by Rod D. Martin
February 18, 2008

Violence continues to drop dramatically in Iraq as the Bush-McCain Surge continues to work its magic, and as Iraqi civilians continue to join their government in eliminating the foreign al Qaeda terrorists who’ve made their country hell.

Which just makes it all the sadder that we remain forcibly subjected to a daily diet of “the war is lost” propaganda over here.

From that canard to the disgraceful slander that “Iraqis aren’t doing enough for themselves” to the painfully ludicrous (but still occasionally repeated) lie that al Qaeda isn’t even in Iraq, the left continues to bet its future on America’s defeat, no matter what they have to say to achieve it; just as Bill Clinton claimed throughout the 1992 elections that the then-growing economy was “the worst economy in fifty years.”

He would have lost that election but for Ross Perot. But you can’t count on things like that, Ralph Nader notwithstanding.

What gets lost in all of this is that this war has liberated 25 million Iraqis from a brutal dictator, Iraqis who are coming together across religious and ethnic lines to build what is slowly becoming only the second free nation in the region. Also lost are the 25 million liberated Afghans, whose previous rulers were known for executing young girls who committed the crime of learning how to read. And of course, little details like the Bush foreign policy’s successes in Korea, encouragement of the several successful color revolutions, and “persuasion” of Libya to not only give up its nuclear weapons program but store it in Oak Ridge, Tennessee get missed by these folks as well.

They get missed for good reason, too: the media doesn’t cover them.

It has become almost cliche among conservatives that “you know we’re winning because Iraq’s not on the front page anymore.” Abu Ghraib, the non-scandal about non-torture in which some American soldiers put women’s underwear and an occasional leash on Iraqi prisoners (which, for many Democratic voters in San Francisco, would otherwise be called “going clubbing”), was front page news for six solid months. In 2007, “the surge is a failure” was front page news for two months before the first surge troops showed up in Iraq.

But where are the stories now?

And particularly this one: where is the story about the heroic American soldiers who are giving 25 million Iraqis hope, racial and religious reconciliation, and a chance at a future without terror and without tyranny, at the cost of only a few more lives than the same al Qaeda enemy killed in one morning in New York on September 11, 2001? The story about how those soldiers, going back again and again, volunteers all, are keeping al Qaeda from capturing the second richest pool of oil reserves in the entire Middle East and using that money to nuke our cities?

You don’t see that story. And you won’t. But know this: we are winning, and we’re winning because George W. Bush is patient enough not to expect this war to easily resolve in the span of a two-and-a-half hour movie. As Hillary Clinton is finding to her horror, the Democratic Party is not a party of grown-ups, not even by her diminutive standards: they expect the action movie ending in time to make it to their double feature (well, except of course when they don’t, as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, etc.; but I digress). Giving them the keys to the White House will mean children running American foreign policy.

And if that should happen, get ready: all those millions of real people, real women, real ethnic minorities, real everything they say they care about, will go back into slavery and death. They’ve promised it, and they will deliver. And every one of our soldiers who’s given her life will have done so in vain.

That’s what this election is about.