Focus on failure

A prudent person might push slowly back away from the computer and follow their own advice, but when I saw this story it nearly made me puke, especially coming right on the heels of this week's depressing events:

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Strangely, the nausea was actually due to a sudden realization that Reid might be right. Don't get me wrong, it's not because we're incapable of winning, rather it's because America is not proving itself strong enough to avoid the crushing forces lined up against us winning.

I certainly hope this view is transitory and largely clouded by the events of the week, but I'm not sure.

Most conservatives would suspect Reid has his own selfish reasons for saying such a thing. It's hard to definitively say, since he might strongly believe our losing would be the best thing for America. Perhaps his mindset is that the terrorists and enemies will hate us less if they see us topple their ever despised adversary--our current leader. An olive branch of peace, if you will. Whatever the case Reid is no different than many other liberals who've become so deeply invested in failure they really have no other choice than to root for the other side.

Still, the word "lose" is awfully powerful. To have it spew forth from the mouth of the Majority Leader of the US Senate is scurrilous, especially as he simultaneously threatens to withhold troop funding without a written surrender document.

He knows damn well the effect his rhetoric will have on the enemies of this nation--the same type people the VT nut tried to emulate, if only for just a day. The same people who hope to one day inherit the Middle East when we finally chopper out.

Yeah, maybe the Majority Leader sees it differently, a sort of gift that keeps on giving politically while helping America lose her foreign oil dependence cold turkey. Maybe he thinks it will help to stop global warming. Just get the Haight-Ashbury memorial Department of Peace rolling, confiscate all the guns from the law-abiding citizens and it's all good.

There's no evidence, but wonder if it's just a coincidence the insurgents raised their death tolls in Iraq these past few days? It's not like they would have anything to compete with, right? Our attention and goals must remain squarely focused on failure. Harry would have it no other way.

Maybe I should have backed away from the PC after all.

MORE 4/20/07

This is very much worth the read.