Gifts From the Left

Rick Moran has a great article at the American Thinker discussing the many gifts Give 'Em Surrender Harry and Nancy Pelosi have recently bestowed upon the Republicans. Rick does an exceptional job of exposing many of the areas ripe for the mining of public opinion:

. . While his veto would have been upheld anyway, Harry Reid and his assessment that the war is already lost as well as Nancy Pelosi's refusal to meet with the Commanding General in Iraq for a briefing has changed the dynamic of the debate over the war, giving the Administration a juicy opening with which to skewer the opposition.

Pelosi's gaffe is mind boggling. Being able to find time to meet and drink tea with the Syrian thug President Assad but brushing off a briefing with America's own Iraq Commander General Petraeus is a juxtaposition of priorities that is too delicious not to use. The defeatists risk being seen as a variation of the Three Wise Monkeys with "see no progress, hear no progress, and speak no progress" when it comes to Iraq. Perhaps there is a little nervousness about some of the news that is breaking through all the stories about car bombings and suicide attacks, which are down in number but not much in casualties. In fact some of the indicators regarding the violence are improving less than 3 months into the surge.

In truth, the Democrats and the left have already left the surge for dead. No matter what news comes out of Iraq, the Democrats will spin it to prove that the strategy is not working.

Unfortunately, this will be relatively easy to do since the insurgents and terrorists are very obliging in working hand in hand with the defeatists in Congress to undermine the President's strategy by getting as big a bang for their buck with each brutal attack on innocent civilians as they can.

Of course, other elements of the new strategy not totally dependent on the military are showing signs of success. The reconstruction teams, whose numbers have doubled and who have already begun working with tribal leaders to turn the tide in Anbar Province, have met with many small but significant successes. This is reflected in a growing realization by Sunnis that they are likely to get a better political deal if the Americans stay rather than if our troops are withdrawn, leaving them in the lurch:

Meanwhile, opponents of the Iraqi operations back in the United States are getting nervous about the success of the security operations in Baghdad and its suburbs. The fact that nearly all the Sunni Arab tribes have joined the government is seen as a political disaster by many U.S. politicians who have declared Iraq a failed venture for the United States. It's a bizarre situation, and long has been. You only have to visit web sites frequented by Iraqis or American troops, to see that what is reported in most of the media about Iraq is invented, or distorted beyond all reason into an alternate reality. . . .

Read the entire article here. My biggest fear is that the Republicans will not mine this to the degree it deserves. This is not politics, this is national security and our children's future. The political opportunism being displayed by the left to force defeat and ride that to political victory is treasonous. The time for good manners is long past. We should be hearing sound bites containing words such as "traitorous," and "lying." We should be hearing sound bites with phrases such as "speaking German now" and "30 pieces of silver." And we should be hearing those sound bite every night from different sources. In addition, there should be a never ending stream of op-eds from the pols. I do not know why we are not hearing it yet. Is our VP the only person willing to say out loud what is so transparently obvious?