Why We're Fighting

There's a really, really good editorial in today's Wall Street Journal on the Democrats and their pursuit of defeat in Iraq at all costs. The editorial closes with a great summation on why we're in Iraq to begin with:

The stakes in Iraq are about the future of the entire Middle East -- and of our inevitable involvement in it. In calling for withdrawal, Mr. Reid and his allies, just as with Vietnam, may think they are merely following polls that show the public is unhappy with the war. Yet Americans will come to dislike a humiliation and its aftermath even more, especially as they realize that a withdrawal from Iraq now will only make it harder to stabilize the region and defeat Islamist radicals. And they will like it even less should we be required to re-enter the country someday under far worse circumstances.

This is the outcome toward which the "lost" Democrats and Harry Reid are heading, and for which they will be responsible if it occurs. The alternative is to fight for a stable Iraqi government that can control the country and keep it together in a federal, democratic system. As long as such an outcome is within reach, it is our responsibility to achieve it.

Defeatists like Sen. Reid are not only cowards, they are also cravenly hypocritical. They want defeat in Iraq because it will politically damage the President and the Republicans. So, they are willing to let Iraq fall into anarchy and are willing that American lives be lost in vain in order to gain the advantage in the next election. What gutless immorality.

On a lighter note, I predict Rush Limbaugh will love this editorial and not only for its substance. One of Rush's recent themes is that the Dems "own defeat". The editorial (probably not unintentionally) uses the phrase as the subheading in both the WSJ Online and Opinion Journal versions of this editorial. The editorial itself says: "[P]erhaps we ought to be grateful for [Mr. Reid's] earlier candor in laying out the strategic judgment -- and nakedly political rationale -- that underlies the latest Congressional bid to force a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq starting this fall. By doing so, he and the Democrats are taking ownership of whatever ugly outcome follows a U.S. defeat in Iraq. I think Rush will be flattered that the Journal's editorial staff are reinforcing his view that the Dems are the party of defeat.