WASHINGTON -- James Taranto, the very clever Wall Street
Journal writer and editor of Opinion Journal.com, has a thesis
regarding our political culture. He believes that the liberals are
victims of their own cultural hegemony. They say things that are
quite inaccurate. Their inaccuracies are repeated by their
intellectual look-alikes throughout the culture. They reread their
inaccuracies and are roundly confirmed in their ignorance.
Conservatives think the liberal opposition is composed of liars or
suave deceivers. Actually, our liberals are sincere in their
ignorant beliefs. Grant them at least this much.
If our liberals were not so ubiquitously dominant in our
political culture, they might be confronted occasionally by
disagreement. It would smarten them up. It might even cheer them
up, for they have a very gloomy view of the world. Today they are
profoundly convinced, as one of their very brightest has put it,
that the war in Iraq is "lost." The very bright fellow is that
rumpled, lovable old curmudgeon from Nevada, Senator Harry Reid. He
is not the only one. So far as I can tell almost all the Democratic
presidential candidates think the war is lost. Congress abounds
with solons who are calling for retreat. Just the other day I
watched Congressman John Conyers intoning this defeatist line to
Wolf Blitzer, and Blitzer too seemed to agree this war is lost.
Rather heroically Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly
Standard, submitted a Washington Post piece two weeks
back arguing that victory was still attainable in Iraq and that
history would view President George W. Bush benignly. The hoots and
the ha-has from the liberals are still to be heard. Of course, he
had a point. The new strategy of General David Petraeus seems to be
working. Casualties among civilians in Iraq are perceptibly lower.
Sheiks in once hostile provinces such as Anbar and Diyala are
joining forces with us against the savages of al Qaeda, the Iraqi
military is gaining strength, and wider areas of the country are
assuming a semblance of law and order.
Now two critics of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq
have returned from an eight-day visit there and published a piece
in the New York Times that sounds very much like the
writers have come to Kristol's point of view. What will happen to
our liberal friends if they read it? Perhaps Congressman Conyers
will perceive it as satire. It is hard to imagine anything shaking
his conviction that Iraq is a lost cause.
The critics writing in the Times are analysts from the
liberal Brookings Institution, Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M.
Pollack. They chide the defeatist critics of the Administration who
they say "seem unaware of the significant changes taking place" in
Iraq. "As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush
Administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by
the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily
‘victory' but sustainable stability that both we
and the Iraqis could live with." They conclude by saying, "...there
is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that
Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into
2008."
That would take us into an election year with the Democrats
saying the war is lost. What will they say if we are, as these
analysts seem to think, winning? My guess is that they will
continue to say we are losing. Return to Taranto's insight. The
political culture is almost totally befogged by liberal
misconceptions and bugaboos. It is, as we say at The American
Spectator, a Kultursmog. It pollutes the liberals' minds and
renders them oblivious of any evidence contrary to their gloomy
views.
Thus they will continue to say we are losing. They may pipe down
somewhat, but they are not likely to admit to being wrong. How
would they know? If their calls for retreat gain no support from
the electorate, perhaps they will change the subject to another of
their favorite misconceptions, to wit, the economy is going to
hell. Actually, the economy is chugging along in a healthy and
protracted period of growth. For the past five years, per capita
gross domestic product has grown at 11%. We are living through a
vast global economic boom, and the Democrats seem completely
unawares. In 2008 their presidential candidate will be moaning that
we have lost a war and are economically in a hell of a mess. The
Republican will only have to point to a healthy economy and the
success of General Petraeus's splendid army to win. Then the
Democrats will whine that the Republicans stole the election from
them. That is my prediction, and I base it on the evidence.
topics:
Harry Reid, Satire, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO
