Say Anything Blog

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, along with most of his political party, said we lost the Iraq nearly a year ago.  Since then peace has broken out in Iraq.  Troop casualties are down.  Iraqi casualties are down.  Al Qaeda is on the run, and Iraq’s various political factions are finding common ground.

And, perhaps most importantly, more and more Americans are starting to think that we can win this thing.

  American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006, a development that promises to reshape the political landscape.

  According to late February polling conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 53 percent of Americans — a slim majority — now believe “the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. That figure is up from 42 percent in September 2007.

  The percentage of those who believe the war in Iraq is going “very well” or “fairly well” is also up, from 30 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent today.

  The situation in Iraq remains fluid, of course. A surge in violence or in troop deaths could lead to rapid fluctuations in public opinion. But as the war nears its fifth year, the steady upturn in the public mood stands to alter the dynamics of races up and down the ballot.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, they have so thoroughly invested themselves in the idea of defeat in Iraq (their Presidential front-runner, Barack Obama, is campaigning on the idea of Iraq as a failure and a policy that would require the precipitous withdrawal of troops from that country) that they literally cannot change course on the issue even as American attitudes do just that.  If the tried a flip-flop on Iraq it’d come off as phony and calculated.  The sort of thing politicians more concerned with winning elections than sound war-time policy would do.

Of course, the fact that the Democrats are politicians more concerned with winning elections than sound policy is the reason why they invested themselves in defeat in the first place.

But every day now it’s looking more and more like history will vindicate President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and that Democrats - though they’ll never admit it - may just have to swallow that bitter, jagged pill.