Doubling Down On Defeat & A Pattern Of Avoidance

Doug Ross has a superb retrospective on how our Dems have embraced defeat at all costs. After detailing their perfidy, he characterizes their actions:

They were wrong. They were unbelievably partisan, putting their interests before those of the United States and the safety of its military.

No party has been more wrong, more often, on serious issues of national import than the Democratic party since 1864.

Read the entire post.

Plus there is not only an embrace of defeat, but a refusal to defend it - at least from our would-be Messiah-in-Chief. Gateway Pundit notes that Obama met with Maliki but DID NOT raise the issue of his sixteen month timetable during the meeting - apparently wanting to avoid any fall out that might require Obama to publicly discuss "refining" his plans. To put this in context, Obama also deliberately avoided raising his sixteen month timetable when he had the opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in April. He went AWOL from a town hall meeting before military families where the issue of Iraq and his embrace of defeat was almost sure to be raised - rather pointedly. And he is staying as far away as possible from any debates with McCain that are not both truncated and moderated by MSM synocophants. There is a pattern here.

What does one take from all of this. My take is that Obama is one cowardly SOB without the courage of his convictions to be able to defend his positions in any sort of pointed debate.

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ABC Asks Some Of The Questions That Obama Should Have Asked

In April, during the hearings with Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker, Obama had an opportunity to raise and discuss his plans to order a withdraw from Iraq unrelated to conditions on the ground, beginning immediately and being completed within 16 months. This would have given the public a platform to evaluate Obama's insane plan. From a national security standpoint, from an Iraqi security standpoint, and from a U.S. force protection standpoint, the plan would deeply harm the U.S., play into the hands of Iran and al Qaeda, threaten all the security and political gains made in Iraq, and threaten the security of our withdrawing forces. Indeed, what Obama proposes would turn into a Dunkirk for U.S. forces. Obama studiously refrained from asking before the public any questions that would have raised these issues. But today, at least ABC News is asking some of them - those that concern logistics and force protection.
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This from ABC News:

Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."

It is a plan that, no doubt, helped Obama get his party's nomination, but one that may prove difficult if he is elected president.

Military personnel in Iraq are following the presidential race closely, especially when it comes to Iraq.

The soldiers and commanders we spoke to will not engage in political conversation or talk about any particular candidate, but they had some strong opinions about the military mission which they are trying to accomplish, and the dramatic security gains they have made in the past few months.

We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq.

"We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions.

"Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month.

Asked if he considered it dangerous to pull out if the withdrawal is not based on "conditions," Hammond said, "It's very dangerous. I'll speak for the coalition forces, men and women of character and moral courage; we have a mission, and it's not until the mission is done that I can look my leader in the eye and say, 'Sir, Ma'am, mission accomplished,' and I think it is dangerous to leave anything a little early."

That phrase, "sustainable security," is something you hear a lot in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who is the operational commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, says he has seen things improve significantly here.

As for Obama's stated plan to bring home the troops within 16 months, Austin said, "I'd have to see the entire plan. I'd have to understand the strategic objectives of the leadership, and based on those strategic objectives, come up with operational objectives. It's very difficult to comment on one way or the other, whether one plan would work or one plan wouldn't work. Right now, we are helping the Iraqis achieve sustainable security, and helping them to increase the capability of the Iraqi security forces, and we are making great progress along those lines."

On the streets of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber had struck just days before, Capt. Josh West told us he wants to finish the mission, and that any further drawdown has to be based on conditions on the ground.

"If we pull out of here too early, it's going to establish a vacuum of power that violent criminal groups will be able to fill once we leave," West said.

Capt. Jeremy Ussery, a West Point graduate on his third deployment, pointed to his heavy body armor as we walked in the 120-degree heat, saying, "The same people keep coming back because we want to see Iraq succeed, that's what we want. I don't want my kids, that hopefully will join the military, my notional children, to have to come back to Iraq 30 years from now and wear this."

But Ussery added, "You can't put a timetable on it -- it's events-based."

Success on the battlefield is not the only complication with Obama's plan.

Physically removing the combat brigades within that kind of time frame would be difficult, as well.

The military has been redeploying troops for years, and Maj. Gen. Charles Anderson, who would help with the withdrawal, told us as we toured Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, "We have the capacity to do a minimum of two-and-a-half brigade combat teams a month -- can we expand that capacity? Sure. Can we accelerate? It depends. It depends on the amount of equipment that we bring back. And it's going to depend on how fast we bring them out."

It is the equipment that is the real problem.

. . . While Anderson and his troops have a positive attitude, several commanders who looked at the Obama plan told ABC News, on background, that there was "no way" it could work logistically.

Read the entire article.

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McCain, Timetables and Timeframes

McCain gave a superb speech in Ohio today setting forth the goals that he wanted to accomplish as President over a four year term. One of the topics McCain discussed was Iraq and a timeframe in which he expected our nation to succeed in stabilizing Iraq and defeating the dual existential threats to both America and that nation's nascent democracy.

Barack Obama has posed a timetable for withdraw from Iraq with the last of our combat brigades fighting a rearguard action out of Iraq within 16 months, irrespective of conditions on the ground. John McCain said in his speech that he expected to win the war in Iraq and to have most of our combat troops withdrawn from Iraq by 2013. The difference between those two visions and those two plans is the difference between night and day. The former envisions declaring Iraq a defeat and leaving it to be "Lebanized" by Iran and reinfested by al Qaeda. The second envisions doing what is necessary to fully defeat these threats and stabilize Iraq - a nation where accomplishing those goals is becoming a more realistic possibility with each passing day. Nonetheless, here is how the NYT spun McCain's comments in the lead paragraph of its article reporting McCain's speech:

Senator John McCain declared on Thursday that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013 and that the nation would be a functioning democracy with only “spasmodic” episodes of violence. The comments were a striking departure from his usual refusal to set a date for American withdrawal.

