Good Losers

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Foreign Policy: As the president visits the United Nations, the U.S. attitude toward Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and other challenges has changed. Have the ideas of "victory" and "defense" become passe?

In the 2006 congressional elections and the 2008 presidential election, Democrats convinced voters that they weren't appeasers or defeatists; they simply believed that Republicans were foolishly waging the global war on terror in the wrong ways and places.

"I don't oppose all wars," the president often said regarding Iraq, for instance. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war."

And who can forget Nancy Pelosi appearing on CBS' "60 Minutes" during the 2006 campaign? With Iraq going sour, the soon-to-be-speaker declared that "the war on terror is the war in Afghanistan."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., liked to complain that "we need to finally bring Osama bin Laden to account for his crimes" — nevermind the Bush administration's perfect record of keeping the homeland safe in the years after 9/11; catching one guy in the mountain caves of Waziristan is what's important.

On the eighth anniversary earlier this month of those vicious attacks on America, the Arab news network Al Jazeera was able to run a headline proclaiming: "Pelosi: Afghan Surge Lacks Support." It quoted the speaker as saying:

"I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in the Congress."

The same Al Jazeera story quoted Rep. James Moran, the suburban Washington Democrat known for getting physical with fellow congressmen, who claimed "it is clear that Afghanistan does not lend itself to a military victory," and that America's "military presence clearly is a problem in itself."

Talk about false advertising. Again and again in the last two national campaigns, the Democrats pointed to Afghanistan as the real war we had to win; Iraq, on the other hand, was some crazy diversion that President Bush got neo-conned into, or was fighting to avenge his father.

Well, Afghanistan is now the Democrats' war and, according to the commander placed in charge there by a Democratic president, the U.S. is in danger of losing it. Reports say Gen. Stanley McChrystal may resign if not given tens of thousands more troops to conduct an Afghan version of the successful Iraq counterinsurgency strategy. President Obama says he'll think about it.

Consider that for a moment. The United States of America losing a military conflict against a band of gangsters in a country that is essentially a throwback to the Stone Age. Unlike with Vietnam, no one can blame this time the jungle or the anti-militaristic tunnel vision of a technocrat such as Kennedy-Johnson Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

The abandonment of our plans for a land-based long-range nuclear missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, to guard against Russian or Iranian aggression, smacks similarly of retreat. The Washington Post reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed that "the radar that was going into the Czech Republic looked deep into Russia and actually could monitor the launches of their ICBMs."

So what. It's okay to be in a position of weakness.

Appearing on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on Monday described the leader who will visit the U.N. as a "post-American president." What that seems to mean is that the U.S. doesn't have to worry about losing wars or being weak — anywhere and everywhere in the world.