An editorial column in the Wall Street Journal touches on some of the consequences if Senator Harry Reid's pronouncements are taken seriously.
As for Iran, Mr. Reid's strategy of defeat would guarantee that the radical mullahs of Tehran have more influence in Baghdad than the moderate Shiites of Najaf. It would also make the mullahs even more confident that they can build a bomb with impunity and no fear of any Western response.
The stakes in Iraq are about the future of the entire Middle East--and of our inevitable involvement in it.
I will be curious to see how this ultimately affects the Democratic party. It's hard for me to imagine them gaining by their aggressive attacks against strengthening democracy in Iraq, but I think it depends mostly on how long the mainstream press are will to stay with the inevitability of defeat as their lede. The Washington Post seems to have cracked on that count. Today's front page has a story on Iraq in which defeat is not the foregone conclusion.
Through an interpreter, Cummings began to explain why they were there, that U.S. soldiers would soon be moving into the spaghetti factory, that a wall was going to be built.
I will leave, the man interrupted, shaking.
"No," Cummings said, asking the interpreter to explain again what he had said.
I will leave, the man said again, explaining that he and his family had come to this little bit of land because they had been uprooted, that they had been here two years, that they meant no harm, that they had nowhere else to go, and then, at last hearing the interpreter, he said, I don't have to leave?
"No," Cummings said.
I don't have to leave? the man said again, and then, as his shaking subsided, and his rush of words slowed, his family emerged from the shack. Child after child. An old woman. More children. And finally, a young woman, very pregnant, who stood in the doorway, trying to push her dirty hair off her dirty face with her dirty hands as she looked at the soldiers, at first breathing nervously, then easing into a slight smile as she heard the man saying thank you for saving them from the terrorists, for enclosing them in a wall, for allowing them to stay.
I'm almost stunned to find this in the Post. Maybe they just don't have any books to sell.
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