History Written By The Losers

posted at 1:37 am on September 1, 2010 by Doctor Zero
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Winston Churchill once observed that history is written by the victors.  President Obama’s Tuesday night speech on the end of the combat mission in Iraq was an example of history being written by the losers.

There are few examples in recent memory of a political party being as comprehensively wrong as the Democrats were about Iraq, every step of the way.  The Democrats insist their miserable performance on the domestic economy should be measured against phantasmal scenarios of doom – the apocalypse that would have happened if they didn’t blow a trillion bucks on the “stimulus,” which “created or saved” zillions of jobs.  When it comes to military policy, however, they’re happy to believe Saddam Hussein was basically harmless, and would have minded his own business if left alone.  Their court jester, Michael Moore, made a movie depicting Iraq as a kite-flying paradise before the Americans showed up and ruined everything.  Their media allies floated stories, during the early days of the Iraqi occupation, tentatively suggesting things might have been better for the Iraqi people when Saddam ran the show.  After all, he left most of his subjects alive.

Although most Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq, they quickly changed their minds when public opinion soured on the war, and they saw a political opportunity.  This led to the tortured birth of the Idiotic Evil Genius narrative, in which the Democrats claimed George Bush was a simian cowboy moron who diabolically tricked them into supporting his neocon war for oil.  Mainstream Democrat politicians made common cause with the wilder fringes of the nutroots.  Anyone who remembers the melancholy Cirque du Soleil of the Kerry presidential campaign could only laugh at President Obama’s assertion tonight that “Americans across the political spectrum supported the use of force against those who attacked us on 9/11.”  In reality, a sizable chunk of the President’s party had no interest in the Afghanistan operation until it became a useful club against Bush’s Iraq policy.  I wonder how the Kos Kidz feel about Barack Obama declaring them completely outside the “political spectrum.”

It is a simple matter of fact that almost every major Democrat, including Barack Obama and all of the other 2008 presidential contenders, opposed the surge strategy that brought us victory in Iraq.  In other words, if Obama and his party had been in charge from 2004 onward instead of Bush, we would have lost Iraq.  A suggestion to any major Democrat, during the 2004 campaign, that victory could be secured in Iraq by sending more troops would have been met with absolute contempt.

During his speech, Obama boasted of sending troops under General David Petraeus to “break the Taliban’s momentum.”  That would be the same general Obama’s dedicated supporters at MoveOn.org called “General Betray Us.”  Obama’s party accused this man of treason for “lying” about the success of the surge strategy.  MoveOn.org has not been denounced or given the John Birch Society heave-ho from the Democrat party.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, spent much of 2007 declaring the war in Iraq a lost cause.  He plainly stated the surge was “not accomplishing anything.”  The only way the Bush White House could get him to shut up was by daring him to vote with the courage of his convictions and cut off funding for the war effort.  Democrats worked relentlessly against the war effort, relishing the political damage inflicted on George Bush.  Here are Obama’s remarks about Bush from his Tuesday night address:

I am mindful that the Iraq War has been a contentious issue at home. Here, too, it is time to turn the page. This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.

Note the complete lack of credit for Bush’s winning war strategy.  Obama is only willing to concede that Bush supported the troops and loved his country… and that very statement from Obama is an outrageous lie. “No one could doubt” Bush’s love of country and commitment to our security?  How about Van Jones?  You remember him, Mr. President.  You installed him as one of your dozens of unelected, unaccountable “czars,” and gave him a $30 billion budget.  He was forced to resign after revelations he was part of the sub-moronic “9/11 Truth” cult, which believes President Bush deliberately destroyed the World Trade Center in a murderous conspiracy.

If you’ve forgotten Mr. Jones, perhaps you remember Cindy Sheehan, elevated to sainthood by the Left because she used her “absolute moral authority” to declare the Iraq operation a futile waste of life, and George Bush a subhuman tool of the international Zionist conspiracy.  The Democrat Party treated her as a major celebrity back in the day, but discarded her like so much rubbish once Bush was out of office.

It would have been absurd to expect Obama to offer a humble apology for his personal mistakes during the debate over the Iraq war, and admit his party was wrong to actively oppose the victory he celebrated Tuesday night.  Politicians rarely admit mistakes, or offer apologies for errors in judgment.  To cite another example from Tuesday night, during one of his awkward pivots to domestic politics, Obama said that “to strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve.”  This leads one to wonder what Obama’s lavishly funded friends in the NEA, and the bloated Department of Education, have been doing for the last thirty years, aside from making field trips to attend Al Sharpton hate festivals.  No amount of dismal failure will ever lead Democrats to concede that public education is flawed, or a single dollar of funding for its bureaucracy should be cut.

No mistakes, no apologies, no accountability… why learn from history when you can rewrite it?

Thanks are due to the incredible courage and resourcefulness of the American military, the vision of commanders like General David Petraeus, and the remarkable determination of President George W. Bush.  They overcame stiff opposition from Barack Obama and his party to give Iraq a chance at becoming something greater than a plaything for billionaire tyrants and savages.  The long struggle against Islamic fascism may end in something better than mind-shattering bloodshed, because of their efforts.

Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.

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