Listen carefully

Renowned Iraq experts Lieberman


and McCain


have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that just as Bush had the “courage to change course in Iraq,” so opponents of the war should change course and support the war. They admonish “opponents of the war in the Congress” to “listen carefully to the evidence that the U.S. military is at last making real and significant progress in its offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq.” Those opponents of the war in the Congress are no doubt immensely grateful for this not-at-all-condescending reminder, without which they might have listened carelessly, leading to merry mix-ups galore: “Did he say the surge is seceding?” “I don’t know, I wasn’t listening carefully, I thought he said it was re-seeding.” “Are you sure he didn’t say inbreeding?”

But what about the notion that “the U.S. military is at last making real and significant progress” (emphasis added). When have the two of them have ever claimed it was doing anything else?

The article talks as if the only causes of violence in Iraq are Al Qaida and Iran.

They say that the Sunni Arab community “was largely synonymous with the insurgency a year ago,” which is just a tad reductive if not racist, but that it “has been turning against al Qaeda from the bottom-up”. Which sounds quite kinky.

Well, it does.