The Self-fulfilling Prophecy

I’ve been saying for years that this war in Iraq has dragged on because of the anti-war Democrats incessant yapping and the media’s focus on troops’ injuries instead of their accomplishments. The proof comes this month. While the Washington Post dances a jig over the 100 casualties of the past month, do they for one minute wonder why?

The deaths of more than 100 American troops in April made it the deadliest month so far this year for U.S. forces in Iraq, underscoring the growing exposure of Americans as thousands of reinforcements arrive for an 11-week-old offensive to tame sectarian violence.

More than 60 Iraqis also were killed or found dead across Iraq on Monday. Casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces have outstripped those of Americans throughout the war. In March, a total of 2,762 Iraqi civilians and policemen were killed, down 4 percent from the previous month, when 2,864 were killed. Iraq’s government has yet to release any monthly totals for April.

Of course, it’s Bush’s fault for sending more troops into the fray. I guess it couldn’t be because the enemy sees an opportunity to influence US policy by making the president look bad while he vetoes the corruption-ridden defense spending bill, could it? I guess it’d be too honest to posit an alternate scenario to the readers instead of the intellectually vacant “more troops=more casualties”.

Why would I think such a thing?

Highlighting the vulnerability of American forces, a series of explosions Monday night rocked Baghdad’s Green Zone, the most heavily secured enclave in the capital and home to thousands of U.S. troops, Western diplomats and Iraqi government officials.

Hmmmm, the night before the President gets the bill from Congress, the Green Zone gets mortared. Just a coincidence? Especially since the enemy knows there are fewer troops in the Green Zone last night than there were a month ago. Naw, it’s just a publicity stunt by the enemy to make the American public think they’re as strong as ever.

And the media is going along with it – just like they did during the ’68 Tet battle that reduced the Viet Cong to an ineffective fighting force for the remainder of the war in Vietnam, but strengthened them PR-wise when Walter Cronkite and the rest of the press declared the war lost.

A logical person would notice that al-Sadr came out of hiding in Iran for a moment or two to urge his Mahdi army to attack Americans just as the debate in Congress was starting to go his way just weeks after the surge began and forced al-Sadr to seek refuge in Iran. Think the Washington Post could notice that for a minute?

The Post isn’t the only one. AP is positively giddy about numbers, too. And they arrive at the same conclusion as the Post;

   All but one of the latest U.S. deaths occurred in Baghdad, where a nearly 11-week security crackdown has put thousands of additional American soldiers on the streets — making them targets for both Shi’ite and Sunni extremists.

It’s just easier to spew out cause-effect theories supported by shallow interpretations of the numbers rather than admit that the monkey-shines of Pelosi, Murtha, Reid Schumer, et al. are the real cause.

Monkeyshines like what S.A. Miller is reporting in the Washington Times this morning;

   House Democrats are expected to attempt to override the veto this week, although they likely are at least 70 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to succeed. The failure of the House vote would make a Senate action unnecessary because both chambers are needed to defeat a veto. 

To me, this means that Democrats are absolutely out of ideas. They could have spent the last month reworking their bill and presenting the new work to the President, but instead they keep beating the same drum knowing it’s a failure. Too bad the Democrats can’t be this persistant when it comes to our national security. 

That’s OK, because as I’ve said countless times before, the Left and it’s willing accomplices in the media will pay a price eventually for their behavior – just like the price they paid after Vietnam. They’ll all go down in history as the punchline of some hillariouos joke.

Category: Media, Politics, Terror War