THE "FAILED" WAR - AT 9:01 A.M. ET:  Remember when Iraq was "unwinnable," a failed blunder by "neo-cons"?  Jeff Jacoby, who holds forth as the lone conservative at the faltering Boston Globe, gives a more up-to-date perspective:

MARKETS without bombs. Hummers without guns. Ice cream after dark. Busy streets without fear." So began Terry McCarthy's report from Iraq for ABC's World News Sunday on March 15, one of a series the network aired last week as the war in Iraq reached its sixth anniversary.

A nationwide poll of Iraqis reveals that "60 percent expect things to get better next year - almost three times as many as a year and a half ago," McCarthy continued. "Iraqis are slowly discovering they have a future. We flew south to Basra, where 94 percent say their lives are going well. Oil is plentiful here. So is money."

In another report two nights later, ABC's correspondent characterized the Iraqi capital as "a city reborn: speed, light, style - this is Baghdad today. Where car bombs have given way to car racing. Where a once-looted museum has been restored and reopened. And where young women who were forced to cover their heads can again wear the clothes that they like."

But Jacoby also deals with a hard truth:

Even now, with a stubbornness born of partisan hostility or political ideology, there are those who cannot bring themselves to utter the words "victory" and "Iraq" in the same sentence. But six years after the war began, it is ending in victory. As in every war, the price of that victory was higher than we would have wished. The price of defeat would have been far higher.

COMMENT:  Well said.  Now the same intellectually dishonest forces that did everything possible to force a defeat in Iraq are trying to work their magic in Afghanistan.  Instead of victory, they talk of an "exit strategy."  Polls show the left wing of the Democratic Party wants us out of Afghanistan, even though our actions there are a direct result of the 9-11 attacks. 

I wish some of these people would have the courage, and integrity, to admit that they are opposed to any American military operation, and certainly any American victory.  They represent the same kind of intellectual corruption we found in the "anti-war" movement during Vietnam.  The manipulators of that movement "wept" for the Vietnamese people...until the Communists won, and turned Vietnam into a slave state.  Then the weeping stopped.

March 25, 2009