Sprinting to Defeat

Harry Reid, not satisfied with legislating interference with the military and the commander in chief moves on to declaring all is lost.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid said yesterday that the war in Iraq is "lost," triggering an angry backlash from Republicans who said the top Democrat had turned his back on the troops.

The bleak assessment, the sharpest yet from Reid, came as the House voted 215 to 199 to uphold leglislation ordering troops out of Iraq next year. Reid said he told Bush on Wednesday that he thought the war could not be won through military force, but only through political, economic, and diplomatic means.

"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense, and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — [know] this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

The surge hasn't even reached its peak, yet he's written it off as a failure. There's a reasonable assessment. The military at least is being guardedly optimistic about the effects, but Reid can't be bothered to listen. I'm wondering where he gets his intel. And how he can manage his daily life with his head so far up his ass.

The reality of the surge is that there will be a relative calm at the start, then a back lash of violence, specifically aimed at stirring up violence between the sects and managed primarily by the foreign insurgents. Then there will be counter and parry between the two for a period. The telling part is whether the Iraqi people choose to join the insurgents and fall into a hot civil war or join their present government and try to bring resolution and peace.

Reid's contention that there is no military part to this situation is incredibly foolish, and completely blind to the historical facts regarding insurgencies. This ignorance makes one ponder as to what his motives are in this statement.

The MSM in some instances aren't helping either. This "Article" is interesting in its posture.

President George W. Bush and fellow Republicans struggled on Thursday with comparisons between the U.S. wars in Iraq and Vietnam as the Senate's top Democrat declared the Iraq war lost.

A day after a White House meeting with lawmakers failed to resolve differences over whether to attach a troop withdrawal plan to a war funding bill, Bush and the Democrats continued their feud from afar.

Asked to compare Iraq to Vietnam, a war that still weighs on the American psyche three decades after it ended, Bush told an Ohio audience a premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could lead to chaos and death the same way war broke out between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

"After Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life. My concern is there would be a parallel there," Bush said, adding that "This time around, the enemy wouldn't just be content to stay in the Middle East, they'd follow us here."

Struggled? How specifically did they struggle? Or is that a bit of opinion leaking in that is obviously distortion or the facts they present? First the President was asked to make the comparison, and his answer as reported is quite accurate, if limited.

In fact, their own report shows Reid as the one that was factually challenged.

Later Thursday on the Senate floor, Reid said: "As long as we follow the president's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course -- and we must change course." The war funding bill should contain a timeline to "reduce combat missions and refocus our efforts on the real threats to our security," he said.

This statement ignores that there are political, economic and informational efforts being performed in Iraq and they are supported by the military effort. I'd love to ask Reid how he expects those efforts to ever have any effect if no stability and security can be established. How would those efforts ever come to fruition without security that only the military can bring?

No doubt the Dems learned the political lesson of Vietnam which branded their party as weak on foreign policy and completely incapable of following through in a war. They parse their words very carefully to ensure everyone knows how patriotic they are and how much they support the troops, while they put road blocks to their activities, like timetables and screeches for withdrawal. They have learned the lesson of perception much better than the Repubs in this case, and since the majority of the citizenry only have shallow perceptions of the reality of Iraq and the effects of losing there, no doubt the Dems have a better political standing.

The question still remains, what if we fail, then what? The Dems have the appearance of a "if we leave they'll be nice" attitude, or the containment strategy. Neither of which will work. Not to mention the world perception of failing would further weaken the US in efforts to stabilize areas of interest.