Still Trying to Call The Surge A Failure

I blogged here that, given the significant progress in Iraq as to both security gains and politcal reconciliation, that those committed to defeat were coming up with ever more surreal reasoning to justify their transparent partisan positions. I also wrote that it would difficult for the left to keep moving the goal posts. But Michael Kinsley shows today that where there is a will, there is a way.



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Today, far left pundit Michael Kinsley, wrting with the literary equivalent of an army of earth moving vehicles and tow trucks, is upending the goal posts marking success in Iraq and trying to move the posts out the far left side of the stadium:

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his gamble. The surge was a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.

Skepticism seems like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One is to admit that you were wrong, wrong wrong. The other is to sound as if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many opponents of the war have chosen option two.

But we needn't quarrel about all this, or deny the reality of the good news, to say that at the very least, the surge has not worked yet. The test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? And the answer is no.

Read the article. The surge is a failure despite the fact of tremendous security gains and despite the acts of reconciliation studiously ignored by Kinsley because of our troop levels. As I wrote in the linked post at the top, the left is becoming ever more surreal and transparent in their attempt to come up with ostensible justifications for legislating defeat. And the logic with which Kinsley attempts to make his argument could not be a better illustration of my point.