| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Admit It: The Surge Worked |
| 2009-01-17 |
| It's time for Democrats to say so. During the campaign they rarely did for fear of jeopardizing Barack Obama's chances of winning the presidency. But today, the hesitation is less tactical than emotional. Most Democrats think Bush has been an atrocious president, and they want to usher him out of office with the jeers he so richly deserves. Even if they suspect, in their heart of hearts, that he was right about the surge, they don't want to give him the satisfaction. Yet they should -- not for his sake but for their own. Because Bush has been such an unusually bad president, an entire generation of Democrats now takes it for granted that on the big questions, the right is always wrong. Older liberals remember the Persian Gulf War, which most congressional Democrats opposed and most congressional Republicans supported -- and the Republicans were proven right. They also remember the welfare reform debate of the mid-1990s, when prominent liberals predicted disaster, and disaster didn't happen. Younger liberals, by contrast, have had no such chastening experiences. Watching the Bush administration flit from disaster to disaster, they have grown increasingly dismissive of conservatives in the process. They consume partisan media, where Republican malevolence is taken for granted. They laugh along with the "Colbert Report," the whole premise of which is that conservatives are bombastic, chauvinistic and dumb. They have never had the ideologically humbling experience of watching the people whose politics they loathe be proven right. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #6 Democrats. It must suck to realize you've spent your life cheering for the party consistently on the wrong side of history. But then, most of them are too ignorant to realize it. I suspect that many can't face that Lincoln was a Republican, that the Southern Democrats bitterly fought the civil rights movement and that "peace" in Vietnam resulted in massive genocide. Well, at least this guy is willing to get on board once the war has already been won. Nothing says brilliant like a willingness to admit you were wrong. |
| Posted by: Glolusing Barnsmell3409 2009-01-17 16:58 |
| #5 Being |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-01-17 16:16 |
| #4 “Is the surge solely responsible for the turnaround? Of course not. Al-Qaeda alienated the Sunni tribes; Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army decided to stand down; the United States assassinated key insurgent and militia leaders, all of which mattered as much if not more than the increase in U.S. troops.” Beinart is the quintessential CFR stooge. He and his “fellows” promote themselves as “out of the box” intellectuals yet they can’t resist writing their version of history in the present. Theirs is an egocentric quest to define the problems for their pre-declared solutions. And their cynicism is satisfied from the ease at which they can sway the politically ambitious class. Of course, even a novice salesman could sell Nancy Pelosi with a simple narcissism close. But the irony is how these “Big Picture” academics unabashedly buttress their philosophies with the myopic. Look how Beinart defines the “Surge”. He declares it simply as an “increase in U.S. troops” - not an overall strategy. In other words, the Surge was just an “event” and therefore is independent of other events. As if the Sunni Awakening and Al-Sadrs actions almost happened in some sort of time vacuum. You see, this allows him the liberty of assigning his own values of those events. And predictably he puts those events on equal footing (and above) of one of the most remarkable military success stories of all times. As my Grandmother used to sarcastically say…”Ain’t he clever?” |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2009-01-17 13:58 |
| #3 So how small is the Washington |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2009-01-17 12:37 |
| #2 What they truly need to realize is how far they are pushing the people on the right. They have sought to criminalize the conservative viewpoint. It's no longer that we simply disagree, but they've constantly portrayed us as evil. Thanks to them, I will happily embrace that. Democrats are no longer human to me. They deserve no mercy, pity or compassion. I have taken their hatred so long that I will gladly return it to them. In spades. They time will come that they will have to reap what they have sown, and I'm thinking that what happens to them will be beyond their wildest nightmares. So I offer them my congratulations, they have replaced the Nazi's as the most evil people on this planet. The Nazi's were simply happy to kill everyone else. But for the Democrats, they have embraced and celebrated a culture of human sacrifice worse even than those from before. One that glories in the deaths of their own children while protecting adults that prey on children in the sickest ways imaginable. So while it is a sad thing, to see so many voluntarily resign from the human race, I refuse to call it anything else anymore. We will not win the coming political struggles by turning the other cheek and being timid or refusing to fight back hard against them in the public arena of ideas. A new Dark Age is coming. The only question left is do we cower in our homes or build fires against the dark? |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2009-01-17 12:26 |
| #1 a good point buried in a steaming pile of "Bush bad. Bush stupid" crap. It's the WaPo, nuff said |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-01-17 09:21 |