Rush Limbaugh speaks frequently about the Democratic Party's investment in our defeat in Iraq. Now, Charles Krauthammer has a new column which wonders how the Democrats can continue to pursue this strategy when we are having greater success in Iraq.
How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the United States to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.
Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?
And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.
Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Defense Department, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy.
Democrats didn't campaign on getting out of Iraq. The nutroots did. So, to pacify the nutroots, Democrats are embracing the most despicable strategy a nation's government can have: to undermine its own war effort.
This isn't debate about strategy. The Democrats have already proved they have none. They've argued they want a new course, yet complain when the President adopts the strategy they say they wanted last year.
We've had few American casualties in this four-year war than people in this country who are killed in drunk driving accidents. But not having our soldiers die isn't enough, I suppose. Neither is victory. Only defeat will satisfy these people.
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