Petraeus 1, Defeatocrats 0

Note to readers: this post refers to two articles from the Weekly Standard, an unabashedly conservative magazine. If the thought of an article from such a source makes you stutter, spit, and whine, it is recommended you skip this post, find a nice, nurturing place, and relax to calming thoughts like “harmonic convergence” or “transgendering the social paradigm.” This way, you won’t annoy normal people. Thank you for your cooperation.

While our server was down, Kim Priestap wanted to post on the following article by David Gelernter:

The issue isn’t tactics–doesn’t concern the draw-down that the administration has forecast and General Petraeus has now discussed, or how this draw-down should work, or how specific such talk ought to be. The issue is deeper. It’s time for Americans to ask some big questions. Do leading Democrats want America to win this war? Have they ever?

Of course not–and not because they are traitors. To leading Democrats such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Al Gore and John Edwards, America would be better off if she lost. And this has been true from the start.

To rephrase the question: Why did Harry Reid announce months ago that the war was lost when it wasn’t, and everyone knew it wasn’t? The wish is father to the deed. He was envisioning the world of his dreams.

The Democrats’ embrace of defeat is inspired by no base desire to see Americans killed or American resources wasted. But let’s be honest about it, and invite the Democrats to be honest too.

Appeasement, pacifism, globalism: Those are the Big Three principles of the Democratic left. Each one has been defended by serious people; all are philosophically plausible, or at least arguable. But they are unpopular (especially the first two) with the U.S. public, and so the Democrats rarely make their views plain. We must infer their ideas from their (usually) guarded public statements.

Read the entire article at the above link. Gelernter hits home: Democrats incline towards seeking some international consensus as if that, if it could be achieved, conferred some moral authority. It does not. The majority of the United Nations still tends toward autocracy and kleptocracy, if not totalitarianism. There is no moral authority to be had there.

Neither are our partners in the much-maligned “Western Civilizations,” the Euro=peons, of any great moral stature. Even as they vote for economic sanctions on rogue regimes, they continue to do business with them on the sly, with full knowledge of their violation of “international law” (supposed the Holy Grail of the Left). Not to be used as an example for the children, are they? And isn’t the left all about the chiiiiildren, after all?

From the same source, analysis from Fred Barnes:

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The effect of Petraeus’s performance was to slow the clock in Washington, as Peter Wehner, fresh from six years at the Bush White House, pointed out on National Review Online. According to the clock trope, Washington was racing toward full-blown rejection
of America’s intervention in Iraq, while the Iraqi government was moving far less quickly to meet Washington’s–mainly Congress’s–demand for political reconciliation and reduced violence. Now, with the momentum for retreat in Iraq diminished, Petraeus has more time and flexibility.

For Democrats, Petraeus Week was a wrenching ordeal. It meant their efforts to change Bush’s policy on Iraq fundamentally were dead. Instead, they decided to push various proposals, some symbolic, some designed to make it more difficult for Bush to carry out his military plans in Iraq.

The New York Times ad by MoveOn.org trashing Petraeus as a liar backfired badly. Making matters worse, Democrats were afraid to repudiate MoveOn.org because the party relies so heavily on it for money and campaign workers. Senator John McCain, among other Republicans, seized the moment. He said if Democratic senator Hillary Clinton isn’t tough enough to denounce MoveOn.org, she’s not tough enough to be president.

Read all of Barnes’ column at the link above. It has indeed been a critical week. For the first time since the 2004 election, the defeat-and-retreat crowd is facing a headwind.