The Democrats are increasing the volume on their calls for a withdrawal from Iraq, but as Kimberly Kagin points out in the Wall Street Journal, pulling out now would be to quit just when success is at hand. Of course, as we've argued here before that's precisely why the Democrats are unwilling to wait until General Petraus' progress report is issued in September. The Dems appear to want to do two things: They want to foster the impression that Iraq is a lost cause, and they want us to get out before it becomes plain to everyone that they're wrong.
There's no other explanation for the Democrats' behavior that makes any sense. They have so deeply embedded themselves in the psychology of defeat that to have Iraq turn out well would destroy their credibility with the average American voter for at least a generation. Victory in Iraq would be the worst thing that could happen to the political aspirations of the Democratic party so they demand withdrawal now before victory in Iraq destroys the political credibility of their party.
Read Kagan's entire article. It's an excellent picture of what's really happening in Iraq, and what's happening doesn't look at all like what much of the media is reporting.
While we're on the subject, another thing that doesn't seem to get much mention in the commentary on the war is this: It's becoming increasingly clear that the enemy in Iraq is not comprised to any great extent of Iraqis. The enemy is al Qaida. This doesn't get mentioned much because, I suspect, the critics of the administration have been relentless in faulting Bush for invading Iraq when the real enemy is al Qaida which, we were told, was hiding out in Afghanistan. We were foolish, the argument went, to expend our resources on Iraq when those who declared war on us on 9/11, if not before, were sitting in the mountains of Afghanistan thumbing their noses at us.
Now it appears that the struggle in Iraq is at least largely a struggle of Iraqis and Americans against al Qaida. The tape released by al Zawahiri last week confirms this as does almost every report we read about the fighting. In other words, we are primarily at war with the enemy who attacked us on 9/11, we're winning that war now that we've decided to fight it aggressively, but nevertheless the Democrats and some Republicans want us to quit.
We're like a football team driving down the field with the clock winding down. The team has momentum, they're working their way into field goal range, and just at that moment the coach pulls them off the field and sends them into the locker room. When asked by his stunned players why he did that he tells them that the team has already spent enough energy trying to win, too many players are being injured, and that it's time to go home.
Any coach who did that would be rightly suspected of either having bet against his own team or of having lost his senses. I leave the reader to complete the analogy for him/herself.
RLC