Majority Says Iraq War a Success, Poll Finds

Daily Kos is pumping up the results from the new Wall Street Journal poll, which finds Americans optimistic about the direction of the country, and confident in President Barack Obama's leadership abilities.

But one of the most interesting findings is that a majority says the U.S. was successful in Iraq:

There was widespread approval of Mr. Obama's plans for Iraq, with 80% approving of his move to pull out most U.S. troops within 19 months. Two in three Americans said the U.S. has accomplished as much as can be expected in Iraq, compared with 27% who said more can be done.

And the public is mostly satisfied with the results, with 53% saying the war has been successful, up from 43% in July 2008. Sixteen percent say it is very likely there will be an all-out civil war in Iraq when U.S. troops leave, compared with 40% who thought that in June 2007.

Read the rest of the poll findings here. Most of this is good news from the Democrats, certainly.

But the results on Iraq have to constitute one of the greatest partisan travesties in the history of American foreign policy. I mean think about it: Here we have Daily Kos now boasting about the success of the war on its front page, yet just months before the Bush administration committed to a new counterinsurgency plan in Iraq, Daily Kos was adamantly announcing that the United States had alreadly lost the war, "It's Not Defeat, Dammit!":

STOP TALKING ABOUT "DEFEAT" IN IRAQ. Hear it from your own thereisnospoon. Say it with me slowly, loud and clear.

There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. Defeat. In. Iraq.

There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. Victory. In. Iraq.

Get over it. Stop using those words because they are MEANINGLESS.

While I appreciate insightful diaires like L C Johnson's, talking about our "defeat" in Iraq is not only misguided and incoherent, it plays into Republican frames about how "we want America to lose", and how we're "defeatists in the face of the enemy." Which is bullshit - because I, like every other patriotic Democratic American, want America to come out a winner every time.

And it's not just diarists here. The James Baker Commission just came out and Ruled Out Victory in Iraq. Whatever that means.

The reason that terms like "victory" and "defeat" in Iraq are meaningless is because you can't "win" an OCCUPATION. Wars you can win or lose; occupations can only end in withdrawal or annexation.

We can no more "win" or "lose" in Iraq that the British could have "won" or "lost" in India, or the French could have "won" or "lost" in Algeria.

That really has to be the biggest "epic fail" post I've ever read.

And to think, just yesterday Daily Kos was still dissing the deployment, promoting an even more rapid acceleration than the 18-month withdrawal plan President Obama announced this week. The Democratic-left has for the past six years agitated, demonstrated, lobbied, and voted for an American defeat in Iraq. Now websites like Daily Kos - and no doubt the rest of the hard-left cadres of the "party of defeat" - are pumping up such triumphant poll findings as if these are some confirmation of leftist wisdom on the war. This is truly a disgrace.

What can you do, I guess? The most signal achievement of the Bush administration - preventing another Vietnam - has resulted in a strange historical twist of not only helping to elect a Democratic administration in the first place, but in propping up the new aministration in foreign policy as well.

Of course, just in case anything goes wrong - like a new round of terrorist attacks at home - leftists are already preparing talking points to blame Republicans for "intelligence" failures.

In any case, stay tuned ...

And here's a big thanks, irrespective of politics, to America's service personnel in all of wars abroad.)