J.C. WATTS Advertisement

The topic of the day - every day -- is, understandably, Iraq. We all wonder what's really going on there. There is no question that even the most ardent of the president's supporters are now caught in a second-guessing mode.

We get conflicting reports on the progress - or lack of same - in that troubled spot. Mainstream media and conventional wisdom doesn't give an ounce of credence to anything positive that may be coming out of the conflict. Largely unpublished reports coming from sons and grandsons on the ground often paint a different picture of progress, but most of us don't receive the benefit of that knowledge.

Democrats abandoned ship months ago, and now a growing number of Republicans are bailing. Certainly, more lives are lost than any of us are comfortable with. And the past couple of weeks have been among the bloodiest of the war. No one ever said this would be easy. No one said it would be without pain. But our national lack of will seems to dictate otherwise.

Now we face the new reality of an impending troop surge. This is not a decision anyone welcomes, but even those in the plushest offices on Capitol Hill are powerless to stop it. I rue the possibility that they would deign to cut funding for your sons and daughters and leave them utterly defenseless. But one should not be surprised at anything in this climate.

Clearly, there are legitimate questions as to whether or not this will work. Is this (more) bad policy? Is this (another) bad idea?

"What ifs" abound. What if this doesn't work? What if it does?

Most Americans want us to win this war. They also understand that the strategy we've executed the last couple of years has not worked. Let's be honest, under the current strategy, we're certainly not winning.

Thus, the president's proposal to increase troop strength. Some say it's the same old strategy. But there are factors to consider that make this plan different indeed.

Certainly, securing Baghdad has to be priority. The previous Baghdad operation had flaws aplenty. The Iraqis did not fulfill their commitment to troop numbers. Not enough Iraqi or U.S. troops were on the ground to hold the neighborhoods we had cleared through Baghdad. In many cases we cleared them, but did not hold them. Not surprisingly, the bad guys came back.

This time, for the first time, Iraq will have more boots on the ground.

A second and very significant flaw: the rules of engagement dictating where troops could and could not go were severely restricted by politics in Baghdad during previous operations. Prime Minister Maliki has made it clear this will change. The extremists will no longer have safe haven in Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi troops cannot enter. This stands in stark contrast to the past.

Now, it's time to keep score. We must have benchmarks from which to measure success. Without benchmarks, it's just practice. There is no way to know if we're winning or losing. The fact that we are now making it clear that Iraqis have to step up is a serious shift in strategy.

The president must follow through in holding the Iraqis to clear military and political milestones.

Prime Minister Maliki has promised the Iraq government will take responsibility for security in all Iraqi provinces by November. That's a very clear and distinct difference over what has happened in the past year. Benchmarks are now in place.

If circumstances change, we must be prepared to adjust to win. As ugly as things have been over last year or so, pulling out is no option. Failure cannot be an option.

Reports that the Iraq Study Group rejected a ramp-up in troops are a myth that must be debunked. War opponents are picking and choosing the elements they like best from the Iraq Study Group report, and disregarding those to which they may take exception.

In fact, the president's new plan has incorporated many of the essential elements of the report. "We could support the short term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad or to speed up training or equipping mission if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such a step would be effective," the study group said.

Let's pray that this action stabilizes Baghdad and its infant democracy, and our American heroes can come home because the job has been completed, not because of fainthearted political pressures. With the presidential campaign heating up earlier than ever before, I hope our aspiring presidents will take heed of Senator John McCain's advice that it is indeed better for a candidate to lose a campaign than for our nation to lose the war.

J.C. Watts writes twice monthly for the Pahrump Valley Times. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com