Investor's Business Daily, April 20th, 2007
Party Of Retreat: The Senate's top Democrat has announced to terrorists a U.S. surrender in Iraq. Considering our new strategy's documented successes, Harry Reid's determination to lose is practically treasonous.
In a week that saw the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, and a Senate committee subject the attorney general to a modern-day Salem witch trial, the Senate majority leader managed to say something that made headlines:
"This war is lost," the Nevada Democrat told reporters Thursday, "and this surge is not accomplishing anything."
That's odd. According to the Pentagon, the influx of tens of thousands of troops, accompanied by a new strategy focused on counterinsurgency, and led by a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is accomplishing plenty.
Over the past six weeks, as the Baghdad security plan has been implemented, attacks on civilians in the city have been cut roughly in half. Civilian casualties are down almost a quarter nationwide, with attacks on civilians off 17%. Only in north-central Iraq did violence grow.
But leave it to Reid to look on the dark side -- just as terrorists want all of us to do -- and gloat about this month's al-Qaida suicide bombing in Baghdad's Green Zone and the car bombs slaughtering over 100 innocents last week.
Al-Mada, considered the most professional of Iraq's newspapers, last week said "we have to be happy about" the new U.S. security plan in Baghdad because "It is not easy anymore to place bombs in cafes, markets, near the universities and even in the hospitals."
The paper pointed out that "scores of al-Qaida chiefs have been arrested," fleeing families have returned and mosques reopened. "And," the newspaper added, "it especially made the (Iraqi) politicians understand that they should not expect a failure of the present government to boost their own careers."
A U.S. Army dispatch last week from the eastern city of Baqouba provided a localized example of the progress.
"We've pushed al-Qaida out of here," wrote Sgt. Matthew Benzshawel after a three-day clearing operation earlier this month in the Buhriz neighborhood, an al-Qaida stronghold. Forces detained a dozen terrorists and destroyed more than 20 weapons cache.
We suppose Reid would consider Benzshawel a propagandist for the Bush White House, along with all the sergeant's brave fellow soldiers committed to winning this war -- who can and will win if they have the tools, leadership and moral support they deserve.
Reid has instead given moral support to the terrorists. His "leadership" has been to try to cut off our forces' war funding. Now he has told the Islamofascists that victory is theirs if they can just keep blowing up U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens a little while longer.
In aiding and comforting the enemy in wartime, Reid has betrayed the office he holds, shamed the Nevadans he represents and made the Democratic Party he leads synonymous with surrender. There is one way he can repair the damage he's done to the nation: step down.
