The Defeatist Talk Didn't Stop the Progress in Iraq

John Podhoretz on the talkers versus the doers:

In each election, turnout was higher than the last — and the word being used everywhere to describe yesterday's voting numbers is "overwhelming." Sunnis who had stupidly decided to boycott Election No. 1 finally came out in force. They've figured it out, even though the lunatics on the left in this country and elsewhere haven't yet: Representative government has come to Iraq, and you gotta represent.
While Iraqis braved the terrorists, many Americans trembled before them.

"We can't win in Iraq," shouted Howard Dean, who might have confused Iraq with Iowa, where he couldn't win.

"We've become the enemy," yawped John Murtha — who later told Time magazine that he probably would have said nicer things about the war and its prospects if President Bush had invited him over to the White House for a coke and a few hands of canasta the way his father did.

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a slain soldier, moved to Bush's front yard for the month of August and was treated like a heroine by the media . . . until she called both Hillary Clinton and John McCain warmongers — and you can't criticize either Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

Here at home, a perfect political storm developed. The cold front formed by the political opportunism of the president's partisan opponents met the warm front formed by the Leftist wackoes led by Sheehan, and they both swirled around the calm eye occupied by those all-too-knowing armchair experts who confidently informed the world at every turn about how the Bush administration had mishandled everything in Iraq.

And you know what? It's all nonsense and flapdoodle, all of it. All the talk about Iraq inside the United States in the year 2005 has been meaningless.

Oh, maybe the political storm here will have political consequences next year for the Republicans. Maybe it won't. Maybe, even now, John Murtha is being measured for his angel's wings by a grateful Divinity. Maybe, on the other hand, God likes his angels a little more coherent. Who's to say?

Read the rest here.