Mark Steyn: Iraq Is About America

The Left in America think Iraq is about Iraq. Iran and the rest of the Middle East think differently:

Au contraire, the ayatollahs have concluded they have a very clear interest in fomenting chaos in Iraq. They're in favor of Sunni killing Shia, and Shia killing Sunni, and if some vacationing Basque terrorists wanted to blow up the Spanish Cultural Center in Mosul, they'd be in favor of that, too. The Iranians don't care who kills whom as long as every night when Americans turn on the evening news there's smoke over Baghdad. As I say in my book, if you happen to live in Ramadi or Basra, Iraq is about Iraq; if you live in Tehran, or Cairo, or Bei-jing, Moscow, Pyongyang or Brussels, Iraq is about America. American will. American purpose. American credibility.

How far can America be pushed? What can we terrorist-sponsoring get away while the Americans go "all squishy"? A whole host of countries watch with profound interest. The Democrats want two simultaneous things:

1. To use "failure" in Iraq to hang the Republicans and win the presidency.
2. To have all troops out of Iraq so no grown-up decisions have to be made and they can't be blamed for failure.

The Press, of course, plays along. Steyn continues:

So "the Murtha plan" is to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. But of course he's a great American! He's a patriot! He supports the troops! He doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years. As John Kerry wondered during Vietnam, how do you ask a soldier to be the last man to die for a mistake? By nominally "fully funding" a war you don't believe in but "limiting his ability to use the money." Or as the endearingly honest anti-war group MoveCongress.org put it, in an e-mail preview of an exclusive interview with the wise old Murtha:

"Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy."

"Undermining"? Why not? To the Slow-Bleed Democrats, it's the Republicans' war. To an increasing number of what my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls the White-Flag Republicans, it's Bush's war. To everyone else on the planet, it's America's war. And it will be America's defeat.

It will be America's defeat. But these are the people who view Vietnam as a victory. They soooo want to be relevant again. They want defeat in Iraq because it means defeat for America. That's the last time they viewed themselves the winners. And let's be honest here: It's all about reliving the glory days. It is narcissism at its most destructive.

Via Instapundit