Folks, I have been sick of late and trying to keep up with work as best as possible. This has impacted my time to read up on current events and blog. So I have to admit I missed an important article out today by Joe Lieberman on the Iraq war, which is just incredible. Hat tip to RCP for putting this at the top of their reading list, because this article demonstrates amazing clarity of thought and perspective as we enter this pivotal year in our war on terror. A year where we can make significant progress, or allow ourselves a serious defeat at our own hands.

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.

Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq–or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?

This has been the crux of the problem with the liberals from day one: is it more important to punish Bush or win in Iraq? Sadly, I don’t think the far left has the capacity anymore for rational analysis. The primary proof of this is the left’s inane effort to dump Lieberman simply because he was as aggressive as Bush as on cleaning up the ME in order to try and gain some long term security for this nation. That is not the kind of position that deserved a Ned Lamont response. And the American people knew it just as deep blue democrat CT put Lieberman back into the senate for six more years. There is still no better example of how the liberals have gone over the cliff.

If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security–meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.

Tamping down this violence is more than a moral imperative. Al Qaeda’s stated strategy in Iraq has been to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war, precisely because they recognize that it is their best chance to radicalize the country’s politics, derail any hope of democracy in the Middle East, and drive the U.S. to despair and retreat. It also takes advantage of what has been the single greatest American weakness in Iraq: the absence of sufficient troops to protect ordinary Iraqis from violence and terrorism.

Senator Lieberman’s observations are inescapable. The liberals point to the civil strife enflamed by al Qaeda as the reason we need to run away from the ME, but that is handing al Qaeda not only a win, but an example to use over and over again to chase us over and over again from the world stage. In all my years I never thought I would see the day US leaders would demand America surrender to evil butchers as a matter of foreign policy. It used to be “failure is not an option”, now it is “failure is the only allowable” option. Even when we could win this, the left demands we don’t even try.

Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America’s cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.

There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed. Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions.

Only liberals deem attacking our forces at their foundations, attacking their supplies and replacements, is the path to some victory. But we go back to the liberal irrational position that it is more important to beat Bush than save Iraq. And all this comes down to petty ego. The left is desperate to show their wild ramblings about the evil BushHitler were right all along. And if it means losing Iraq and strengthening al Qaeda and facing even worse situations on a broader scale in three years who cares? Well, everyone else who is not a BDS deranged liberal cares. Because everyone else is going to be paying the price. And for many of us the tolerance of allowing the liberals to speak what minds they have left is fast coming to a close. Lieberman lays it out much more politely than I have the patience for:

In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger–forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill–probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.

I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Instead of undermining Gen. Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month, let us give him and his troops the time and support they need to succeed.

Joe doesn’t add the ‘or else’ – because he doesn’t have to. Liberals have been tolerated. Lambasted (as is our right in a free debate), but tolerated. There will come a time when there will be no tolerance left. And the result will come. It will not be some drastic military coup or marshall law or lynching. It will be the dead silence of being completely ignored. The left have this one brief chance before Democrat and Whig become synonmous. Right now I would bet the odds favor the end of the Democrat party as we know it before I retire. Why? Easy:

We are at a critical moment in Iraq–at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America’s cause–the cause of freedom–which we abandon at our peril.

While the liberals are all enthralled in their Jim Jones moment and have already drunk the Kool Aid, the rest of us are not even close. In this situation, those few loons who cannot abide a success in Iraq are simple destroying themselves. The sooner the better is all I can say.