As American and Iraqi hopes for Iraq's future continue to bear fruit, the Left has become ever more determined to claim each victory as a defeat, for purely political reasons. The only way for them to regain power, they believe, is to convince America to throw a war we're winning. Again.

Hey, it worked thirty years ago. Why not now?

The "mainstream" media generally reports the only the most negative or spectacular stories, seeming almost gleeful at times in their self-imposed death watch. Why else do you probably know without thinking the approximate number of American military deaths in Iraq, but would need to look up how many have died in Afghanistan? The terrorists, knowing this, try to do something flashy as often as possible -- roadside bombs, kidnappings or beheadings. Nearly every soldier who returns from or writes from Iraq seems shocked at how little of what's really happening there is ever mentioned in the newspapers or TV news. After a constant barrage of negative reporting, media outlets run their biased, weighted, oversampled opinion polls... and report the inevitable results as though they were news.

Think about it, though. Leading a coalition of nations, America toppled a brutal dictator whose regime destabilised the entire Middle East, after twelve years of his violating a cease-fire agreement with us. Government officials and influential people in the only major countries that declined to help were, as it turns out, in bed with the dictator all along. His mass graves are no longer being filled, his rape rooms and other violations of human rights are now shut down, his secret illegal weapons research stopped, and his sponsorship and training of terrorists are ended. Our military has performed above and beyond expectations, and the enemy only survives by hiding in and striking from the shadows. As time goes on, they are losing the ability to do even that. Yet to hear the Left tell the tale, the war has somehow failed.

A council representing all Iraqis was appointed to write an interim constitution; under that constitution Iraqis held their first free elections to select an interim government to draft their permanent constitution. The constitution was ratified by the overwhelming majority of Iraqi voters, and under that constitution they are about to elect their own government. Iraqis are free to debate the issues in public and vote for their own leaders for the first time in history. The world's oldest civilisation is the world's youngest democracy. Yet if you listen to the Left's spin, Iraq's future is somehow bleak.

Terrorists flocked to Iraq to prevent democracy from taking root there. That should give any reasonable person a hint that democracy in the Middle East is bad for terrorists... and what's bad for terrorists is good for the rest of us. They joined forces with the few thousand Sunnis who preferred a tyrant's rule to democracy. Beaten and demoralised, the "legitimate" resistance -- though no one who fights to enslave an entire nation can be called legitimate -- is now suing for peace. That will leave only the terrorists, backed by Syria, Iran and other al-Qaeda supporters, fighting the joint US and Iraqi forces. Until they, too, are beaten, we cannot and should not withdraw. Yet the Left insists that the US ought to abandon the Iraqis, even as their would-be conquerors are faltering.

Already hints of democratic reform -- baby steps, in some cases, but all in the right direction -- have swept through Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. The cesspool of tyranny, in which terrorism freely breeds, is finally being drained. None of this would have taken place without the fall of Saddam and the birth of democracy in Iraq. Yet the Left insists that the anti-democratic forces are somehow winning somehow.

Libya has surrendered its entire WMD program, which was far closer to building a nuclear weapon than we had previously supposed. The nuclear weapons proliferation ring headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan has been exposed. The festering corruption within the United Nations, which leads right up to the family of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has been uncovered. The leaders of Iran and North Korea understand that we mean it when we say they will not be allowed to posess nuclear weapons. Countries around the globe that supported terrorism now understand that we are serious about halting that support. All of this sprang directly from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Yet the Left complains that we aren't "playing fair" with those sworn to destroy us and our way of life at all costs.

This isn't a game. We're not playing. This is a battle for the future of our entire civilisation. Do we want to give in to the demands of terrorists and their sponsor nations by running away from Iraq before the job is done, or will we push back against the Islamofascist tide that even now threatens to engulf Europe?

The question finally came to a head when Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) called for the US to withdraw from Iraq. The Republicans called his bluff, and that of most Democrats, by forcing a vote on immediate withdrawal. The measure was defeated 403-3. Keep this in mind: everything Democrats have said about bringing the troops home from Iraq right away is just political rhetoric. (Well, except for those three idiots who voted to run away. They really mean it.) Even those calling for a specific timetable are only trying to claim credit in advance for the staged withdrawal that the President has long endorsed.

"Iraq's military, police, and border forces have begun to take on broader responsibilities. Eventually, they must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn," Bush said in May 2004. Such a transfer of responsibility can only happen as the Iraqi forces train up to the task, and not on an artificial schedule imposed by politicians maneuvering for power half a world away. Common sense should tell anyone that informing the terrorists still fighting us in Iraq that we will leave on a certain date will only give them hope, and a great propaganda victory. I can just see the al-Jazeera headlines. "Great Satan Defeated! America Runs Away! Bin Laden Was Right -- They Can't Take It!"

Democrats know as well as anyone that we need to finish the fight in Iraq. They know we're winning. However, they also know that publicly acknowledging the truth about Iraq means defeat for them in 2006. They need America to lose Iraq, and suffer setbacks in the War on Terror, in order to win an election.

And, sadly, that's more important to some of them than any other consideration.