Don’t hold your breath waiting for an official announcement. There will be none – not from the MSM, the enfeebled, outgoing Bush administration, Congress, and certainly not the incoming Obama administration.
But despite the Democrats’ best efforts, it can no longer be ignored:
Zombie declares:
Observations and statistics agree: The fighting has ceased, the war is over
Michael Yon:
“THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:” Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. “There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything.”
Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette:
Surprised?
I’m not.
I’ve been saying “we won” for some time now, so no argument on that point from me.
Some video proof via Hot Air:
Zombie says:
The only reason that the war has not been declared “over” is that the media, which was generally opposed to the war and opposed to any of President Bush’s policies, doesn’t want to give him and his supporters the satisfaction of having been right. The media wants U.S. troops to return home, but only on condition that they do so with their tails between their legs in defeat — not as victorious liberators, which would invalidate five years of subtle and not-so-subtle anti-war propaganda on the part of the left-leaning media. The Bush administration for its part has not declared victory for two probable reasons: first, because they fear that by so doing they would only increase the call by the media and liberal Democrats to “bring the troops home now”; and also by so doing they might invite some last-ditch spectacular terror attack by the few remaining jihadists in order to embarrass the administration. And the incoming Obama administration will certainly never announce victory, since Obama spent over a year campaigning for the Democratic primary as the anti-war candidate. So both sides refuse to say the war is over. Even though it is, in fact, over.
It is up to the American people to declare victory. Which is exactly what we are doing right now.
There never will be an “official” announcement from the government or the media, so you can stop waiting for it.
This is the official announcement.
Join the VIDay movement!
Do you agree with the concept behind VI Day? Then post a VI Day entry on your blog.
Once you’ve posted it, email me (Zombie)the link! And I will post a link back to your blog here on this page.
Make sure to make at least two different postings: Make one now to announce your support of VI Day and to spread the word ahead of time; and make another one on November 22 itself, to celebrate!
(Blogs of all political orientations are invited to join: Even if you’re a progressive blogger and only want to announce an end to the war as a way to accelerate the homecoming home all troops, you are welcome to link to and/or mention VI Day too.)
One last note: If anyone is planning to hold a “meatspace” (i.e. real world) party or celebration to mark VI Day, send me the details and I will post them here as well.
Here are participating blogs, thus far:
Nice Deb 
This is SUCH good stuff! Excellent news, to be sure.
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It won’t be picked up by the media because the concept itself is pretty stupid. I mean, did someone surrender or something? No. The disconnect here is that what we’ve been doing is nation-building, engaging in counterinsurgency operations, and generally cleaning up the giant mess we made, as opposed to something like charging up San Juan Hill. Sure, we’ve finally had some positive results in our mission, and that’s certainly good news. But to get all excited that there’s some sort of glorious “victory” here seems akin to patting yourself on the back for finishing a muscle car build that you dumped $100K into and cost you a marriage, even while wondering if the thing is actually going to drive down the road without falling apart.
I’m sorry, but this blog-burst is a cop-out for the original war cheerleaders who still refuse to/cannot accept that it simply was not worth it.
And this notion that the media was anti-war is, unfortunately, chuckle-worthy, since I don’t really remember them putting up too much of a fuss when Bush and the gang were beating the drum to go in there in the first place. In fact, I seem to remember them fawning all over Bush as he landed on that aircraft carrier in his ridiculous jump suit. The media didn’t really start getting critical about it until it was pretty obvious that the WMD thing was BS. If the coverage really is “anti-war” now, perhaps the reason is that they felt guilty for their role in the whole fiasco.
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I’m sorry, but this blog-burst is a cop-out for the original war cheerleaders who still refuse to/cannot accept that it simply was not worth it.
Very, very shortsighted. That statement is a cop-out for those who refuse to admit that this could be the most profound change in the Middle East since 1967.
But to get all excited that there’s some sort of glorious “victory” here…
What we’re excited about is the achievement of security when the Dems considered it flatly impossible. We’re excited that the country stuck with it and prevailed, rather than withdrawing early. We’re excited that the mainstream is finally catching up to what we started tracking a year and a half ago.
You were wrong to call for withdrawal, and you were wrong in your assessment of the situation. You’re also wrong about the potential benefits, but I suppose it’s too early to get you on board in that area. Baby steps.
I don’t really remember them putting up too much of a fuss when Bush and the gang were beating the drum to go in there in the first place.