Read the entire article. Is there anyone in the MSM today who has a shred of intellectual honesty left?

Here is McCain's full speech today

Part 1




Part 2



Part 3

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Cordesman Warns On Iraq & Afghanistan

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, writes in the Washington Post today to warn politicians that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can clearly be won and stable states formed, but both will require patience.





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This today from Anthony Cordesman:

No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.

These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.

The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.

Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south.

What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.

. . . The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.

Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.

Read the entire article.

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The Left's Arguments For Legislating Surrender In Iraq, Version 5

Two opinion pieces appeared in the Washington Post yesterday on the status of Iraq. One was a jointly written article by Fred Kagan of AEI, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, and retired General Jack Keane. Its a straightforward look at the successes we have had in Iraq, the many problems yet to overcome, and a warning against withdrawing troops too quickly as al Qaeda attempts to regroup and Iran continues its deadly meddling. You can find it here.

The second article is by Andrew Bacevich, a professor of International Relations at Boston University. Bacevich posits all of the arguments of the hard left for leaving Iraq immediately. And it is not surprising at all to find that the ostensible arguments he posits wholly sidestep the recent successes in Iraq.

When problems appeared in Iraq following al Qaeda's bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome in February 2006, the argument made forcefully by Harry Reid and company was that Iraq was in the middle of a civil war and thus, we needed to leave. At the start of the surge in January 2007, the left adopted the argument that the surge would be a failure. The left reached their nadir in April, 2007 when Harry Reid preemptively declared America defeated by four suicide al Qaeda bombers. Then, by September 2007, with the three month old "surge" clearly starting to have effect, we were treated to the odious Hillary Clinton accusing, in so many words, General Petraeus of lying before Congress. Once it became clear beyond dispute that Iraq was experiencing a giant stride forward in security, the argument became that the Iraqi government was not making any progress towards passage of the benchmarks - with the one central to the left's argument being political progress to bring Sunni's into the government through de-Baathification. And now with that bench mark in large measure met, the far left, represented in the pages of the Washington Post today by Mr. Bacevich, simply come up with new arguments - and as always, hiding the true justification, partisan political gain and establishing the dominance of the leftist foreign policy agenda.

Bacevich's main points are that we should not have invaded Iraq, that the surge is meaningless, and that continued "persistence" in Iraq will "only compound the blunder." As a threshold matter, whether to invade Iraq is a question with relevance today only to history professors. To any who still raise that argument, it is the penultimate red herring. Pulling out of Iraq precipitously in order to satisfy some nagging guilt rather than in consideration of our national security and other concerns would be irresponsible in the extreme. Yet such is the very first argument of the left.

Mr. Bacevich's criticism of the surge is particularly disingenuous. The purpose of the surge was to bring security to Iraq and quell what appeared to be a nascent civil war with foreign elements of al Qaeda and Iran being the driving forces. In that, it has been a success beyond the most optimistic projections but a year ago. Interestingly, Mr. Bacevich does not contest the gains in security, but takes the position that these improvement are meaningless.

". . . what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent.

The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstanding, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant.

The cynicism apparent in those statements is rather breathtaking. He refuses to credit the security gains of the surge, he takes no note of the normalcy that has returned to the majority of Iraq, and he quite disingenuously refuses to acknowledge either the economic growth that is taking place in Iraq or the political reconciliation that just took place at the Parliamentary level. The Sunni legislators themselves were quite happy with the law they helped pass. Evidently Mr. Bacevich knows more about this than the Sunni legislators themselves. And as to the economy of Iraq, we got a brief snapshot of that aspect of Iraq recently from Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution

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Inflation is within reasonable bounds. Oil revenues are up quite a bit due to the price of petroleum, even if production has increased only very gradually. Due largely to the improved security environment, electricity production and distribution finally took a substantial step forward in 2007, for the first time since the 2003 invasion. Without even counting the informal electricity sector, which has itself grown, official numbers have increased 10 percent to 20 percent. Cell phone ownership and usage have gone through the roof; national port capacity has increased substantially; the Internet is making real inroads.

You can read the hard numbers and view the graphs at the DOD's quarterly report on Iraq issued in December.

Mr. Bacevich sneeringly compares Iraq to the successful nation-building projects, such as post-war Germany and Japan. Such is an incredibly superficial comparison that does not even acknowledge the time frame's involved in Germany and Japan. In the case of Germany, it had started war in 1939, it surrendered in 1945 and remained under military rule for four years afterward. During the war, its military capacity was wholly destroyed. A similar situation of course occurred with Japan, and we did not end our military occupation of that country until 1952. In Iraq, we did not destroy their military in set battles in 2003; rather, their military and militias melted away only to start taking part in hostilities later. If Mr. Bacevich wishes to make comparisons to nation building in Germany and Japan, he needs to start from the intellectually honest position of the time frames involved. Further, he needs to acknowledge that neither Germany nor Japan faced the massive problems of an al Qaeda insurgency or an expansionist Iran on its border whose primary tool of statecraft is terrorism.

