Desperate Dems in denial and searching for defeat

Peter Colier and David Horowitz:

As the fall elections approach, the Democrats have formally unveiled their platform for the war in Iraq: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

At the very moment that documents captured from the Zarqawi death site indicate that Al Qaeda feels it is losing its war against the Iraqi future and has become so desperate that its only hope to prevail is by embroiling the U.S. in war with Iran; at the very moment Iraq’s democratically elected government is establishing itself as a functioning regime, and its increasingly capable military becomes more successfully engaged against the insurgents —at this critical moment for the future of Iraq and the Middle East, more than three quarters of the House Democrats have voted against a resolution to “complete the mission.”

For the first time in American history, a major political party wants America to run from a war we are winning.

We have come to an historic juncture. It is not mere perversity or jockeying for position before the fall elections that makes the Democrats refuse to take yes for an answer on this war to liberate a Muslim people, break the hold of bloodlust and authoritarianism in the most benighted region of the world, and defeat terror on its central front. Nor is the Democrats’ choice of capitulation simply a reflex— like so many other positions they hold—of their pathological hatred of George Bush. In large part, in fact, their insensate hatred of Bush is hatred for what this war embodies: America taking up arms against a sea of troubles as turbulent as any it has faced before; America bringing freedom to the heartland of terror.

That George Bush believes America can act unapologetically, without the quaking guilt his critics are convinced stains its history, is why the Democrats hate Bush.

It is all the Democratic Party can do to keep from publicly embracing the assertion of the hard left as to why were are in Iraq: “Blood for Oil!” And the Democrats most certainly agree, with the malicious assertion of Michael Moore, although they are unwilling to repeat it in so many words, that the Iraqi insurgents are fighting an occupying power and are therefore the moral equivalent of America’s Minutemen.

Democrat leaders would have us believe that their present defeatism, which they labor cynically to present as statecraft, is a rueful acknowledgement of facts on the ground in Iraq. They wanted the U.S. to succeed, but because of Bush’s bellicose mendacity they were forced to reconsider their support. Yet Nancy Pelosi, the Woman Who Would be Speaker, attacked the war on April 13, 2003, the day American troops pulled down the statue to Saddam Hussein. It was but two months before the entire Democratic leadership was attacking the President for “lying” about Saddam’s effort to buy fissionable uranium in Niger. The war against the war had begun even in the first flush of success. Within a few months, Ted Kennedy was claiming, “The president’s war is revealed as mindless, needless, senseless and reckless.”

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It is hard not to conclude that the Democrats want America to be defeated in Iraq and that it is not only their electoral opportunism but their worldview that demands it....

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There is much more and it is good history of how the Democrats came to be so desperate for defeat. It is not just about Bush. It is about a world view that every potential conflict is a quagmire and if we win this one we will just blunder into another quagmire in the future.