Oh yes, why don’t you tell us about the Judith Miller articles one more time, because I don’t think we’ve heard how that one journalist outweighs the rest of the MSM nearly often enough. Do any of these ring a bell for you?
o Quagmire in the invasion (when they stopped to rest and let logistics catch up)
o We can’t take Baghdad without huge casualties
o Our military says they’re in Baghdad, but Bagdad Bob says they’re not – why is our military lying to us?
o Our military allowed the museum to be looted
Just a few instances of the amazing support received by the MSM.
In fact, I seem to remember them fawning all over Bush as he landed on that aircraft carrier in his ridiculous jump suit.
That’s pretty pinheaded. Why do you wear a flight suit when you fly in military non-passenger aircraft? Because you have to. When I was a cadet taking a ride in a T-37, I had to borrow a flight suit to wear for the 15 minute flight. And I don’t remember the fawning so much – I remember much more clearly the bitter sniping from people like you.
But hey, go ahead and revise history the way you’d like to remember it. Oh. I guess you already did.
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And if I sound sarcastic and critical, it’s because you’re resurrecting things that were beaten to death 5 years ago, and acting like they were never completely debunked. Which they were. Next we’ll back to “Selected not elected.”
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geoff-
Actually, I wasn’t even thinking of Miller, but thanks for reminding me. Moyer did a pretty good round up. of what I was talking about. Besides Knight Ridder, the bulk of the MSM pretty much just regurgitated the White House’s sales pitch.
I say ridiculous because of the obvious photo op, and the media did fawn as designed.
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ooops…clean-up on aisle 5. Messed up my tag.
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Fixed it for you. I’ll let Geoff respond to you.
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Forget it. He’s citing Bill Moyers, for Christ’s sake. Anybody who uses Moyers to make the case for the objectivity of the press is an unwitting casualty of irony.
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I figured you’d say that. It’s much easier than, say, addressing the argument he’s making, or course.
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It’s much easier than, say, addressing the argument he’s making, or course.
Oh indeed it is. But you provided the shortcut yourself, when you used a famously liberally=biased media source to support your claim that the media is not liberally biased. You undid yourself with your own link, so I didn’t have to say anything. Are you so myopic that you didn’t realize this?
A special treat: one of the interviewees in Moyers’ piece is none other than Dan “Fake but Accurate” Rather. Har!!
The fact that you would go to that sort of reference, and consider it the least bit credible on the issue of press objectivity, tells me that it’s pointless to carry this any further. The next time you want to talk about whether the press is biased or not, I’d suggest you don’t start by assuming that Moyers is in the center.
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I’m sorry, but this blog-burst is a cop-out for the original war cheerleaders who still refuse to/cannot accept that it simply was not worth it.
How dare you. Who do you presume to speak for? The military voted overwhelmingly for the Pro-Iraq war candidate, McCain. Who are you to tell them, after all their their sacrifices and the sacrifices of their fallen comrades, that “it wasn’t worth it”.
Amazingly, Iraq was one of the few countries that would have voted for the Pro- Iraq war McCain:
http://www.economist.com/Vote2008/index.cfm
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081030170209.3wcxfwin&show_article=1
So you presumably don’t speak for the majority of them.
Who are you to say that helping to create a stable Democracy in the heart of the Middle East “wasn’t worth it”.
You make a very subjective argument. And a weak one.
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The disconnect here is that what we’ve been doing is nation-building, engaging in counterinsurgency operations, and generally cleaning up the giant mess we made, as opposed to something like charging up San Juan Hill.
This is also amusing. Bush has been mocked for more than 5 years over the “Mission Accomplished” nonsense, because liberals insisted that we were still at war. Fine, sez we: if that’s what you want to call it, we’ll call it war, even though it’s more of a counterinsurgency/reconstruction operation. Then, after violence erupted when the Samarra mosque was bombed, they insisted that we call it “civil war.” If we didn’t, we were accused of being in denial.
But now that success is upon us, he doesn’t want to call it war anymore.
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geoff-
Ah, so Moyers’ wealth of examples of the media not critically reporting the situation in the run-up to the invasion isn’t worth exploring because….Moyers is a liberal? That would be ad hominem circumstantial, ya know.
Its pretty simple. My claim was that the bulk of the media reporting certainly wasn’t “anti-war” during that critical period when the debate was going on in the country. When challenged on that notion, I link to a documentary on that very subject to back up my assertion. In contrast, you’ve responded with logical fallacies, condescension, and no links.
nicedeb-
Um, I’m a taxpayer?
Is it OK for me to think that American blood and treasure is precious, and shouldn’t recklessly be thrown at some boondoggle? Can I have an opinion on that?