Mr. Bacevich even attempts to pose the Anbar Awakening and awakening movements throughout Iraq as a negative. As he puts it:

By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

This completely mischaracterizes the Sunni Awakening - a movement that had at its heart a rejection of al Qaeda. This is at least as intellectually dishonest as claiming that a Democratic electoral victory in 2006 was the cause of the Anbar Awakening. Further, those Sunnis fighting against al Qaeda are seeking to take a role in Iraqi politics. To claim that the Anbar Awakening somehow renders the central government irrelevant is nonsensical.

And Bacevich's next argument is equally incoherent. He posits:

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon.

I won't bother quoting the paragraphs that follow that argument. You can read it for yourself and see if you can make any sense of it. As near as I can tell, Bacevich is merely complaining that the success of the surge means that Democrats won't be able to muster the votes to legislate defeat in Iraq.

Lastly, Mr. Bacevich dusts off the old Democratic talking points and pulls out all of the anti-war arguments used to date. According to Mr. Bacevich, the war in Iraq has:

. . . boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

The anti-Americanism meme is the particularly ridiculous. Anti-Americanism did not arise because of the Iraq War, and if anything, we have seen an improvement in how America is perceived as we are seen as succeeding in Iraq. Name for me the last French President to be so openly pro-American as Sarkozy, or the last German President to be as openly pro-American as Merkel. Two, shall we base our foreign policy and national security decisions on public opinion polls in Europe? The anti-american argument is sheer sophisty.

As to his next argument, that Iraq has resulted in the recruitment of "untold numbers of jihadists," can Bacevich, who is applauding the war in Afghanistan, name a single jihadist who was recruited that would not have been so motivated had we only gone to war in Afghanistan? Further, can Bacevich even begin to imagine how robust jihadi recruitment would have been had we reacted ineffectually to 9-11? Or can Mr. Bacevich tell us what will happen to jihadi recruitment if we legislate a victory in Iraq for al Qaeda or Iran? We can pack up and leave Iraq tomorrow, and if it has any effect on jihadi recruitment, it will only be to send it through the roof as the radical clerics claim that only the hand of Allah could have delivered unto them this victory over the Great Satan who had the brave jihadists all but destroyed in Iraq.

Lastly, the tired meme that Afghanistan is more central to the fight of al Qaeda certainly conflicts with the statements of bin Laden and his no. 2, Zawahiri. But why give their open proclomations any weight in the matter when it would conflict with a far left talking point? As to Afghanistan, I defy Mr. Bacevich to tell us how, in any way, abandoning Iraq will assist with the war in Afghanistan. The problem in Afghanistan is really a problem of safe havens in Pakistan. And that is not, at the moment, something we can effect by taking troops out of Iraq.

Mr. Bacevich's arguments are notable for two points. One, they mark the latest evolution in ostensible arguments by the far left for surrendering Iraq as soon as possible. Two, Bacevich does not address the single most important question - what would be the long term ramifications for our nation if we legislatively surrender Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran? Mr. Bacevich I think is either intellectually dishonest or too blinded by partisanship to make valid arguments that consider the long term ramifications.

Lastly, Mr. Bacevich makes for an unusual member of the far left. True, he works in academia, but he is a retired Army Colonel, and a man whose son died fighting in Iraq. In that respect, and wholly apart from my significant disagreements with his arguments above, I wanted to acknowledge his service to our country and to express my sympathy for his loss.

You can find Mr. Bacevich's article here.

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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?

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Obama On The March

Obama, in an interview today, is apparently trying to show that he is at least as vaccuous as John Edwards. His first order upon becoming President will be . . . "TO THE REAR, MARCH:"

Roland Martin: If you are elected what is the very first thing that you focus on as Commander in Chief of this country?

Barack Obama: Well, we will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will give them a new assignment and that is to bring our troops home in a careful, responsible way, but to end this occupation in Iraq. I will call in my Secretary of State and initiate the diplomacy that's needed to make sure that exit is accompanied by negotiations between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Gateway Pundit has the whole story. Thank God we have no strategic interests in the Middle East or I'd be worried by this.

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Hillary Clinton Asks Us For A Willing Suspension of Disbelief

The latest numbers on the violence in Iraq, showing drastic reductions across the board, are here, and you can find the latest assessment of the situation in Iraq by LTG (ret) Barry McCaffery here, in which he observes that there is "an unmistakable new reality" in the security situation. To borrow the phrasing of Hillary Clinton, one would have to engage in a willing suspension of disbelief in order to assess that Iraq is on anything other than an upward spiral, with the counterinsurgency strategy of General David Petraeus having worked beyond expectations to bring a Pax Americana to Iraq. And that is precisely that Hillary Clinton was asking us to do yesterday when she called the war in Iraq failed and reasserted her call for a legislated surrender:

“Last night, the Senate voted to add additional funding for Iraq to the Omnibus appropriations bill without any requirements to end the war,” Clinton said in a statement released by her Senate office. “As I have said before, I cannot and will not support continuing to fund a flawed and failed strategy in Iraq. I was proud to be a co-sponsor of an amendment offered by Sens. Russ Feingold and Harry Reid that would require the President to safely redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq within nine months after which funding for military operations in Iraq would be terminated.

Read the article here. One might suspect that she wants to insure we fail in Iraq purely for her own partisan political gain. And she wants to be our Commander in Chief? I struggle to think of any possible elected office at the federal, state or local level for which this incredibly un-principled woman is qualified.

