by Rod D. Martin
September 11, 2007

With Osama bin Laden reduced to posting videos that sound like Barack Obama speeches and with the Iraq situation turning around before our (not at all surprised) eyes, this is proving to be a very good 9/11 indeed (and it’s the 9/11 that’s 72 months after the first one, as in 72 virgins, and 72 angels around Allah’s throne, so that matters more than it might).

So what’s the Left to do? These are the folks, after all, who have completely invested themselves in America’s defeat, staked their electoral hopes on America’s global humiliation, and done everything they can to “help” America lose. And America isn’t losing. It would seem a quandry.

But it isn’t, at least not to MoveOn.org.

The loony left’s vanguard took the long-awaited report of America’s most-respected general — the unanimously-confirmed David Petraeus, the west’s foremost counterinsurgency expert — as an opportunity for slander. In a full page New York Times ad headlined “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”, MoveOn — without bothering so much as to hear the man’s report, much less demonstrate a single credential in foreign or military policy of their own — claims that the General is a liar who is “cooking the books for the White House”.

It’s enough to make even MoveOn’s allies blush, as this ABC News story makes painfully clear.

The truth is, anti-war leaders are stymied and frustrated over America’s growing victory, and are increasingly frustrated even with each other at their inability to stop our success.

And what is that success? The defeat of al Qaeda, certainly; but also victory in the proxy war Iran is waging in Iraq, the solidification of the growing democracy there, and ultimately the prevalence of bottom-up liberty throughout the strife-ridden region. As Ronald Reagan used to say, “my strategy is simple: we win, they lose.” Until they lose, across the Middle East, tyrants and terrorists will continue to have unending oil money to fund an unending jihad against all who won’t bow down to them and to Mecca.

The left plays politics with this at everyone’s peril, but as has been the case for decades, just doesn’t care: their short-term domestic political goals trump everything. But they’ve miscalculated on this one: the latest New York Times/CBS poll shows that the vast majority of Americans trust our military commanders on Iraq — and trust them to succeed — while distrusting the political leadership in Washington. MoveOn’s attack on a universally-respected four-star general in full dress uniform, putting his life on the line every day and giving his solemn assessment of his command, makes them look like the untrustworthy hacks they are.

And along with bin Laden’s pitiful video performance, an all-day stock market rally, and the growing consensus among Sunni leaders that kicking al Qaeda out of Iraq is a darn good idea, that makes this a pretty great 9/11 too.