The real stakes

By Douglas Hanson

Investors Business Daily today nails it on the basic issue of the debate over the President's strategy for Iraq: it's about the consequences of defeat and GW's renewed efforts to achieve victory, and his critics' "dangerous fantasy."

Those opposed to Bush view their anti-war tactics as a means to score a political points, using a potential loss on the battlefield as the mechanism. That is,

The other camp, which seems to include most Democrats and some poll-haunted Republicans, talks as if defeat would be a major blow to Bush but not to America. It roots against the president, treating failure in Iraq as a suitable price to pay for political victory.

And, I might add, failure in Iraq would usher in a business as usual approach to re-distribution of taxpayer dollars to favored domestic programs. The Democrats and the moderate Republicans will fiddle away our security, while the nation wallows in its government sponsored prosperity, pretending not to notice the coming tidal wave of terrorism.