The NYT and the Deadly Peril of Iraq to Democrats

If history is any guide, the Democrats who have invested so completely in defeat in Iraq will suffer a voter backlash if the electorate comes to see the Iraq war as a success. By transparently tying their hopes for partisan political gain to defeat in Iraq, our Democratic leadership is now in bind from which there is no way to retreat from retreat.

Thus, the left are reduced to ignoring the success of the surge in increasingly outlandish ways. Instead of acknowledging the success of the surge in reducing violence to its lowest level since the invasion of Iraq began, the common refrain among Democrats today is that Iraq was the deadliest year yet for American soldiers.

And on those rare occasions when you can get a Democrat to admit that the surge has worked, you get one of two "yes but’s." The first "yes but" is that the success of the surge really only occurred because Iraqis knew that Democrats intended to cut and run from Iraq once they were elected. Indeed, according to history as rewritten by Obama, the Anbar Awakening was a direct result of the 2006 election. That evinces nearly the same degree of intellectual honesty as attributing the continued rising and setting of the sun to a Democratic electoral victory.

The second response one gets is that, while the surge may have improved security, it is still a failure because its whole purpose was to give room for political gains as of yet unrealized. The centerpiece of these "hoped for" gains was de-Baathification to reunite the Sunni population. Thus it was the horror of horrors yesterday when the Iraqi government passed a de-Baathification law out of Parliament. One can only imagine the number of expletives resounding off the hallowed halls haunted by our modern left.

The de-Baathification is a great success for those who want to see Iraq succeed as a democracy. Thus, true to the rule that for every action there is a reaction, we have the enemy of that success, our mendacious left, led in the MSM by the NYT, reacting with all of the sputtering vitriol they can muster to attack the new law. The Sunni legislators in the Iraqi Parliament supported the new law. As described in a NYT article:

But members of the largest Sunni coalition in parliament agreed to the new measure. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the group's leader, said the legislation was fair to low-ranking former Baathists and allowed the higher-ranking Shubah members to receive pensions, "which I consider good and acceptable."

See here. But that is not good enough for the odious NYT editorial board. They use rank speculation to attack the new law. I will not go point by point through the editorial, you can read it here, and I have no doubt you will soon hear similar arguments made in Democratic talking points as time progresses. But one has to love the NYT conclusion. "Iraqis are going to have to do a lot better to make their country work. Withdrawing American troops may finally persuade them to do that."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Apparently, the only way to insure victory is to declare defeat in Iraq and leave it to reinfestation by al Qaeda and Iranian plans to create an Iraqi Hezbollah. If only we declare defeat and leave, then everyone will "live happily ever after." When will the MSM ever press these incredibly disingenuous people on this fantasy? When will the MSM ever ask them what the costs of their cut and run plan portend to be in terms of our national security, a revitalized al Qaeda, and a Middle East that no longer credibly respects U.S. military power?