Quit Whether You're Ahead or Not

So the Dems in the House (joined by two brain-dead Republicans) have now voted to demand that our troops leave Iraq by a date certain (which purely by coincidence happens to be two months before the elections next year) regardless of the state of the conflict at that time. Now in one sense, this is simply an exercise in futility. There is no way this will ever pass the Senate, and even if it did, Bush would veto it before the ink was dry.

But even, or perhaps because, this is an empty action, it is so revealing of a mindset of defeat and surrender. The Democratic leadership is pushing hard to get us out of Iraq without regard to military advice...or the Constitutional duties reserved to the Commander in Chief. Even worse, while we can leave Iraq, we cannot leave the war of which that is only a part. If the Dems get their way, the war won't end. The only thing that will end is our participation (at least for a little while) in Iraq. In fact it is clear that cutting and running will embolden our enemies and put us at even greater risk.

I do not know why it has taken four years for the new strategy to be put into place. And it still falls short of what we need to do to achieve our goals, which is to shut down the terror funding and equipment pipelines running from Iran and Syria. Without doing that, all the work we do in Iraq is temporary at best. But we are at least doing something and it is starting to bear fruit. Quitting now is the most foolish thing we could possibly do.