One Who Gets It, One Who Doesn't

When I refer to Democrats as the "any port in a storm" party, this is what I'm talking about (via GOP Bloggers):

On Tuesday, [House Minority Moonbat "Crazy Nancy"] Pelosi and three other top Democrats called for a commission to investigate reported abuses of detainees from the war on terror. Mrs. Pelosi said it is past time that the Administration established a policy on determining the fates of the detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arguing that most are from Afghanistan and that the conflict there has ended.

"I assume that the war in Afghanistan is over, or is the contention that you have that it continues?" she said to a reporter.

Don't you just marvel at that? She assumes the war in Afghanistan is over. This at the same time that she and her comrades are claiming that the campaign in Iraq - which, despite starting a year and half later is at a comparable stage to its not-quite-next-door-neighbor's - is an "endless quagmire" that we've "already lost."

A few moments later, Pelosi dropped all pretense of speculation:

A few moments later, she said: "This isn't about the duration of the war. The war in Afghanistan is over."

Why did she make that declaration? Let's let NRO's James Robbins answer that rhetorical question:

Pelosi's assessment of the conflict's termination had nothing to do with the military situation on the ground. She was simply engaging in a bit of legalistic judo over the Guantanamo issue. The Pentagon has stated that the enemy detainees can be held for the duration of the war. Fine then. The war is over, let them out. A very clever ploy, but it leaves one with the uncomfortable feeling that Pelosi might actually believe what she said. If nothing else it demonstrates her failure to conceptualize the nature of the unconventional war we are in.

How in fact do you know when this kind of war is over? There is no ceremony on the deck of the Missouri or in a railway carriage with documents signed and side-arms surrendered. Generally a defeated insurgency or band of terrorists, like an old general, just fades away. Attacks become less frequent and less violent; the opposition makes fewer defiant statements; high level enemy leaders are captured, killed, or vanish into obscurity. Peace comes on little cat feet. You know you've won when nothing happens.

In other words, as I asserted yesterday:

[T]he prisoners at Gitmo are illegal combatants, not common criminals and not uniformed enemy soldiers. They are neither entitled to access to the U.S. civilian criminal justice system nor Geneva Convention protections, which in fact would legally allow us to line up all five hundred-plus jihadis against a wall and summarily execute every damned last one of them...And they are literal animals so dangerous to American lives, military and civilian, that we dare not release them.

The logic of the situation is inescapable: they're either in Gitmo permanently, or we liquidate them. Turning them loose is not an option, at least not if we want to minimize the chances of another mass 9/11-or-worse attack.

What Crazy Nancy's latest pronouncement means is what many of us, including Karl the Great, concluded quite a while ago: the only logic in left-wing rhetoric is its anti-Bush/anti-American dialectic. Otherwise, they'll say anything, even if it flatly contradicts something they said the day before, even if the facts prove the exact opposite, as long as it damages their arch-enemy. Or, as I put it, also quite a while ago, Democrats are fighting a war, alright, just not the same one in which the rest of us are engaged.

In a robust riposte to "Mrs. Pelosi," seven House Republicans sent her a sharply-worded letter in which is found this very pregnant query:

Would you prefer that [American soldiers] gave up the fight, stopped hunting for Osama bin Laden, and allowed the terrorists to run free?

Remember, it was just last year that the Dem spin was that Afghanistan was where the "real" war on terror was going on, and that the President had "taken his eye off the ball" by invading Iraq. Now the Democrats want to quit Afghanistan as well.

So, the answer to the question above would seem to be yes, yes, and yes. Which is what one must logically conclude that Dems have believed all along, as Karl the Great had the temerity to actually put into spoken words the other night. And that, in turn, is why Democrats got so self-righteously indignant in response - he blew their cover.

The bottom line with the left is that they have a manifestly and comprehensively faulty view of the world, one that has been conclusively and repeatedly discredited by actual, real-life events, but are plainly and simply unwilling to either relinquish it or make adjustments to acknowledge stark reality. When it comes to foreign policy, their corrupt, naive, militant pacifism is a square peg that they insist upon jamming into a round hole, and woe be unto anybody who tries to tell them that it doesn't fit.

The difference with the GWOT is that the square peg is an IED, and pigheadedly pounding it into the round hole will only get us all converted to jihadi fun-size halloween nuggets.

Far from being "reality-based," people like Crazy Nancy huddle in the comforting folds of ideological dementia, and denounce almost as "infidels" people like George W. Bush, who recognize the imperative of dealing with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Meanwhile, in (or, rather, from) Iraq....

The U.S.-led multinational force must stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces are fully prepared to defend the country by themselves, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Thursday.

Setting of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces would be a sign of weakness, he said. "The country would be open to increased terrorist activity," he said at the Council on Foreign Relations.

One Ed Morrissey sentence says it all:

The Iraqi sees this issue for what it is.

Why? Because he has to. He doesn't have the luxury of indulging in childish, self-centered fantasy. He has to be serious because there is no other paltable alternative for him and his people.

The Land of Make-Believe is a death wish. Which, if its siren call continues to be ignored by the grown-ups, ripening old bags like "Mrs. Pelosi" will be afforded the indulgence of a full portion of "twilight years" lamenting the "might have beens" that never can be.

Visit the "wailing wing" of any nursing home. You can't miss it.