RUSH: There’s an interesting column today in the Wall Street Journal, and you can find it at OpinionJournal.com. It’s by Frederick Kagan, who is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the author most recently of No Middle Way: The Challenge of Exit Strategies from Iraq. The headline of the piece is very interesting: ‘Why We are Winning Now in Iraq: Anbar’s citizens needed protection before they would give their ‘hearts and minds,” and they have done so. It’s a long piece and I don’t want to read the whole thing to you, obviously. But it goes to show that the talking point, ‘The US presence is creating more terrorists,’ is wrong. It makes this point brilliantly. Because we surged, because we kicked butt, and because we stayed in these regions after we kicked butt, we provided real and visible security — which corresponds with Iraqis joining the effort, and not being recruited to target the United States. Now, we’ll link to this at RushLimbaugh.com, because it’s a very, very long piece. It’s evidence like this, it’s truth like this that liberal Democrats, the Democratic Party, and the Drive-By Media do not want to hear. Everything they tried with General Petraeus and the MoveOn.org ad backfired on them big time, and they are looking to distract people’s attention from their lack of patriotism and their attempt to secure defeat for this country and the US military. It’s going to blow back on them again.
They’ve had 55 resolutions! Do you people know this? They’ve tried 55 resolutions in the House and Senate to establish a date certain to get out of Iraq, and every one of them has failed. Now, these people talk about the ’06 elections being largely about the American people wanting to get out of Iraq. They’re misinterpreting that. To the extent the ’06 elections had anything to do with public mood on Iraq, yeah, people were upset about it, but a lot of people are upset that we weren’t being the United States of America, that we weren’t winning, that we weren’t kicking butt. To assess the results of the ’06 election and conclude the American people want us out of there, is absurd. The American people don’t want to lose. They don’t want the US military to lose. They want to win! Americans love winners, especially in a fight. George Patton said it. If the Democrats really had all of this get-out-of-Iraq-now support, the first resolution would have passed — and certainly one of the 55 would have passed. None of them have, and they continue to lose ground each time they offer a new resolution. Of course, now where are we? Not only do Democrats and liberals lie, they will accept being lied to by their own people, by their own candidates. Mrs. Clinton, depending on the hour of the day, has a different position on the war. She has advocated getting out of there. She has suggested we can’t win — and she has told their troops, the kook fringe base, if she gets elected, she’s pulling them out of there.
John Edwards, the same thing. Barack Obama, same thing — and then we go to the debate on Wednesday night, lo and behold, every damned one of them said, ‘I can’t commit to getting us out of Iraq by 2013,’ which, by the way, is four years after any of them would take office. Four years after, and they can’t commit and wouldn’t. Now, their base is simply livid about this. There’s a column by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. Chris Matthews last night was beside himself. He was despondent. It was sort of funny to watch, because they think they’ve been lied to. ‘What is this, 2013? What are we talking about?’ So what do they have to do? They have to deflect attention away from themselves, so the way to do it is run this attempted smear against me, particularly on a matter of military, and that gins up their base because their base obviously hates people like me much more than they’re angry at Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards or whoever. Take your pick. This is simply a strategy for the left. They are running around like stuck pigs. Nothing is working out for them on this war the way they thought it was after they won the House and the Senate in ’06, and they’ve gotta deflect the anger from their own base. So what better way to do that than to put out some smear on me, because it works as far as getting their base livid and angry. Get ’em mad at me, make ’em forget they’re mad at Democrats.
Here’s Eugene Robinson. He was on Matthews last night. He is not happy. He is not buying the political rationale here that you go left for the primary and move to the center for the general, Richard Nixon’s old strategy. ‘Yes, you heard it right,’ he begins. ‘At the Dartmouth College debate Wednesday evening, not one of the three leading Democratic candidates could pledge that all U.S. combat troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his or her first term as president. That’s the end of a first term. Which would be January 2013. Which would be 5 1/2 years from now. ‘It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,’ said Hillary Rodham Clinton. ‘I think it’s hard to project four years from now,’ said Barack Obama. ‘I cannot make that commitment,’ said John Edwards.’ No wonder their base is livid. No wonder their support groups have to run out and try to deflect attention. They have just been lied to by their own people big time. They have been lied to for four years, because when the rubber hit the road, when the Democrats began speaking as president, as a future president, ‘Yeah, we can’t pull out of there. I can’t guarantee we can do that,’ and I told he need this back in April, by the way. The dirty little secret is whoever wins, if the Democrats do, they’re not pulling out of Iraq.
Anyway, Eugene Robinson continues: ‘Makes you wonder what kind of Kool-Aid they were serving backstage. Let me suggest that everyone stick to bottled water next time. … The time for a Democratic candidate to start taking the antiwar vote for granted and scurrying toward an imagined ‘center’ is after securing the nomination, not before. Democratic primary voters are smart enough to recognize the difference between saying you oppose the war and pledging to end it. … One thing we don’t know is whether Bush will have sought to tie the next president’s hands by ordering some kind of attack on Iran. Yes, that would complicate the situation in Iraq. So why did Clinton vote Wednesday for a Senate resolution encouraging Bush to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization? Having voted to authorize the Iraq war — she says Bush pulled the wool over her eyes — why would she vote for anything that Bush might try to use as justification for yet another potentially catastrophic war?’ That’s Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, not happy with Mrs. Clinton. He’s not happy with anything he heard, and he’s reflecting the unhappiness of the fringe, lunatic kook base of the Democrat Party. So they’ve gotta deflect attention. ‘And please,’ he concludes, ‘No hiding behind ‘I don’t do hypotheticals.’ The Republican candidates’ view of Iraq, Iran and the Middle East is dangerously apocalyptic, but at least it’s a vision. What’s yours,’ Mrs. Clinton? says Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post.