Good News From Iraq

From Big Lizards...

* Iraq suicide blasts at lowest level in 7 months

* 11.5% drop in U.S. fatalities in November

* There are now more than 120 Iraqi Army and Police combat battalions actively fighting against the terrorists

* We've officially transferred 90 square miles of the Baghdad province to the Iraqis

* The Iraqis have held two successful, national, free elections in the past year

* The terrorists and the Baathist bitter-enders have been unable to hold any territory whatsoever

Cites and elaborating quotes at the link.

I was trying to make this point earlier:

The Democrats and the media want Bush to lose this war, for political reasons. They want to pressure him to cut and run and allow Iraq to be the war-torn terrorist haven they need it to be in order to prosper.

But they cannot advocate this cut and run strategy if we're winning the war. They cannot press for the withdrawal of all troops from a war when actual victory is perhaps just a year away.

So they need to claim that the war is "unwinnable." If the war is unwinnable, of course, there's hardly anything lost by withrdawing now. In fact, if the war truly were unwinnable, it would be prudent to get out early, rather than throwing living soldiers after the dead.

This requires them to deny all progress being made in Iraq, denigrate the fantastic job our military is doing in hunting down and killing terrorists who would otherwise be committing terrorist actions directly against US interests, claim that Iraq's constitutional, elected government is actually worse than Saddam's dictatorship, etc. Only with this false predicate -- "We're losing now, and we will lose in the future" -- can they advance their defeatist agenda, and disguise the true reasons for wanting a bug-out (they have to defeat Bush politically before he achieves victory militarily in Iraq).

Their careers, political and media, depend upon an American defeat in Iraq. They cannot hope for an actual Al Qaeda military victory; that's simply an impossibility. They need Bush to concede defeat in the jaws of victory, and to do that, they need to convince the American public that a war moving towards full victory is actually doomed to certain defeat.

They need this. They cannot recapture power without it. And if convincing the American people to save their asses by forcing Bush to surrender requires them lying about white phosphorus, "propaganda" in Iraqi newspapers, and the like, they'll do so, gladly.

Much like the Goateed Evil Twins of the Founding Fathers, who knew they were risking hanging for treason by signing the Declaration of Independence, they have put too much on the line to choose any other path at this point.

America must lose for them to win. And if Al Qaeda can't, and the American military won't, help them in securing an American defeat, they'll just have to find another way.

Compare And Contrast... to their relentless dishonest negativism on an economy that's grown at an average yearly rate of 4% for the past several years, as pointed out by the Good Doctor Reo Symes below.

Same thing. They can't quite sabotage the economy (although fostering false pessimissism does injure the economy), but they sure as hell can do a lot to make sure everyone perceives Bush's economic plan as "unwinnable." The moment America realizes the economy is booming, well, forget taking back Congress in 2006.

It drives me batty when the liberals/media (redundant I know) claim that Bush and conservatives are guilty of daffy optimism and "faith-based" politics. In fact, Bush and conservatives' may be optimistic, but their optimism is much closer to reality than liberal/media pessimism.

In fact, it's the liberals/media guiltiest of the daffiest optimism and "faith-based" thinking -- they are exhuberantly, irrationally optimistic that everything from the economy to the war are going to hell in a handbasket, which of course is very optimistic news for them.

posted by Ace at 02:44 PM

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