A year after the American troop surge in Iraq began, its success is clear, even to Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Rep. John Murtha. As Wesley Morgan details in the current issue of National Review, violence is way down, American troop levels are decreasing, tribal leaders are casting their lot with America, and a tattered al-Qaeda is on the run. Yet most leading Democrats sound like they haven’t heard the news.On the anniversary of the surge, Harry Reid wrote that “as President Bush continues to cling stubbornly to his flawed strategy, Al Qaeda only grows stronger.” After Bush’s State of the Union Address last week, Hillary Clinton said, “President Bush is not satisfied with failure after failure in Iraq; he wants to bind the next president to his failed strategy . . .,” while Barack Obama‘s assessment was: “Tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that’s just not true.” During Thursday night’s debate at the Kodak theater, conservative radio host Michael Graham asked in frustration, “Do these two U.S. senators have any idea what’s actually happening in Iraq?”
Are they simply clueless? Maybe, though you have to suspect that they do actually know the surge is working. Unpatriotic? Call it what you will; there’s nothing like amplifying every failure and minimizing every success to show the troops in the field which side you’re rooting for. But as the French say, “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a blunder.” Insisting that America is losing in Iraq is not only wrong factually and morally; it’s poor strategy.