Knife in the Back

Yesterday's comment by Harry Reid that the war in Iraq is "lost," raises my general level of disgust for Democrats and their foreign policy foibles to new, unexpected heights. The least he could have done is let us get the surge boots on the ground before he declared it a disaster.

It fits perfectly past actions though, for Reid to declare defeat at the first sign of success.

Jed Babbin sums it up:

How many times have we heard the Dems insist that they support the troops? It’s one of their mantras. If something isn’t “for the children”, it’s to “support the troops.” But it’s false, just as their insistence last fall that they wouldn’t cut and run was. All of that pales in comparison to one single fact: Reid and the rest of the Democrats do not condemn defeat. They do not say they would have done better to win, because the words “win” and “victory” never pass their lips. They never propose an idea that might lead to quicker, more decisive victory in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa, or Lebanon, or anywhere else. No. The Democratic pathology is the same now as it was forty years ago.

It's not even that "victory" never passes their lips. It's that defeat so often does. It's a fixation.

Lt. Jason Nichols spells it out for Reid:

Senator Reid: When you say we've lost in Iraq, I don't think you understand the effect of your words. The Iraqis I speak with are the good guys here, fighting to build a stable government. They hear what you say, but they don't understand it. They don't know about the political game, they don't know about a Presidential veto, and they don't know about party politics.

But they do know that if they help us, they are noticed by terrorists and extremists. They decide to help us if they think we can protect them from those terrorists. They tell us where caches of weapons are hidden. They call and report small groups of men who are strangers to the neighborhood, men that look the same to us, but are obvious to them as a foreign suicide cell.

To be brief, your words are killing us.

How Reid rose to such a lofty position without understanding this basic idea is beyond me.