http://cookiecrumbexpress.com/blog/2008/04/08/vetrans-for-freedom/

http://www.neptunuslex.com/2008/04/08/bigd-got-a-nice-note/

http://cao2.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/the-successful-surge/

http://radiopatriot.blogspot.com/

On the eve of General Petraeus’s next scheduled testimony to Congress, National Review hosts or links to three strong arguments in favor of continued support for our efforts in Iraq.

In the first, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute takes on antiwar (and thus Antiwar Party) talking points. They make easy work for Kagan, whose very lengthy takedown can be summarized thus: however else they can be characterized, the arguments against Iraq by anti-war Democrats are deeply dishonest, and not in accord with reality – current or past.

What is Victory?

Kagan demolishes what equates to Democratic sophistry, the pretense that a withdrawal from Iraq would not really be defeat, nor can staying achieve “victory”:

Yes, in the world as it is, whatever line we sell ourselves, there really is victory and there really is defeat, the two are different, and their effects on the future diverge profoundly. And yes, the reason we must continue to spend money and the lives of the very best Americans in that far-off land is that the interests of every American are actually at stake. [snip] Unless the advocates of defeat can show, as they have not yet done, that the consequences of losing are very likely to be small not simply the day after the last American leaves Iraq, but over the next five, ten, and 50 years, then what they are really selling is short-term relief in exchange for long-term pain.

Other highlights from Kagan:

The War Costs Too Much
Military spending has traditionally been a form of economic stimulus, and wars more commonly end recessions or depressions than start them. That’s not a good reason to start a war, but neither is it a good reason to lose one. The impact of the current war on the U.S. economy, finally, is far smaller than the impact of previous major conflicts.

The War Is Inevitably Lost, Recent Progress Notwithstanding
The credibility of many making this argument suffers from the conviction with which they declared early (and, in some cases, even late) in 2007 that no progress of any kind was possible.

Iraq is a made-up state: Iraqis hate each other, and only armed might can keep the peace.

The high degree of Sunni-Shi’a intermarriage in the mixed areas of Iraq, the large numbers of such mixed areas, and the increasing anger with which many Iraqis in those areas now denounce the idea of sectarian conflict all run against this argument.

Iraqis are not ready for democracy
As for the notion that democracy is incompatible with Islam, tell it to the hundreds of millions of Muslims in Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Europe who have embraced it. As for the notion that democracy is inappropriate for Arabs, the enthusiasm with which the liberal elite that insists on the universality of its own moral relativism engages in such overtly racist argumentation is astounding.

The Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with the surge
This argument is a bit like saying that the French people, finally tiring of the Nazis’ occupation, rose up of their own accord in 1944, engaging in increasing partisan and insurgent activities culminating with the re-appearance of the Free French military units that liberated Paris — and that none of this had anything to do with the Normandy invasion, since the Free French movement and partisan activity within France predated that invasion.

Violence fell only because Moqtada al Sadr ordered a unilateral cease-fire
In addition to having to abandon any pretext of participating in Iraqi politics if he ended the ceasefire, therefore, Sadr also had to face the likelihood that well-informed U.S. and ISF troops would take out his key leadership cadres the moment he ordered them to fight. And that is what happened when Maliki launched his offensive in Basra and JAM and Special Groups began to fight in Baghdad — which is one of the main reasons Sadr ordered his people again to stand down.  The degree of Sadr’s influence and power — even of his control over his own movement — is increasingly open to question, but his ability to make Shi’a Iraq explode at will appears to be substantially diminished.

Now that the Surge Is Ending, We’ll Be Right Back Where We Started
The worst flaw in this argument, however, is that it naively assumes that the situation in Iraq today is the same as it was in January 2007 apart from the temporary increase in U.S. forces and the (supposedly) temporary drop in violence. In fact, the situation has changed profoundly both in the provinces and in Baghdad itself, where the central government has made remarkable progress even on the “benchmarks” that Congress set for it last year.

