Liberal Amnesia

I heard some liberal pundits this week forecast that the elections scheduled for January in Iraq would surely not be held on time. They were gleeful in their dissection of President Bush's pronouncements on one day that "elections will be held" and on the next day that "elections are scheduled". To them that meant that their dire predictions of quagmire were true.

There are at least two problems with their gloom and doom forecasts. First, events in Iraq won't stand still enough for there to be a quagmire. Every time they predict something won't happen on schedule it happens. Remember the handover of power to the Iraqis that couldn't possibly happen on June 30th? It happened. Second, they either still don't know George W. Bush yet or they are succombing to their usual amnesia.

Liberals in the media who offer predictions are never slowed down by the fact that all of their past predictions were wrong. It's their own peculiar brand of amnesia.

Go as far back as you want.

Let's start with John Kerry's on the Dick Cavett show debating John O'Neill in 1971. In response to a question from Cavett about the "cliche" of their being a bloodbath in Vietnam if we pulled out Kerry predicted that at most there would be 3000 to 5000 "assasinations" which were to few to worry about. O'Neill responded that the history of Vietnam suggested a bloodbath. History provides the answer. Hundreds of thousands were killed. It was clearly a bloodbath in Vietnam after we pulled out. Thousands more put out to sea, with thousands dying there, to avoid the slaughter on shore. Has John Kerry ever said that he was wrong?

Liberals never seem to look back and ask the question of who was right. They are in fact skilled at downplaying the atrocities of our enemies and at predicting our defeat or the powerlessness of our "quagmires".

We could review many other assertions the left has made over the years:

- that the Cold War was not winnable
- that the Gulf War would take years and thousands of casualties. That we, in effect, would suffer a bloodbath.
- that going into Afghanistan would be a disaster that would bog down and take years and thousands of casualties.
- that the original invasion of Iraq would bog down and take years and cost thousands of casualties.
- that we couldn't turn the country back over to Iraqi civilian officials on June 30th

And now, they predict that the elections won't be held in January as the Bush administration has claimed. They, apparently, still do not know George W. Bush.

I know that there are problems with insurgencies that we are battling in Iraq. And I grieve for the 1000 brave military members who have lost their lives.

But let's be clear. If we went back in time to January of 2000 and predicted that the war would go as follows: that the military would march to Baghdad in a few short weeks and topple the Baathist government, capture Sadaam Hussein and kill his thug sons, capture or kill most of the Iraqi leadership, and then establish and turn power over to a new civialian Iraqi government with only 1000 dead in less than two years - liberals would have scoffed at that.

So now the prediction from the gleeful left is that the elections in Iraq scheduled for January will have to be postponed. Would Las Vegas, if they looked back at the record on liberal predictions, give odds on that?