Given the following facts about the war it's hard to understand why the Last Helicopter folk are so strident in their calls for us to get out of the country:
First off, US soldiers killed in Iraq continues to fall. This is the 5th straight month.
Even IED deaths, after a brief surge in February are down to their lowest level since I started keeping track.
Each month, there are more Iraqi troops available.
Slightly more Iraqi police were killed in March then in February, but the trend has plateaued at about 200 fatalities a month.
Meanwhile, March was actually one of the more peaceful months in Iraq since the insurgency began, even for civilians.
This could all change over night, of course, but the trend lines are certainly pointing in the right direction. It seems awfully foolish to be calling on the United States to quit while it's ahead, yet that's exactly what Kerry, Murtha, Pelosi and other Democrats are doing. I don't think this is true of Murtha, but it certainly seems true of others that their biggest fear in Iraq is that the U.S. will win, and that winning will embolden us to use force again. At least some on the left want us to fail so that we will be too chastened and weakened to resort to military intervention again any time soon. The aversion to force is understandable, if wrongheaded, but the means some are willing to employ in order to produce it are reprehensible.