A Timetable, A Timetable! My kingdom for a timetable!

So General Casey has announced a timetable for Iraqis to get finished training and take over their own security. It's not a timetable like the trains used to run on, though. It's more like a goal, which will take longer or shorter depending on events. Those who keep braying that we didn't have a plan for the postwar or than we don't have an "exit strategy" are ignoring that there's been a timetable all along, including elections and negotiations.

There's the rule for such plans, however. They seldom survive the first encounter with the enemy. The fact that the plans in Iraq have moved along largely as designed has never been acknowledged by those who oppose this war. The President has told us all along that this would be a long strugge. Some things have not gone as we would have liked, but considering the damage we've done to Al Qaeda, not to mention Saddam Hussein, I'd say it was a pretty smart strategy to get the terrorists into an area where we could kill them, without having to try to track them down everywhere else.

We lost 91 soldiers last month. It's a terrible thing when we lose anyone, but focusing only on deaths associated with this war is somewhat racist. It's if the deaths caused by Saddam in those years after we left him in power don't count, or the people being murdered in Darfur aren't as tragic to their families. We have done more that anyone in history to limit the violence of war, yet we're always the ones blamed when we stand up to real warmongers.

All in all, I agree with James Taranto. We were justified in removing Saddam, and it's those who voted to authorize force and then, for political advantage, turned into pacificists and sought reasons to claim that they shouldn't have be bound by their votes, who are the dishonorable ones in this whole affair. They keep blaming everything on Bush and making up new faults to blame him for. They did the same to Reagan, passing his budgets and blaming him for the rise in deficits. When did a Democratcontrolled Congress ever cut spending or balance the budget? The only reason I can think of for the failure of Republicans to engage this attack is that they knew they were doing the same thing. Hastert is a steady journeyman but he's not a debater or a gifted spokesman. I've never seen the Republicans in such disarray, but then I've never seen such dishonesty and partisanship from the media. If the Democrats have been dishonest, the media have been the enablers in this carnival of hypocrisy.

The left is always invoking the international community as if the U.N. were the measure of legitimacy for anything we do. Yet, if the American people choose this dishonor, we will have consigned ourselves to more criticism and less trust from these people. Even now our strongest ally is transforming into one of the Axis of Weasels. Do we really think they will respect us for anything we do now? Remember that our academics follow European culture and attitudes slavishly, and when do you remember the faculty of Harvard praising America for anything? They and the journalism they have created are the Chomsky generation, the Wormtongues whispering shame defeat and despair, as they carefully dispose of our values.