Let's look back less than six months.

And as we see changes that point towards victory, what do they say?

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

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“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it — how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

The problem is that they are going to have to explain how they have any credibility left after declaring the war lost and indicating their lack of resolve to win. They are going to have to explain why America should trust them to make hard, unpopular choices in the name of national security even in the face of declining poll numbers. And they will have to explain why their response to an improved situation on the ground in Iraq today is the same as their response to the gloomy outlook that the Democrats capitalized on in 2006.

In other words, why is the only solution offered by todays Democrats the same one we saw in Saigon in 1975?

Posted by: Greg at 03:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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