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Michael O'Hanlon's Suicide Hotline

The Democrats’ mantra of defeat in Iraq, their refusal to acknowledge the reality wrought by the surge, and their continued attempt to surrender legislatively has senior Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon trying to lead his Democrats back from the brink of Copperhead suicide. O’Hanlon long ago saw the changing reality in Iraq and understood why victory there was of great importance. Now he is trying to find some way for his Democrats to extricate themselves from their complete embrace of defeat. He suggests that the Dems adopt what seems more than a bit shameless historical revisionism.

Writing in the USA Today, O’Hanlon muses

Rarely in U.S. history has a political party diagnosed a major failure in the country's approach to a crucial issue of the day, led a national referendum on the failing policy, forced a change in that policy that led to major substantive benefits for the nation — and then categorically refused to take any credit whatsoever for doing so.

O’Hanlon posits the tenuous position that it was only the Democratic takeover of Congress that led Bush to adopt the surge strategy. He suggests the Democrats rely on his suggested narrative to now claim credit for the success in Iraq. Shameless? - you bet. Welcome? - very much so if they would now, as he also suggests, begin playing an affirmative role in making Iraq a success rather than their current course of "rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory" by attempting "to mandate an end" to operations in Iraq.

We now have a realistic chance, not of victory, but of what my fellow Brookings scholar Ken Pollack and I call sustainable stability. Violence rates have dropped by half to two-thirds in the course of 2007, the lowest level in years. Iraq is still very unstable, but it has a chance.

Despite this progress, many Democrats are inclined to provide Bush the roughly $12 billion a month he requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 only if the money is devoted narrowly to counterterrorism and bringing home U.S. troops. This is a mistake.

On strategic grounds, it appears that we now have an opportunity to salvage something significant in Iraq. Given sectarian tensions and brittle Iraqi institutions, this almost surely requires us to execute a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces there rather than an abrupt departure. In political terms, it would be rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory to mandate an end to an operation, however unpopular, just when it is showing its first signs of progress.

Democrats should change course. Rather than demand an end to the operation no matter what, they should continue to keep up the pressure for positive results in Iraq. They can retain their anti-war stance, emphasizing that their default position is that U.S. troops should soon come home absent continued major progress. . . .

Read the article here. O’Hanlon makes a series of recommendations for attaching strings to funding that would allow for the Democrats to maintain an anti-war patina while playing a positive role in making Iraq a success. It’s a reasonable argument and one certainly in the best interests of America's national security and foreign policy. But it is one with little, if any, chance of being implemented.

While O’Hanlon has grasped the reality of Iraq, he has not grasped the reality that he is fundamentally different from his neo-liberal compatriots. O’Hanlon is an anachronism – a classical liberal. His Democratic compatriots are almost entirely neo-liberals who have ejected classical liberalism’s defining quality – intellectual honesty - in favor of the calculus of partisan power. And they long seen defining Iraq as an abject failure a the key to that calculus. With intellectual honesty no longer at issue, facts, reality, and indeed, any interest beyond attainment of partisan power are of no importance.

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Democrats & The Future of Iraq

The Democrats are going apoplectic. Not only does it appear that we will succeed in Iraq, but we will maintain a long term presence to provide internal and external stability. This would be fatal to all the non-principles (America is Bad, Bush is Incompetent, Partisan Political Gain, Iraq was a Mistake, Peace Through Superior Surrender-Power) that our Democrats hold dear. Poor Joe Klein at Time Magazine is even demanding we toss out the Constitution to prevent this one. And Harold Myerson, the legal scholar at the Washington Post, sees this as a nefarious plot by President Bush. Indeed, he warns "Bush's efforts to make the U.S. presence permanent would drape the necks of the Republican presidential and congressional candidates with one large, squawking albatross. " It sounds as if Republicans could be tagged with the eternal shame of success.

With the pax Americana taking hold in Iraq, with Iraqi forces increasing daily in size and effectiveness, and with the drawdown of U.S. forces having begun, it was reported yesterday that President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki had agreed to begin negotiations on the future of U.S. forces in Iraq. Basing troops long term in Iraq would be done, at the invitation of Iraq and for precisely the same reasons as justified statitoning troops in post-war Germany, Japan and Korea: to provide for the internal stability of a nascent Democracy and to protect against external threats. As to external threats to Iraq, Amir Taheri has pointed out that the countries surrounding Iraq have long been planning how to carve it up after the inevitable Democrat-led U.S. withdrawal. And as to internal stability, this from the NY Sun, quoting General Lute:

"From the Iraqi side, the interest that they tend to talk about is that a long-term relationship with us, where we are a reliable, enduring partner with Iraq, will cause different sects inside the Iraqi political structure not to have to hedge their bet in a go-it-alone-like setting, but rather they'll be able to bet on the reliable partnership of the United States," he said.

"To the extent it doesn't cause sectarian groups to have to hedge their bet independently, we're confident that this will actually contribute to reconciliation in the long run," he said.

The agreement in principle "signals that we will protect our interests in Iraq, alongside our Iraqi partners, and that we consider Iraq a key strategic partner, able to increasingly contribute to regional security," the general said.

Read the entire article. (H/T Don Surber)

A stable Iraq is the last thing radical Islamists, Middle East despots, or our Democrats want. According to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein:

The Democrats are lining up. . . . to block any Bush attempt to pass a Status of Forces Agreement treaty with Iraq. The question is, Will Bush try to bypass the Senate by making the SOFA an executive agreement with the Iraqi government? The answer is, of course he will.

. . . But any agreement that opens the door to permanent bases should require Senate approval. . . .

