Say Anything Blog

Why is it failing?  Because, according to Pelosi, it hasn’t completed it’s goal yet.

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire (CNN) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, told CNN in an interview Thursday that the surge in Iraq “has not accomplished its goal,” and the first item on her agenda after the recess will be the war in Iraq.

When the House reconvenes in September, Pelosi says Iraq will be “front and center.”

This is the sort of double-speak, move-the-goalposts rhetoric the Democrats are forced to use when confronted with the grim (for them) reality that the surge is, in fact, working.  Which isn’t to say that victory is at hand in Iraq, but certainly makes people like Pelosi and Harry Reid look foolish for declaring this strategy a failure before it was even fully implemented.

And that’s the problem at the heart of Pelosi’s comment.  The surge is failing because it hasn’t reached it’s objective yet?  The surge troops were only fully deployed to Iraq around the beginning of July.  The amount of time the surge has fully been in place is measured in weeks, not months.  Saying that the surge is a failure because it hasn’t reached it’s objective yet is a bit like a teacher failing a student after one day of class.

It’s an unreasonable standard she’s setting, and the only reason she’s setting it is because if the surge does work things are going to be awful for her political party.