Denial or Dissimulation?

Charles Krauthammer believes that our Democrats are in a “state of denial” about Iraq. The Democrats, a year ago, justified their embrace of defeat on the meme that our soldiers in Iraq were in a “civil war” that “could not be won militarily.” Now that Iraq is well on its way to being pacified following the posting of a new U.S. commander with a different strategy, the Democrats are searching for any excuse to add a patina of legitimacy to their continued attempts to legislate defeat in Iraq.

For Mr. Krauthammer to call that a "state of denial" suggests the Dems are using a psychological defense mechanism that prevents them from recognizing reality. Mr. Krauthammer is being far too tactful, suggesting an excuse for what is clearly conscious perfidy.

The Democrats, a year ago, saw an opportunity for partisan gain by exploiting problems in Iraq and they jumped on it without any regard to the long term costs to America. Now they are trapped in their total embrace of defeat, hoping to be saved by bad news out of Iraq before they have to provide funding for the war again. It is all a coldly calculated decision by intelligent and ambitious but unprincipled people. They are not in a state of denial. They are trapped in a corner and know that they will face the wrath of the electorate if they concede to success in Iraq. They are consciously dissimulating in an effort to find some means of escape. Their stranglehold on the concept of the formal “top down” benchmarks to justify surrender and their utter refusal to acknowledge the “bottom up” grassroots progress clearly occurring in Iraq and now reported by even the NYT is incredibly transparent dissimulation.

This today from Mr. Krauthammer:

It does not have the drama of the Inchon landing or the sweep of the Union comeback in the summer of 1864. But the turnabout of American fortunes in Iraq over the past several months is of equal moment -- a war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: "This is not working. . . . We must reverse it." A euphemism for "abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.

How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.

. . . But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?

Sure, there is no oil law. But the central government is nonetheless distributing oil revenue to the provinces, where the funds are being used for reconstruction.

Sure, the de-Baathification law has not been modified. But the whole purpose of modification was to entice Sunni insurgents to give up the insurgency and join the new order. This is already happening on a widening scale all over the country in the absence of a relaxed de-Baathification law.

. . . Why is top-down national reconciliation as yet unattainable? Because decades of Saddam Hussein's totalitarianism followed by the brutality of the post-invasion insurgency destroyed much of Iraq's political infrastructure, causing Iraqis to revert to the most basic political attachment -- tribe and locality. Gen. David Petraeus’s genius has been to adapt American strategy to capitalize on that development, encouraging the emergence of and allying ourselves with tribal and provincial leaders -- without waiting for cosmic national deliverance from the newly constructed and still dysfunctional constitutional apparatus in Baghdad.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?

. . . So, just as we have learned this hard lesson of the disconnect between political benchmarks and real stability [following elections and then the Samarra bombing], the critics now claim the reverse -- that benchmarks are what really count.

This is to fundamentally mistake ends and means. The benchmarks would be a wonderful shortcut to success in Iraq. But it is folly to abandon the pursuit of that success when a different route, more arduous but still doable, is at hand and demonstrably working.

Read the article here. Mr. Krauthammer describes realistically what is now obvious in Iraq. He does not do so as regards what is equally obvious in Washington. This is emblematic of the problem conservatives seem to have in responding truthfully and with appropriate disdain and volume to the partisan, conscious and traitorous acts of today's Democrats. To call what the Democrats are doing today anything else requires, as Senator Clinton put it, a "willing suspension of disbelief." And do remember the context of her remarks. She was attacking General Petraeus over his reports of success in pacifying Iraq.