Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.
All of which might be, as Glenn Reynolds thinks, code for consensus, that in offering agreement that sounds like criticism the Democrats may be able to keep the war going while placating their base, to transform themselves into hawks while still hating Bush. It remains to be seen whether they've actually got the stomach for it. We may find out in 2009.
But in all other respects, the Democrats have seemed bent on proving the joke about the definition of a liberal as someone who won't even take his own side in a fight. Somehow the left believes that violence is a spiritual malady that doesn't really effect their lives; that everybody really loses no matter how the war turns out. This is true of a few wars (Trojan, Peloponessian, World War I), but by no means all, a fact readily apparent to anyone with more than a superficial understanding of history. But the left is determined not to study war no more, and so have only one option when faced with it: fritter and carp, preach and howl.
The old saw about how war doesn't prove who's right, only who's left, is absolutely true. If virtue and civilization were the guarantors of military success, we wouldn't need to fight this war (I'm not praising the virtue and civilization of us, by the way, merely underlining the outstanding lack of it in our enemies). But victory in war is dependent on a great many factors; and such things as cunning, killing power, and fortitude rank high among them. As the left is opposed to these things, it does not care for any victory which requires them, and will declare any such victory false, even if it should produce wonders undreamt of, such as the third set of elections happening in Mesopotamia. This is to be ignored, or at any rate declared "not worth the cost," because it doesn't fit the narrative of imperial conquest leading to People's War by the Great Oppressed. Keepers of an ancient tragic narrative of master and slave, bourgeois and proletarian, colonialist and noble savage, they cannot look at Zarqawi and see a brute, a thug, a barbarian who kills for it's own sake and believes himself rewarded by God for this. They see Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Ghandi all rolled into one.
They are trapped in the past, determined to reduce everything to the old crusade no matter how much new data keeps slipping in. Having irrevocably decided that their society is not right, it naturally follows that in a war they do not wish it to be left.
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