Dems disappointed by success of surge

NY Post Editorial:

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Uber-dove Ted Kennedy grudgingly conceded the success of the surge yesterday (while sneeringly referring to it as "the escalation").

Said Kennedy: "The violence has declined."

His disappointment was palpable - but not surprising. He was among the congressional Democrats who so arrogantly predicted (hoped?) one year ago that the surge would fail.

Indeed, four days before Bush announced the surge, the top two Democrats on Capitol Hill - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - defiantly declared that "adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans."

New York's own Sen. Chuck Schumer, who normally knows better, complained that the president had offered "a new surge without a new strategy."

And those Democrats who even then were hoping to succeed Bush as commander-in-chief piled on.

"The president's plan has been flawed from the outset," said Sen. Barack Obama, adding: "At what point do we say, 'Enough'?"

John Edwards called on Congress to de-fund the surge and demanded the immediate withdrawal of 50,000 US troops.

And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - newly converted to fervent opponent of the war following the Democrats' 2006 wins - complained that the surge "will take us down the wrong road."

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

American casualties are down sharply, having dropped in each of the past four months. Sectarian violence has declined, as the number of car bombings and suicide attacks has plummeted.

That is to say, the chief objectives of the surge, as defined by Bush last year, are well on the way to being realized.

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But are any of the Democratic candidates honest enough to admit they were wrong?

Are you kidding?

Indeed, as Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman wrote yesterday in The Wall Street Journal: "Had we heeded their calls for retreat, Iraq today would be a country in chaos: a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran."

Instead, "the forces of Islamist extremism are facing their single and most humiliating defeat since the loss of Afghanistan in 2001."

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But Democrats - especially the party's White House hopefuls - either refuse to admit their error or display willful cut-and-run mulishness.

Do none of them understand the consequences of failure in Iraq?

Do they even care?

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There are many in the Democrat party who desperately want failure in Iraq. They see failure as a political opportunity to use it blame Republicans and to thwart efforts to use force in the future. What we are now seeing in Iraq is a strategic victory over al Qaeda and its use of insurgency warfare. It is also a strategic defeat for Democrats who want to argue that every use of force is a potential quagmire and that the US cannot defeat insurgency warfare. The Democrats have become like Zawahiri in denying the obvious. Aligning their interests with the interests of a wicked enemy my have some short term political gain for the cynical in the Democrat party, but it is clearly not in the national security interest of the US.