Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

That is a saying the less than credible liberal left needs to ponder. After predicting certain failure in Iraq and a useless Surge the far left failed to manufacture a stinging defeat and retreat in Iraq. And once you fail to make good on your promises, you are seen as someone who was simply “wrong”. Once failure is the result there is no other label to put on it – it was a failure and those promoting the whole thing (whatever it was) wee wrong. Making excuses and blaming others is just simply failing ugly and without honor and respect. We all make mistakes which makes us human. Loser blame everyone and anyone else for their mistakes.

The anti-war left cannot create a Vietnam style defeat out of Iraq because, thankfully, the American public understand history (in terms of the price we paid in other wars) and they understand defeat is never an option if you can avoid it. The anti-war movement is over now<, its credibility shot to pieces:

Three protesters, a half-dozen signs and a missing petition.

“People walk past and say, ‘I’m glad you’re doing something,’ ” said Marty O’Malley, a Forest Hills council member who has attended more than 100 anti-Iraq war events, as he stood in front of Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle’s Downtown office last week with the small gathering of activists.

“I want to shake them and say, ‘Why aren’t you doing something!?’ ”

…

Americans still have strong feelings about the conflict: 62 percent want the next president to pull out of Iraq within a year or two of taking office, the poll said. Yet war opponents and supporters are having trouble getting the public’s — and the media’s — attention.

A March survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press discovered that just 28 percent of Americans knew the approximate number of U.S. deaths in the war.

“Obviously, I wish that the American people were more engaged in understanding what’s at stake in Iraq,” said Pete Hegseth, who served there with the 101st Airborne Division and is now executive director of Vets for Freedom. “I think it’s unfortunate that here on the homefront we’re not interested in what’s going on overseas.”

Too many people confusing disagreement with lack of understanding. The fact is the doom and gloom predictions are simply wild, emotional speculation without any regard for the resulting bloodshed that would follow if the speculation was followed. So far we have been avoiding defeat as well as can be expected in a situation like Iraq and the War on Terror. We have even done better than those superior Europeans who let Basra and southern Iraq fall under the influence of Islamo Fascists (the UK, who are our staunchest ally, make no mistake) and those even more superior leftist Europeans who are in Afghanistan and refuse to fight Islamo Fascism. They simply move food and direct traffic I suppose. We are clearly doing more to turn back al-Qaeda than those kinds of approaches.

The fact is Americans understand we have more than a small chance to actually win the effort in Iraq. And they know the huge benefits we can reap if we do win it. All they have to do is compare success to all those failed predictions of quagmires and body bags the left has been spouting and see which outcome is preferable. Now the only question in their minds is can we really pull it off this time?

The fact is we have been moving closer to success just about all the time. Our enemy, who is willing to murder, torture and die for the cause has been brutally hard to beat down (which is what you have to do to win the day). But our enemy’s brutality also turned the Muslim street against them, giving us what we need to snuff out our enemies momentum and shrink them down to something manageable. al-Qaeda is not on the rise as the future of Islam. It is holed up in backwards and isolated enclaves now contained in the tribal regions of Pakistan. It is the enemy of Islam hiding out with a bunch of radicals in the hills of Pakistan.

And that does mean we are close to good victory. Not days close, but maybe months close. Only time will tell, and America has decided to wait and see for a bit more.