Victory, Not Defeat

Fire of Liberty

Jack Kelly has good column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that should make a large amount of Dems in Congress pretty wary of making any moves that would tie the President's hand.
Amongst the many fine points of Kelly's column, I think the following places a governor on the Democrats' actions:

Let us set aside for the moment what the "slow bleed" strategy would say about the honesty and character of the Democratic leadership in Congress if it chooses to pursue it and focus on the wisdom, or lack of it, of making the sabotaging of the war effort foremost on the Democratic agenda.

A large majority of Americans are unhappy with the conduct of the war in Iraq, and a majority thinks it was a mistake to go to war with Saddam Hussein in the first place. But recent opinion polls make clear that most Americans still want us to win, and think we can.

Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, Va. surveyed 800 registered voters Feb. 5-7. By identical margins of 57-41 percent, those polled said Iraq was a key part of the war on terror and that U.S. troops should remain until "the job is done." By 56-43 percent, respondents said Americans should stand behind the president in Iraq because we are at war, and by 53-46 percent they said Democrats were going too far, too fast in pressing the president to withdraw troops.

The newspaper Investors' Business Daily took a poll of 925 adults Feb. 5-11. In that poll, 42 percent of respondents said victory in Iraq was "very important," and 24 percent more said it was "somewhat important." Thirty five percent said they were "very hopeful" the United States would succeed, and 23 percent were "somewhat hopeful."

It seems that the American people are greater strategic thinkers than the foreign policy "experts" in Congress.