Friday, February 16, 2007


Congress declared war on Iraq in 2002.

And now, in 2007, the House of Representatives is attempting to declare war over:

The passage of this legislation will signal a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home," she vowed after the vote, in which 17 Republicans joined 229 Democrats in a wartime rebuke to the president.

Sadly for us and our Iraqi friends, ending the fighting will not be accomplished by bringing our troops home too early. We can only declare our war over. The enemy will keep fighting.

If we bring our troops home soon, the Iraqi Shias will still defeat the Sunni Arabs. And maybe the Kurds won't split off from Iraq. I imagine there is a very good chance we will keep Iranian puppets from seizing control of Iraq. So we will not have an Iraq likely to be a threat to us.

But the Iraqi government won't be able to prevent the creation of a Sunnistan haven for al Qaeda in Anbar province. Nor will we be likely to get a democracy in Iraq any time soon.

We will have a minimal victory. One that realists understand. One that does nothing to eliminate the causes of 9/11. One that guarantees that the Long War will go on even longer by giving our enemies hope of forging that caliphate they drone on about.

Or, we could keep moving forward to build on the victories we've already achieved to create an allied Iraq, free and democratic, that will be an asset in the Long War against Islamo-fascism and an example to other people suffering under despots.

All the loyal opposition has to do to ensure victory is to reject that great fear of victory that might be credited to President Bush. But the victoryphobia evident in our opposition is likely too strong to allow that to happen.

Now all we can do is race to victory before the Left can forfeit victory. I'm counting on our Senate to stop this rush to declare defeat even as our troops fight and die for victory as Congress authorized in 2002.

Oh, what our House did today was not in my name. They should be ashamed for their efforts to abandon our troops and inflict defeat on our nation. Victoryphobia is an ugly thing to behold.

UPDATE: Enough Senators stood in the way of surrender to prevent Congress from declaring war over. This is good.

But this will get worse. It is quite possible that Congress will attempt to act as commander-in-chief by delving too deeply into the control of the war. But when your objective is the White House and your real enemy lies inside that structure, details like engineering our defeat and provoking a constitutional crisis are small matters.