MCCain: Dem Positions Evidence of a "Failure of Leadership"

He would, of course, be right:

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, McCain criticized Obama and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and insisted that last year's U.S. troop buildup in Iraq brought a glimmer of "something approaching normal" there, despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and a U.S. death toll that has surpassed 4,000.

"I do not believe that anyone should make promises as a candidate for president that they cannot keep if elected," McCain told the crowd.

"To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility," he said. "It is a failure of leadership."

The Democratic position on Iraq is one of diligent ignorance and the studied avoidance of reality.

National Democrats, including both Democratic presidential hopefuls, long ago invested their individual political futures and that of their political party in the gamble that the Iraq War would be a defeat, and they then positioned themselves politically to take advance of the expected loss.

They did so with reckless disregard, and did precisely what they'd accused Republicans of doing: they "went to war" without an exit strategy of any kind at all.

Now that the war has turned for the better, al Qaeda has all but admitted defeat, and Sadr's Iranian-controlled militia is on the verge of being dissolved under a united front of Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders, Democrats have no choice but to continue to advocate for defeat. They continue to do everything in their power to salvage a loss, from trying to influence the media as Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have repeatedly done, to promising a defeat by calendar dates as Barack Obama has done time and again in campaign stops.

General Petraeus' COIN doctrine, the "surge," the Sawha "Awakening" movement, and even Prime Minister al- Maliki's poorly-planned raids into southern Iraq against Iranian-controlled militias have tilted the conflict strongly against al Qaeda and Iran. Democratic politicians find themselves in the unenviable position of having to lie to potential voters and their fellow travelers alike to retain votes and relevance, sharing a delusion that things have not gotten better in Iraq.

To give up the delusion of a static unchanging conflict, an endless stalemate that can only be changed by our loss, is to lose a key element of their community-based reality.

Both Democratic Presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to pay lip service to the virulent and vocal fringe that are convinced that the war was irrevocably lost before the battle was joined. They make promises that no responsible military or foreign policy strategist in either party or on the international stage will support, promising defeat, championing genocide, cheerleading for disaster to garner votes... without any intention of actually following through and letting such a disaster happen on their watch.

Clinton and Obama recognize the passive-aggressive bloodlust of the "progressive" fringe of their party, radicals that do not mind thousands of Iraqis being killing in a genocide, or seeing the Middle East sucked into a violent conventional regional war or nuclear arms race if they can only blame the blood-stained streets on Republicans.

Obama and Hillary follow their supporter's fickle whims. They will pander to the torches—and—pitchforks base, but as their own strategists have made clear, they will not honor the calls for genocide by apathy. They'll lie to them with a smile on their faces, and then enact the exact same policies that McCain has the political courage to vocalize publicly.

McCain rightly criticizes his opponent's positions as failures of leadership. Neither Hillary nor Obama have ever led anything of consequence before.

It is too much to expect them to display leadership now.