From your second link:
I don’t suppose that they’d have been as concerned about that if we hadn’t shock and awed, invaded, and disbanded their forces in the first place?
And is 16 months really a “rapid” withdrawal anyway? Is it all that different from what the Iraqi gov. had in mind?
And mentioning a preference for McCain within the military or the Iraqi population doesn’t really address the question of whether the invasion itself was “worth it”.
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Fine Chen. You’re speaking as one taxpayer. You came here to my blog to make a definitive statement (that the war wasn’t worth it)….and we shouldn’t celebrate its victory, based on your status as a taxpayer. Good for you. I would argue that most in the American military, and most of the Iraqi people would disagree with you.
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Ah, so Moyers’ wealth of examples of the media not critically reporting the situation in the run-up to the invasion isn’t worth exploring because….Moyers is a liberal?
First: Yes it absolutely isn’t worth exploring because Moyers has a track record of bias and distortion. It’s like asking Rush Limbaugh for his view on the liberal media. And interviewing Dan Rather is worse than that.
Second: Your ultimate point was to show a conservatively-biased MSM, but your resource was the liberally-biased MSM. Hence the irony.
I don’t suppose that they’d have been as concerned about that if we hadn’t shock and awed, invaded, and disbanded their forces in the first place?
No, they would have been too busy cowering in fear under the Hussein regime.
Is it OK for me to think that American blood and treasure is precious, and shouldn’t recklessly be thrown at some boondoggle?
Is that sort of careless, inaccurate, and biased statement supposed to support your analytic credentials?
And is 16 months really a “rapid” withdrawal anyway?
It is when you do it arbitrarily, without regard for the security situation. And, of course, when you try to start in 2007.
And mentioning a preference for McCain within the military or the Iraqi population doesn’t really address the question of whether the invasion itself was “worth it”.
Perhaps not in the case of the Iraqis, but I think it shows where the military’s hearts lie.
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nicedeb-
Of course that statement is a matter of opinion, and as long as we’re linking to polls, I suppose I should point out that it may just be the popular one.
I might just go a step further and suggest that the urge to arbitrarily declare a “victory day” might have been borne out of the overwhelming pressure of this opinion.
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My claim was that the bulk of the media reporting certainly wasn’t “anti-war” during that critical period when the debate was going on in the country.
But let’s get back to this point, which I have given short shrift to because I think it’s completely irrelevant to the media’s treatment of the war for the past 5 years. Let’s assume that you’re absolutely right, and that the media was gung-ho about the invasion prior to boots hitting the ground (and I’ll admit that their coverage was about as positive as I’ve ever seen for a Republican administration. Does that excuse their coverage thereafter?
The “16 words” idiocy alone completely undid any support they may have given earlier. A responsible and/or objective press would never have allowed, let alone propagated, that nonsense. It was and remains an embarrassment to the MSM and the liberals who gleefully distorted the facts.
And let me point out that the only reason that you knew that there was a pre-invasion debate going on in the country was because the MSM reported it.
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That poll is from March, a little out of date, but even so, after five straight years of gross media bias against the war, one expects a result like that. I trust the opinions of the people actually on the ground, there, more.
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I suppose I should point out that it may just be the popular one.
Exactly the point – the people polled had no idea how much ground conditions were improving in Iraq. And they still have no idea. A very well informed liberal buddy of mine visited 4 months ago, and had no idea that security had been restored in most of Iraq. He was under the impression that it was still 2006.
the urge to arbitrarily declare a “victory day” might have been borne out of the overwhelming pressure of this opinion.
That’s a good one.
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Also, the “urge” to arbitrarily declare a “victory day” is borne out of the fact that we actually won, and that fact should be acknowledged by at least SOME of our countrymen.
Don’t you think that those who have served, and sacrificed for our country deserve that much?
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That’s funny: I was wondering what the trends in opinions were, and the data reported by CBS/NYT in July doesn’t match their article in March.
Here are the results for the “was the invasion the right thing to do:”
3/18 – 36% (the article said 29%)
4/2 – 34%
4/29 – 37%
7/14 – 36%
The Polling Report then continues:
9/16 – 42%
9/24 – 39%
10/29 – 39%
In the 10/29 poll, 43% of respondents still felt the security situation in Iraq was going “somewhat” or “very” badly. I think that makes the point quite handily.
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Great idea!
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nicedeb-
hmmm…ya know, I think you guys are beginning to convince me here. And since it just past midnight over in my part of the world…oh what the heck…
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
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Happy V-I Day, Chen!
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