How do we know we’re doing better in Iraq? Because the story is being virtually ignored in the anti-war mainstream press. The silence in the face of successes in war is unheard of-it is customary to tout victories. Victor Davis Hanson explains this curious reversal:
“There’s an old expression about war: ‘Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan.’ But in the case of Iraq, it seems the other way around. We’ve blamed many for the ordeal of the last four years, but it is the American victory in Anbar province that now seems without parents….
“Why this abrupt amnesia about Iraq, given a radical drop in American casualties and entire cities now largely free from serial violence?
“Many anti-war critics are so invested in the notion of the Iraq war as the ‘worst’ something or other in U.S. history that they cannot accept the radical turnaround after over four years of war.
“Other opponents have simply changed their argument from ‘Iraq is lost’ to ‘Even if we do win, it will not have been worth the cost.’ Either way, good news from the front seems to translate into no news.”