Behind the poses and the rhetoric of the Democrats in Congress, Andrew McCarthy argues, George Bush has already won the debate on Iraq:
“That’s because, (1) whether or not they actually believe it, top Democrats keep saying we should be fighting al Qaeda, and (2) al Qaeda, like it or not, is in Iraq -massed, determined and deadly. It is the enduring failure of the administration that it cannot seem to make Americans see these two stark realities.
“Iraq: The place where jihadists commit the latest atrocity hard on the last. Iraq: The ‘capital of the Caliphate,’ as Osama bin Laden has called it, further describing it as the center of the ‘third world war…a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam.’ Iraq: The site of the battle bin Laden aptly says will end either ‘in victory and glory or misery and humiliation.’
“Americans, of course, do not want to be immiserated and humiliated by our enemies. Democrats know this- which is why they dare not end the war, as it is in their power to do, right this minute, by cutting off funding.
“They won’t try that, no matter how furious this dereliction makes their rabid base. …If we leave now, we lose. It’s that simple.”