Redstate

When Iraq was a worthless hell hole, with a winless war, an incompetent and ineffective leader, and a seemingly comatose government, Bush was the Devil Incarnate, the architect and sole owner of the mess. Few wanted to support or stand near him. Obama and Clinton had all the right answers. There was nothing the President could say or do that would be given any credence; the people and the MSM had made up their minds. The war was a failure! Thru it all, the President stood firm, learned from the costly errors (just as every other wartime President has) and authorized the surge and he began moving strong competent leaders into key positions - Bolten, Petraeu, Crocker, Gates, Mukcazy, et. al. Today, eighteen months later, with the Iraqi Army finally coming into its own, Al Queda showing the signs of faltering under it's own stupidity, and America is still standing without a successful terrorist attack on it's soil since '03. Yet, the Washington Post can't even allow itself to give the President credit for his steadfastness and apparent recent successes. It's okay, the ball will soon be in the hands of a McCain or an Obama and we'll see how smart and tough they are. You can always count on the liberals and the press to tell it like it is, only thru their eyes, even when they have been wrong. You can also count on them never to admit it.

from total failure. Theoretically this ought to work in McCain's favor. He's tenaciously fought to make sure the war was won instead of given away, and Barak clearly wants to just give it away. But Americans still know we are only 1 defeat away from chaos. They don't like being in a situation where we need to keep winning all the time because even a minor setback could be the one defeat we can't afford. Many do regard the people living in the Middle East as incapable of living in peace, and that therefore it doesn't matter how good our intentions or how well we are doing, as soon as we turn our attention elsewhere the whole thing will blow up again. I'm not so sure they are wrong about that part. I just disagree with them over whether or not we need to do it anyway, and don't have a good argument to convince them I'm right.

The next problem is the Islamists are following the same two pronged attack strategy used to defeat us in Vietnam: 1 military front, 1 political front, deny the two are linked in anyway let alone they are linked at the head. A win on either front gets them control of the middle east and they know that the political front favors them over us. After seven years of active warfare our electorate is tired of war (Heck, so am I) and looking for just about any excuse to stick our collective head in the sand.

The Iranian sponsored agents of chaos in Iraq have opened a new battle line on the political front as this Washington Times article indicates. The battle line is popular, and looks to give the Islamists a way to get that defeat: Block the troop agreement while Bush is in charge and hope Barak wins the election. Then put the complete kabosh on the deal after Barak is elected. With no "governing legal authority" to remain you can count on those troop withdrawls because "clearly" the Iraqi people "will have spoken with a democratic voice".

While I am sure McCain wants to keep the troops well supplied and win the war, I'm not so sure he is equipped to deal with this second front.