Voting for victory in Iraq

John Podhoretz:

AT crucial moments over the past three-plus years, American politicians and American voters have been forced to pass judgment on the war in Iraq - not by pollsters asking a tiny fraction of them how they feel, but through actual votes, either in Congress or at the ballot box. And every time they are asked to pass judgment, they have chosen to wage it, to validate the politicians who supported it, to pay for it and to continue it.

That's what happened yesterday in the Senate. Two proposals sponsored by Democratic politicians - one requiring the outright removal of U.S. forces by next year, the other putting the Senate on record as calling for a significant drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq - went down to ignominious defeat. Both were landslide losses - 86-13 for the outright pullout, 60-39 for the big drawdown.

This follows similar votes last week in the Senate and the House of Representatives - not to mention votes cast on a fairly regular basis in both bodies since October 2002.

In October 2002, remember, the Congress voted to give the president the authority to go to war by huge margins in both houses. In November 2002, only weeks later, voters in midterm elections strengthened the standing of President Bush and the Republicans.

In 2003, despite the difficulties after the end of major combat operations and the huge amount of money requested by the president, Congress approved a $87 billion package for our military and for reconstruction in Iraq. In further legislation in 2004, 2005 and 2006, Congress approved spending more colossal sums to support the war and associated efforts.

Some might object that this sort of thing would not have happened with Democrats in charge of Congress. But consider this fact about the Democratic Party: In early 2004, faced with the possibility that it might nominate a candidate for president who was stoutly anti-war, Democrats pulled together and nominated a dull and self-regarding senator one of whose principal virtues from an electoral standpoint was that he had voted for the war in 2002.

That nominee, John Kerry, managed to win 59 million votes in November 2004 - a genuinely remarkable achievement that ought to have suggested his vote for the war had actually been astute.

...

What would the poll results be if voters were asked, "Do you want to lose the war in Iraq?" We are not sure because no pollster has ever asked the question. Perhaps they are afraid of teh answer, but if you look at the polss when things are going well in Iraq, the support is well over 60 percent. Dissatisfaction poll may just reflect unhappiness at not winning, rather than support for defeat.