Between Two Worlds

Fred Barnes wrote in the Weekly Standard this past weekend about the plan in Iraq and the failure to communicate it to the American people. He notes that whenever key Democrats offer policy suggestions with regard to winning the war, the suggestions are things that the Administration is already doing. But few people know or understand the US plan:

The administration indeed has a plan: Weaken the Sunni insurgents and turn the job of defeating them over to Iraqis; isolate the Islamic jihadists and let American Special Forces commandos deal with them; and, finally, woo Sunnis to the new government through the appeal of democracy. It's a simple plan, and at the moment it's working.

Former president Bill Clinton said last week that Iraq looks like "a quagmire." He's wrong. On the subject of Iraq, it's Washington that looks more like a quagmire. That was true in Vietnam, too. By the mid-1970s, America was winning in Vietnam, but support in Washington and the country had plummeted. Now we're winning in Iraq and beginning to lose at home. That's a recipe for defeat.