Democrats out of touch in Iraq

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent article in the Washington Post (via RCP) highlighting the widening gulf between what the Democrats are saying and what the actual situation in Iraq is. Obama has accused Iraqi politicians of doing "nothing"...hmmm...is this really what doing "nothing" is:

1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi Army and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias.

2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki's direction confronted them and prevailed in every town -- Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah -- from Basra to Baghdad.

3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold.

4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces.

5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation.

6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks -- a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenues are being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget.

7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi Army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth Cabinet position.)

I'd like to hear Obama and the Democrats explain how this is nothing, and perhaps more importantly, why they would try to fool the American people (and indeed the rest of the world) by suggesting so in the first place.

Krauthammer continues:

The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Democrats won an exhilarating electoral victory in 2006 pledging withdrawal at a time when conditions in Iraq were dire and we were indeed losing the war. Two years later, when everything is changed, they continue to reflexively repeat their "narrative of defeat and retreat" (as Joe Lieberman so memorably called it) as if nothing has changed.

The Dems seems so intent on losing. Ironically, it's their 'winning' message (in spite of the ramifications) -- it actually echoes what I said on Monday about the rather twisted and entirely offensive notion that Obama, potentially, the next Commander-in-Chief, would benefit politically from the deaths of American soldiers.

I still am amazed that losing is the chosen narrative for the so-called candidate (and party) of hope. The three greatest threats in Iraq (al-Qaeda, the Shiite Militias, and Iran) are being defeated militarily, politically, and socially. Now is not the time to quit, yet that seems to remain the position of the Democrats -- they seem to forget that they're actually Americans too, and that they also benefit from a stable Iraq. This is a great opportunity for McCain:

Obama and the Democrats would forfeit every one of these successes to a declared policy of fixed and unconditional withdrawal. If McCain cannot take to the American people the case for the folly of that policy, he will not be president. Nor should he be.

Absolutely, if McCain can't make this case, then he doesn't deserve to be in the Oval Office. I just hope the media will give him a fair shot at making it.