Spanish Prime Minister-Elect José Luis RodrÍguez Zapatero claimed the Iraqi liberation "hasn’t generated anything but more violence and hate.” But if one takes into account opinions from outside the Sunni Triangle one would have to contend otherwise. With schools now refurbished that girls are permitted to attend, hospitals opened to all the public, Shiites able to worship without fear of their government, more available utilities than ever before and the freedom to exist without fearing that someone could come to get you in the middle of the night because of your political beliefs, the majority of the people in Iraq are quite grateful that the Coalition of the Willing came to their aid. So, why is the liberal-left all over the world saying the liberation of Iraq was a failure?

They can’t be saying the 21 days it took to see Baghdad fall were a failure. The feat was one of the most impressive military displays the world has ever seen. To be sure, I believe even the loss of one life is too many. But, while the liberal-left insists the number killed in action is unacceptable it needs to be pointed out that the number of lives lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom is the lowest casualty count for any military operation of its scale. In comparison, 50,000 troops were lost in Vietnam (truly a war we shouldn’t have been in) and over 1,000,000 were lost in the Iran-Iraq War.

In the grand scheme of things the stabilization of Iraq has gone quite well. While there have been attacks on coalition troops and civilians alike, they’re not foreign to the task of stabilizing a once hostile country. Allied forces dealt with the same resistance after World War II and in post-war Vietnam the numbers of those persecuted for their alleged crimes were astronomical, contradicting what John Kerry testified to in his speech before Congress. By comparison the stabilization of Iraq has been a bit more of a success than the liberal-left would have us believe. Day by day the Iraqis step up to take control of their destiny. But the liberal-left’s version has this being the byproduct of a mission that was a "miserable failure.”

Never before have we seen a country go from the full totalitarian control of a murderous tyrant, complete with rape rooms, torture chambers and killing fields to a country that has an interim governing council implementing an interim constitution in such a short amount of time. Democracy has come to one of the most volatile part of the world with even the Islamic religious leaders contending the removal of Saddam Hussein was a great thing. But to hear the Bush-haters and the liberal & socialist left from around the world and our own country tell it, the action has been a "miserable failure.”

John Kerry, Howard Dean and the rest of the MoveOn.org - George Soros worshiping left have continually stated how much of a "miserable failure” Operation Iraqi Freedom has been. They have said they support the troops (Kerry even voted to use force) but then contend that everything the troops have ever done there has been a failure. They insist on saying that because France, Germany, Belgium and Russia (countries that were doing illegal business with the Hussein regime during the prohibited time) weren’t included in the coalition of countries that took action, there wasn’t an international consensus to do what had to be done. How thirty countries banded together, no matter the number of troops committed by each, isn’t an international consensus I will never know.

The new Spanish Prime Minister-Elect, a socialist, said, "The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a great disaster. It hasn't generated anything but more violence and hate. What simply cannot be is that after it became so clear how badly it was handled there be no consequences."

Obviously it needs to be pointed out to Mr. Zapatero that the ten bombs that went off recently were in Spain, not Baghdad. Perhaps if the Socialist Party in Spain and its radically left wing would have supported the government of José MarÍa Aznar in their fight against the Basque separatist group ETA instead of expending all of their energies protesting the liberation of Iraq because of semantics, they would have been able to send al Qaida a more substantive message than, "We surrender because you blew our people to smithereens.”

A 26-year old Spaniard who identified himself only as David was quoted as saying, "Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq, and Al Qaeda will forget about Spain, so we will be less frightened."

Is this the way to fight the War on Terror, with appeasement? Hasn’t anyone read any world history, specifically about how appeasement failed, miserably, prior to the Nazi’s march through Europe? The only message the Spanish electorate sent to terrorists around the world is that they can topple governments with a few thousand dollars worth of explosives in backpacks. The Spanish vote was a victory for terrorists around the world, and they know it.

It seems to me the only "miserable failures” that have occurred since the inception of the War on Terror reside with governments that embrace the idea of appeasement (an idea we know invites totalitarianism and world war), that illegally deal with governments that are not strangers to turning a blind eye to terrorism, that would rather stick their heads in the sand hoping terrorism will just go away and who don’t possess the resolve to stand together with other willing nations to combat an evil that is existing like a cancer in our world today.

Perhaps we should ask the average Iraqi and Afghani, those who were not among the privileged while existing under the Taliban and Saddam Hussein – in other words the majority of them – who they think the miserable failures are. I think we would get quite a different answer in contrast to what the liberal-left has been coming up with.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials, Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications..