Nancy Pelosi goes NEGATIVE

While my mind struggles between a bad choice (McCain) and uneasy choice (Obama) I am once again reminded of the stakes. Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s late edition told Wolf Blitzer that the surge is a “failure.” She sights the same thing we hear from all the liberal candidates that the surge was supposed to provide the time and space necessary for Iraq’s government to bring political change and to reconcile, which is partially true. Any student of history knows that six months of surge is not sufficient enough time for lasting reconciliation or real political change, for that matter neither is five years enough. These lofty goals will be the work of decades, if not centuries.

The surge was never designed to work in six months. It was designed to quell the violence enough for these goals of political change and reconciliation of religious sects to BEGIN. Not to be successful in total. Also mentioned are “benchmarks” that the Iraq government must achieve.

A list of benchmarks is great but if unrealistic deadlines are set it is only a list of failures that never had a chance. You can set as a goal loosing twenty pounds this week but you have no realistic chance of achieving it. You can set as a goal losing twenty pounds over the next two months and then only eat bacon cheese burgers and have no realistic chance of achieving it. Setting goals is easy, it’s the achievement of these goals that is hard.

What Pelosi is counting on is that you are stupid or very uninformed or so invested in defeat that you will believe anything to protect that investment. She doesn’t care that “Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an ‘extraordinary crisis’. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military ‘created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight’. The terrorist group's security structure suffered ‘total collapse’” according to the TimesOnline’s Martin Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher is quoting Abu Tariq an al Qaeda leader in Iraq. No, Nancy Pelosi and those like her will not bring this up. They can’t retain power or get elected on the truth because they have invested in defeat.

What Pelosi will do is summarily suggest “failure” and hope that you believe her, or even grow tired of hearing it and elect a leader that just makes it all go away. It is tempting to be that person. It is tempting to be a republican or democrat and just want it all to go away. I know I struggle with it. But it will not go away without the US finishing what it started. The Iraq investment is like a 30 year mortgage on your house. Nancy Pelosi treats it like a five year car loan.

My admonition to you this election cycle is not a particular candidate but rather a particular mindset. A mindset that questions defeatist language and holds political leaders to the truth. Not the truth as we want it to be but the truth as it actually is. You can find this truth by doing your own due dilligence and research. It is not just your civic duty to vote but to be an informed voter. Nancy Pelosi hopes on the other hand that you remain ignorant and accept “failure.”