What an ass Joe Klein is. One, a SOFA agreement does not, itself, directly obligate us to station any troops on foreign soil. It merely sets the terms of how such soldiers will be treated in a foreign country. Moreover, SOFA agreements – which we have with virtually every country where our troops are stationed - are not and never have been treaties requiring Senate approval. The President negotiates and signs those agreements as Commander in Chief. As to the whether the Congress can dictate troop deployment once hostilities are ended, that implicates the Constitutional separation of powers between the President as Commander in Chief with day to day control of the military and the Congress whose authority is limited to budgeting and declaration of war. Apparently those nuances of Constitutional law are beyond the grasp of Mr. Klein. Just like the Second Amendment, it would seem that the Constitution need not be consulted when it conflicts with an end that the left is emotionally invested in achieving.

As to the Democrats “lining up,” well, I guess its not as if we have any vital national security interests at stake in Iraq and the Middle East:

Obama has definitively stated that he will "not maintain permanent bases in Iraq." Is it just me, or does that phrasing seem carefully worded?

You can read Hillary’s letter to the White House on the issue here. I love Hillary’s take on this. “To be clear, attempts to establish permanent bases in Iraq would damage U.S. interests in Iraq and the broader region . . .” She does not elaborate on this point, but I would love to hear her explain this in a debate. This is the logic of the far left. America can only succeed by losing. We can only achieve a lasting peace through defeat. It is nihilistic insanity.

John Edwards, though, takes the cake. In demanding a complete withdrawal from Iraq, John Edwards states that “Bush is planning to pursue a 'Korea-style' American occupation of Iraq for 10 years or more.”

How is our stationing of forces in Korea an occupation? An occupation denotes imposing military control over a region. Stationing troops in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government would be no more of an occupation than was the stationing of our troops in Germany or Japan after their own democratic governments been formed. They are there only at the host country invitation and to provide internal and external stability. And in every foreign country that our soldiers have been so stationed, that is precisely what has occurred. If Mr. Edwards is claiming that Korea does not want our troops there, the man has no touch with reality. The last politician who planned to remove our forces from the Korean peninsula was President Carter. And it was the Koreans who went nuts.

It would seem that our Copperheads are walking ever ever further down the road of defeat in Iraq and the world at large. It is a dangerous road for them indeed.

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The History of the Surge Against the Surge . . .

And a sordid history it is. At the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery does an exceptional job of memorializing all of the low points, including among them these gems:

. . . As Harry Reid put it on July 9, "Democrats and military experts and the American people know the president's current strategy is not working and we cannot wait until September to act." As Dianne Feinstein put it, "Today, a majority of the Senate sees that the surge is not working. Do we change course now or do we wait until September? I believe the answer is clear." James Webb, sponsoring an amendment that would cripple the surge, made it clear that whatever Petraeus said wouldn't matter to him. "I don't care what the report says next week. I don't care what the report says in September."

. . . Fearful that Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker might report too much progress in their much-anticipated testimony to Congress in September, Democrats launched a preemptive assault on the duo. "Leading Democrats preemptively assailed the expected findings on Iraq due this week from Gen. David H. Petraeus as 'dead, flat wrong' and said President Bush's likely call for continued patience in the war would simply extend an 'unconscionable' and 'completely unacceptable' policy," reported the International Herald Tribune on September 9, two days before the hearing was scheduled. "The pointed comments from the Democrats seemed designed to undercut the impact of the much-awaited reports." Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts referred to the general's testimony as a "Petraeus village . . . a façade to hide from view the continuing failure of the Bush administration's strategy." Rahm Emanuel said, "We don't need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics, or the Pulitzer for fiction." The testimony required the "willing suspension of disbelief," said Hillary Clinton (a past master at the skill, as she had suspended it often enough in regard to her husband). "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing, and the surge is working," said Dick Durbin. In an unintentional echo of the New York Times's famous "fake but accurate" defense of Dan Rather's fictional documents about President Bush's presumed derelictions of duty in the Texas Air National Guard, Durbin said: "Even if the figures are right, the conclusion is wrong." In less than a year, the Democrats had gone from demanding a change in a policy that was failing, to demanding a change in a policy that hadn't been tried yet, to demanding a change in a policy that at the very least had forestalled disaster and was proving to have some success.

October 2006 was the worst month in Iraq since the war started, with violence spiking all over the country, and death numbers reaching new highs. In November 2006, the Democrats had their best midterm election in 20 years, winning back both the House and the Senate and gaining a large lead in the generic ballot heading into the election of 2008. The two incidents were not unrelated, and, as a result, the party laid down a huge bet on Iraq the Debacle, calculating that the disaster would drive swing voters into their column. "Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding," a gleeful Harry Reid said on April 12, 2007, to reporters. "We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war." . . .

. . . As they took control of Congress at the start of 2007, the Democrats vowed this would be a year of historic importance, and it seems they were prescient: Seldom before in the annals of governance have so many politicians fought so long and so hard to completely screw up a winning strategy being waged on their country's behalf. . . . It was the Stab in the Front, the Surge-against-the-Surge, the Pickett's Charge of the Great War on Terror. It was a year to remember, that will live in the annals of fecklessness. . . .

Read the entire article. And as to Emanuel's comment, referenced above, on handing out the Nobel prize for creative statistics, I do believe Al Gore and the UN shared that one this year.

Update: (H/T Instapundit)And in a similar vein, there is this today from Don Surber, explaining that "[v]ictory was never an option for Democrats."

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Have Our Copperheads Found Their McClellan in Retired LTG General Sanchez?

