John Fund in today's Opinion Journal also believes the Democrats are making some bad bets.
During last week's congressional debate over the war in Iraq, critics of the Bush administration's policy made three arguments: that President Bush more or less lied when claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S., there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that no progress is being made in the war there.
All three assumptions rest on shaky ground, so it is remarkable how much critics have seized on them with such fervor and certainty–the very vices of which they accuse the war's supporters. Indeed, one wonders how Democrats would react if real evidence of weapons of mass destruction, say the discovery of chemical weapon shells, surfaced. Would they step back and re-evaluate their assumptions, or would they accuse the Bush administration of planting the evidence as part of a Karl Rove-inspired pre-election dirty trick? Far from politics ending at the water's edge, today's partisan battles seem to take on added ferocity when they concern foreign policy.
Fund systematically takes apart each of the arguments. The Democrats really are counting on bad news from Iraq. Frankly, they have set themselves up on this. If things get better over there, they will have proved that they are not worthy of trust on national security issues. Look for the MSM to try very hard in the next few months to paint as bleak a picture as they possibly can. Fund's conclusion about the result of the vote in the house on the support resolution is worth repeating:
Given the bland and limited language of the resolution, it is astonishing that 80% of House Democrats felt compelled to vote against it. If President Bush has staked the future of his administration on the outcome in Iraq, Democrats appear to have placed their political bets on the war continuing to go badly. Given the death of Zarqawi, the formation of a unity government in Baghdad, and possible developments in the search for WMD material, that is starting to look like a risky wager.
Democrats might recall they made similar bets that they could win the political debate over Iraq in both 2002 and 2004. They lost both times, and last week's Iraq debate in Congress shouldn't give them confidence that they have any better approach in this election year.
I think they made another mistake here.
