The Times: Surge working, Dems ignoring

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed. Democrats who voted for the war have either repudiated their past support completely (John Edwards) or engaged in a convoluted partial retraction (Hillary Clinton). Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit. In Britain, in a somewhat more subtle fashion admittedly, Gordon Brown assumed on becoming the Prime Minister that he should send signals to the voters that Iraq had been “Blair's War”, not one to which he or Britain were totally committed.

All of these attitudes have become outdated. There are many valid complaints about the manner in which the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfeld, in particular, managed Iraq after the 2003 military victory. But not to recognise that matters have improved vastly in the year since Mr Rumsfeld's resignation from the Pentagon was announced and General Petraeus was liberated would be ridiculous.
(the Times)

Yes, it would be ridiculous.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Democratic Party continue on its ridiculous tack right up through the 2008 election ... if the voters start to figure it out before Democratic leadership, anyway.

Those who called the war "lost" were nearly correct by virtue of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lack of political will, along with flawed strategy, gave the insurgency a chance to keep the United States and its allies from victory in Iraq.

A minority with political will combined with an antiwar minority unable to cobble together a coherent foreign policy sustained the war long enough to institute a successful military strategy. As the Times noted, the success of the surge in curbing domestic violence creates the conditions that should make political reconciliation easier to achieve.

Hat tip to Captain's Quarters.

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