We Should Never Have Fought this War in the First Place
There are no do-overs in the real world. Deciding that we made a mistake in 2003 or that we don’t like what has happened in the intervening five years does not make it possible to hit some global rewind button and start again from scratch.

Iraq Is a Distraction from the Real War on Terror
Is there really any question about whether or not al-Qaeda in Iraq is part of the global al-Qaeda movement? Considering, then, that there are very few and very small al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, that al-Qaeda in South Asia is mostly in Pakistan, and that none of those insisting that the U.S. abandon Iraq to fight the “real” enemy in Afghanistan have proposed any meaningful plans for dealing with Chitral and Waziristan where that “real” enemy actually is — considering, finally, that the one place American soldiers are actually fighting al-Qaeda every day and decisively winning is Iraq, how, exactly, is Iraq a distraction from the war on terror? This is the war, and we’re winning it. Let’s not decide that we’d rather lose.

In the second piece noted above, Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham set the stage for Generalm Petraeus’s testimony by also highlighting the hypocrisy and error of many antiwar critics:

When Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress tomorrow, he will step into an American political landscape dramatically different from the one he faced when he last spoke on Capitol Hill seven months ago. This time Gen. Petraeus returns to Washington having led one of the most remarkably successful military operations in American history. His antiwar critics, meanwhile, face a crisis of credibility – having confidently predicted the failure of the surge, and been proven decidedly wrong.

Senators Lieberman and Graham acknowledge the tragic and significant costs of our efforts in Iraq, but they remain adamant about the value or our continuing successes, in contrast to the fear mongering of antiwar opponents:

The success we are now achieving also has consequences far beyond Iraq's borders in the larger, global struggle against Islamist extremism. Thanks to the surge, Iraq today is looking increasingly like Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare: an Arab country, in the heart of the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims – both Sunni and Shiite – are rising up and fighting, shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers, against al Qaeda and its hateful ideology.

It is unfortunate that so many opponents of the surge still refuse to acknowledge the gains we have achieved in Iraq. When Gen. Petraeus testifies this week, however, the American people will have a clear choice as we weigh the future of our fight there: between the general who is leading us to victory, and the critics who spent the past year predicting defeat.

Lastly, Ralph Peters at the NY Post checked in with a military colleague in Baghdad for what he believes will be a close resemblance to what General Petraeus will report to Congress this week.

Peters explains why Iraq and the Iraqi Government is faring much better than mainstream media and Congressional detractors try to depict:

My source acknowledged that "the planning for Basra was incomplete and some of the local forces were incapable of standing up to the Iranian-supported rogue-militia elements." The quality of Iraq's security forces remains uneven - but he sees them as remarkably improved, in general. Their performance in Basra was more impressive than feature-the-bad-news reporting implied.

This officer doesn't paint over the cracks in the Iraqi house, but he's convinced that the Basra operation did "reflect a determination of a Shia-led government to deal with Shia extremist challenges."

For myself, I watched the Basra dust-up from Panama, amazed at the willful obtuseness of "war correspondents" who still refuse to acknowledge basic military realities. They demanded a level of effectiveness from Iraqi troops that the British had been unable (and unwilling) to deliver over the last five years.

Unlike the Brits, who faked it, the Iraqis went into the city and fought. Was their performance perfect? Of course not. But this is where the punditry got really interesting.

Many of the critics had previously lavished praise on the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus midwifed. One of the most-quoted maxims from that document was T.E. Lawrence's admonition that it's better for our local allies to do something imperfectly themselves than for us to do it perfectly for them.

Well, the Iraqis stepped up to the plate. A few units folded. Others fought ferociously. They did what we said we wanted - and the critics raised the bar again. (Unfair criteria for success now may pose a greater obstacle in Iraq and Afghanistan than do al Qaeda or the Taliban.)

And, by the way, it was Moqtada al Sadr, not the Iraqi government, who requested a cease-fire - after being urged by the Iranians to opt to let those militias live to fight another day.

This stage is set. Let’s see what happens in Washington this week.