Several commentators have noted the similarity between our modern day Democrats and the Copperheads of the Civil War. The Copperheads were the virulently anti-war wing that took control of the Democratic party in the 1860’s. Their rhetoric of the day reads like a modern press release from our Democratic Party leadership. Their central meme was that the Civil War was unwinnable and should be concluded. At their nominating convention of 1864, they adopted the plank:

this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored . . .

At the convention, the Democrats nominated retired General George B. McClellan for President. Lincoln had chosen McClellan to command the Union Army in 1861 and then assigned him to command the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln subsuqently relieved McClellan of command in 1862 for his less than stellar performance on the battlefield. McClellan became a bitter and vocal opponent of Lincoln, harshly critical of Lincoln's prosecution of the war. McClellan and the Copperheads maintained that meme even as the facts on the ground changed drastically with victories by General Sherman in Atlanta and General Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley.

Thus it is not hard to see in McClellan many parallels to retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the one time top commander in Iraq. Sanchez held the top military position in Iraq during the year after the fall of the Hussein regime, when the insurgency took root and the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light. His was not a successful command and his remarks since show a bitter man. According to an the Huffington Post, "In October, the three-star general told a group of reporters that the U.S. mission in Iraq was a "nightmare with no end in sight." He also called Bush's decision to deploy 30,000 extra forces to Iraq earlier this year a "desperate attempt" to make up for years of misguided policies in Iraq." While the Democrats have no intention of nominating him as President, Sanchez's bitter screed and refusal to acknowledge changing conditions on the ground make him the darling of our own Copperheads.

The same HufPo piece tells us that Sanchez supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year. Sanchez's recorded remarks will be heard on the weekly Democratic radio address this Saturday, including:

. . . The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country.

There is no evidence that the Iraqis will choose to do so in the near future or that we have an ability to force that result . . .

. . . [the House legislation to force withdrawal from Iraq] makes the proper preparation of our deploying troops a priority and requires the type of shift in their mission that will allow their numbers to be reduced substantially."

While the Democrats of today may be enamored of General Sanchez and his message, history should provide them a cautionary note. Despite McClellan’s outspoken criticism of Lincoln for his poor prosecution of the war, the rhetoric failed once it became apparent that Union forces were succeeding and that victory was possible. In the end, the American electorate punished the Democrats for their anti-war stance in the 1864 election and for several decades afterward. And now we have a very bitter General Sanchez appearing on the scene to support our own Copperhead’s attempt to legislate surrender. It is a surrender being sought even as the facts on the ground in Iraq have changed completely from the black days when General Sanchez commanded our forces.

We will see if history, in fact, does repeat itself. It certainly seems to be doing so at the moment.

Update: The Washington Post sees the cooperation of General Sanchez with the far left Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi as a "strange alliance." It is obviously not if one only looks for the historical antecedents.

Update: James Taranto of WSJ and I share a similar opinion: "With Sanchez having embraced the role of Democratic spokesman, he comes to look increasingly like the George McClellan of the war on terror."

Update: The swing in public perception has begun. MSNBC is reporting: "Some 48 per cent of Americans now believe that the US ­military effort in Iraq is going well, compared with 30 per cent in February, according to the latest poll by the Pew Research Center."

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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.

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"We Shall Surrender In The Fields and in the Streets; We Shall Surrender In the Hills . . ."

That is the voice of our Democratic leadership channelling Churchill and the famous speech he gave to rally his country during the dark days that followed the 1940 British retreat from Dunkirk. Doesn't it make one proud to see our Democrats, refusing to concede against all odds, determined to achieve their version of "victory" at any cost. That is in the true spirit of Churchill.

Well, perhaps not the true spirit. There are a few minor differences between the spirit of Churchill and the things that animate our quartet of Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, and Obey of course - principles, ethics, intellectual honesty, a sense of reality and loyalty to country to name but a few.

And those differences were very much on display yesterday. If you did not see it, Congressional Democrats Jack Murtha and David Obey appeared at a news conference. The Washington Times has the report:

House Democrats' point man in the war-funding showdown with the White House today dismissed U.S. military gains in Iraq and vowed to tighten the purse strings until President Bush accepts a pullout plan.

"Look at all the people that have been displaced, all the [lost] oil production, unemployment, all those type of things," said Rep. John P. Murtha, chairman of House Appropriations defense subcommittee. "We can't win militarily

The Pennsylvania Democrat conceded violence was down dramatically and some normalcy was restored on Iraq's streets, but he said U.S. victory remains unattainable as long as Baghdad fails to pass national-reconciliation laws

"To change the political law, it doesn't seem to me you need the military stability," Mr. Murtha told reporters on Capitol Hill.

The non-sequiter of that last statement is near breathtaking, is it not? Murtha is saying that stability is unnecessary for Iraq to progress from this point. This man is such an idiotic menace, one has to, in the words of Hillary, "suspend disbelief" when listening to him. Likewise is his refusal to acknowledge the grass roots progress by Iraqis towards reconcilliation that has made this period of peace possible. And indeed, Murtha must willfully ignore it as, for all practical purposes, that grass roots progress largely renders moot the benchmarks upon which Murtha hangs his hopes for legislating surrender. Long gone are the days when he and all his colleagues were able to justify their clarion call to surrender on the assertion that Iraq was in a state of civil war.

Actually, my favorite part of the news conference was when Murtha dismissed the pax Americana now descending on Iraq as a "lull" in hostilities. I believe it was Mort Kondracke that commented to the effect that "yes, its a lull in the fighting, just like there was a lull in the fighting after Sherman burned Atlanta." And Krauthammer pointed out that it is not like this "lull" is the result of al Qaeda having gone on a short vacation.

It is not hard to read between the lines here. The Democratic leadership's refusal to fund the Iraq War and their determination to continue treating it as a lost cause is a desparate bid to buy time in the hopes that something major will go wrong in Iraq between now and the end of January, when military funding runs out. They bet the farm on defeat in Iraq, with the high water mark of their charge being Harry Reid’s declaration of defeat and capitulation in response to four suicide bombings by al Qaeda in April. Now, rather than do the right thing in response to changed circumstance, they have chosen to double down their wager on defeat. Their perfidy is despicable - and criminal. How many lives are they willing to sacrifice for political power?

Imagine for a second the ramifications to our national security that would emenate from a legislated defeat in January, even as America has brought a significant measure of peace to Iraq and, in so doing, largely destroyed the radical Islamists of al Qaeda. Indeed, al Qaeda has been beaten to the point that Osama bin Laden was himself moved to declare, just two weeks ago, that the "the darkeness" in Iraq has become "pitch black."

If we left Iraq now, forced to withdraw by legislation, the radical Islamists would certainly claim it as a victory that would take on mythical proportions. Never forget that it was the belief that Islam had defeated the "super power" of the Soviet Union that drove the growth of radical Islam through the 1980's and 90's. Now with their defeat assured on the ground, to be granted a victory over the American super power could only come - as the story will go - from the direct intervention of Allah. God help us all if that occurs. Radical Islam will take on a new life not heretofore imagined. And, as the world's premier Orientalist, Bernard Lewis has stated, speaking of the immeasurable consequences of a withdraw from Iraq last year - before we had largely destroyed al Qaeda - "the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting."

At any rate, the two front war against the mortal enemies of our nation continues. And its most dangerous enemies are inside of our borders.

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Temp Plummets in Hell As the NYT Lead Story Documents Progress In Iraq

Hell must be positively icy at the moment. The NYT has as their lead a story that goes to lengths to document what all but NYT and a few other followers of the MSM have known for some time now. The surge has worked to significantly pacify Iraq. And the large exhale we hear from Baghdad, courtesy of the NYT, is, if you listen close, likely to be followed by an equally large inhale from the collective members of the Democrat Party who are still intent on legislating defeat in Iraq:

Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves

Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.

“I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.”

Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says. . .

Read the story here. There are plenty of "buts" and "ifs" thrown in - this is the NYT after all. And in all fairness to the NYT, there should be a few "buts" and "ifs." We have taken a huge step towards stabilizing Iraq, but there is a long way to go. Still, for the NYT to go this far in acknowledging success is going to be very problematic for Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, and company. This is the time for as big a push as possible in terms of diplomacy and aid. The Republicans should be taking the lead - and taking the Democrats to task for continuing to legislate defeat rather than working to capitalize on the vastly improved security situation.

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The Changing Democratic Meme on Iraq & Efforts to Legislate Defeat

Dr. Sanity has an exceptional post today that addresses several issues of note. The first is the changing Democratic talking points on Iraq in order to justify legislating withdrawal, highlighted by a quote from Victor David Hanson:

We will soon hear that the war, while granted that it may be winnable, was not worth the commensurate cost, from liberal critics who have embraced much of the realist and neo-isolationist creed of the past (at least apart from Darfur). That is a legitimate debate—as long as opponents accept that it is a fallback position, and Harry Reid was mistaken when he announced the war “lost”.

Also expect Democrats to find ways to exaggerate the aggregate costs (like counting the rise from 20-100 dollars a barrel for oil entirely due to the Iraqi war without notice of the new Chinese/Indian demand, unrest in Africa, and declining production from the UK to the US), . . .

We have in fact already seen that with Chuckie Shumer and the recent release of a report that claims the "hiddens" cost of the war in Iraq to be double the actual costs to date.

The second point raised in Dr. Sanity's post is by Gaghdad Bob, who notes the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy of the moral double standard that the neo-liberals apply to America as opposed to its enemies:

On Labor Day I watched Saving Private Ryan again. In the beginning, there was a scene in which a few Germans wanted to surrender, but the American GIs casually shot them and chuckled about it. Now, it would take a far better -- or possibly worse -- man than I to have not done the exact same thing. After all, these were men who, just moments ago, were creating all the carnage on the beach below, leaving your living and breathing friends to die on the sand and in the water.

Today, because of the insane "moral perfectionism" of the left (which we have been discussing in recent posts), the behavior of these American GIs would have, in the words of Senator Dodd, given Hitler the "moral high ground." After all, Dodd and his ilk insist that the Islamofascists can claim the moral high ground based upon our three instances of waterboarding terrorists, while the New York Times published dozens of front page articles about the hijinks at Abu Ghraib, explicitly arguing that we had morally sunk beneath our enemies.

Again, it is not hyperbole to say that these people are literally morally insane.

Dr. Sanity agrees, doing us all the service of reminding us of days past when the neo-liberal left were still more concerned with our national security and intellectual honesty than in attaining partisan political advantage at whatever the cost to our nation:

Indeed, Moral Insanity is the perfect phrase to describe the behavior of the leadership in Congress; in the Media and on the political left these days.

Let's recall, shall we, what the likes of Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry and Rockefeller said a few short years ago (assembled from Power Line and an earlier post of my own):

Nancy Pelosi, December 1998:

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

Ted Kennedy, September 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

John Kerry, October 9, 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Jay Rockefeller, October 10, 2002:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

And, how about those Democratic presidential wannabes past and present:

Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members .. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.

We could go on and on, but I'll close with one more from

John Kerry, January 23, 2003:

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real...

That was then, I guess, and this is now. Democrats seem to have short memories.

John Edwards, 2002

“I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country. And I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.”

Al Gore, September, 2002:

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country" and "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."

As I have mentioned before, the Democratic Party has lost whatever anchor it once had in the real world and is blowin' randomly in the wind. It has become the party of nothing; led by vapid nothings, who stand for nothing, and whose opportunism appears to know no bounds. They have said and will say whatever they happen to think in any given moment is necessary in order to obtain or keep political power.

As they continue to intellectually approach the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the leftist base they pander to, we will have the continuing pleasure of watching these moral pygmies, currently even more intoxicated with power because they have a majority in Congress, as they actively undermine (all with the help of their media propaganda wing) any and all American interests around the world; impede and vilify US military actions (while saying they "support" the troops), and generally behave as prototypical leftists are wont to do--all, of course, in the name of "peace".

. . . Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is just another day's work for the Democrats who suffer from a compulsion to lose the war at any cost.

Read the entire post - and do see the cartoons at the bottom of the post, they are hilarious.

But can you imagine if the Democrats could succeed in legislating defeat - especially given the reality on the ground in Iraq today. What would the effect would be throughout the Muslim ummah?

The radical Islamists would certainly claim it as a victory "by the hand of Allah" that would likely take on mythical and mystical qualities, given that the U.S. military has all but destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq. It was the belief that Islam had defeated the "super power" of the Soviet Union that drove the growth of radical Islam through 2000. Today, even bin Laden admits that al Qaeda has failed and been defeated, declaring the "the darkeness" in Iraq to be "pitch black." But what if our national leadership hands them the opportunity to delcare victory despite the facts on the ground. That would clearly be portrayed as the intervention of Allah on the side of the radical Islamists. God help us all if that occurrs. Radical Islam will take on a new life not heretofore imagined. And, as the world's premier Orientalist, Bernard Lewis has stated, in such an event "the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting." That is an understatement.

Since Dr. Sanity posted this morning, the NYT has reported:

Senate Republicans today easily blocked an effort by Democrats to act on a war spending bill that would have provided $50 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but would have required that troop withdrawals from Iraq begin within 30 days.

The bill had numerous other strings attached a well, including a goal of completing re-deployment from Iraqby mid-December 2008 and a narrowing of the Iraq mission to focus on counter-terrorism and training of Iraqi security forces.

There is such a complete disconnect with reality in the efforts of the Democrats it defies belief. Even their bill itself, requiring as it does that we begin "withdraw within 30 days" of some combat troops wholly ignores that a brigade of "surge" troops began redeployment to the US earlier in the week. That highlights just how much this legislation, moreso than anything else, is designed simply to allow the Democrats to claim that they forced withdraw and that the Iraq War is a defeat for America at least on par with Vietnam.

With the defeat of their bill, Harry Reid now intends to play politics with military funding. When our military desperately needs to repair itself and its forces, Harry Reid is quite content to let the year pass without any additional funding. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, has articulated the consequences of such an action:

"With the passage of the Defense Appropriations Act, there is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time, through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department." Gates said.

"The high degree of uncertainty on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform," he said.

That is not Reid's concern. The degree of neo-liberal perfidy is beyond disgrace.

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Baghdad Harry Reid Joins Pelosi & Murtha in Call To Legislate Defeat In Iraq

With news out of Iraq - though not found in the MSM - getting better and better each day, the neo-liberal left still refuse to loosen their embrace of surrender and the narrative of defeat. Last week it was Spearker Pelosi & Rep. Murtha threatening not to fund the war unless a date certain was set for withdrawal and the complete end to all combat operations in Iraq. Enter Sen. Majority Ldr Harry Reid, continuing his impression of Baghdad Bob, a role he first auditioned for in April when he declared that the U.S. military had been defeated in Iraq as a result of four suicide bombs by al Qaeda. He continues to compeletely ignore reality in what is so obviously an attempt for partisan gain, irrespective of the impact on our national security or, for that matter, the operation of the Defense Department in time of war:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won't approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home.

By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008.

If Bush vetoes the bill, "then the president won't get his $50 billion," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

. . . But their [Reid, Pelosi & Murtha's] remarks reflect an emerging Democratic strategy on the war: Force congressional Republicans and Bush to accept a timetable for troop withdrawals, or turn Pentagon accounting processes into a bureaucratic nightmare.

If Democrats refuse to send Bush the $50 billion, the military would have to drain its annual budget to keep the wars afloat. Last week, Congress approved a $471 billion budget for the military that pays mostly for non-war related projects, such as depot maintenance and weapons development.

. . . In a recent letter to Congress, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England warned that the Army was on track to run out of money by February.

England also said that without more money the military would eventually have to close facilities, layoff civilian workers and defer contracts. Also, the budget delay could disrupt training efforts of Iraqi security forces and efforts to protect troops against roadside bombs, he said.

"The successes they (the troops ) have achieved in recent months will be short lived without appropriate resources to continue their good work," England wrote in a Nov. 8 letter.

. . . The House was expected to vote as early as Wednesday, with the Senate following suit by the end of the week.

Read the article. What will the Democrats do when the MSM begins reporting the news? There will be a price to pay for their perfidy. One gets the impression that they think by closing their eyes and putting their fingers in their ears, they think that they can ignore reality until it goes away and leaves them alone in their fantasy world. Reality won't - but the independent voters who will decide the next election likely will.

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