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The Left believes that they are so much better in solving the lives challenges that they must have Power no matter what. The goal justifies the means. Not that they really "want" the defeat. Its just on the balance of things its irrelevant comparing to them getting the Power back.
That's why they put themselves into a position of contradicting decades of their criticism of, for example, a "realist" politics of supporting "our SOBs". Now, when the administration tries to promote a freer and more liberal society instead of just installing another dictator, they are against it. Somehow they don't care that their actions are effectively aligning them with forces hostile to human rights, women rights, gay rights, artistical expression and any expression of personal liberty.
A recent response of a majority whip that a report of a success of the surge will be a "problem" is amazing in its honesty. I'd presume that one would be ashamed to admit that narrow partisan interests are higher than national. At least, one would expect more weaseling "wisdom" from a party muckety-muck (a whip is not just a no-name congressman!). But looks like they just don't care. Not that conservatives and republicans are exempt from partisan exaggerations, but it is multitudes smaller. The current Leftist power-grab drive cynicism is on the level of Bolsheviks'.
Let me know if you want in or out.
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Defeat. surrender, Bush failure... many dead Americans and Iraqis... and a strategic Victory for their allies al qaeda!!!
LLS
We need to understand that today’s Left is not intrinsically opposed to dictatorship, just “right wing” dictatorship. Remember, these are the people who openly said Elian Gonzales was better off being shipped back to Cuba. So fighting for “freedom” and “democracy” does not really resonate with the Left. They want forced equality (that is, mandatory poverty, except for the party elite), free health care, total control of the media, abolition of the right to bear arms, and a de facto abolition of national boundaries. In other words, they want to abolish the Constitution.
That's it in a nutshell, demonstrated by the nearly universal tendency on the Left to frame the event as "Bush's War," as if it were a purely domestic political issue. To them everything important about it is. The international aspects consist only of the folly that the world is better off with an Iraq in chaos if the U.S. is properly humbled than with a peaceful and independent Iraq with the U.S. triumphant. To the latter end there is a lock on positive news that is only recently cracking. To the international media no admission of U.S. success will ever be made - that admission would be more damaging than the success itself. It threatens the worldview, the "narrative."
Part of the progressive approch to creating a better world is to exaggerate the shortcomings of the status quo, the underlying theme being "we know it really isn't that bad but let's pretend anyway to motivate people." But in this case it really is that bad, and it isn't the usual demon, the United States, who is to blame. That's quite outside the progressive narrative and such narratives tend to be rather inflexible. The real world is quite another matter.
It's also a matter of laziness and comfort. The Left has its whipping boy who does not fight back, an America that can be simultaneously cursed and depended upon, a comforting shield for the easy chair from which the criticism may flow unabated. The real enemy will take that chair away and enslave its occupants, but it is better to pretend that that enemy doesn't exist than actually to do anything about it, secure in the knowledge that somebody else will and the criticism game may continue indefinitely.
There is a basic paradox there - that the West, and especially the U.S., may simultaneously be subverted and still act as a shield against external enemies. It was a perfectly successful assumption during the Cold War, and it's going to take more convincing than is safe or even possible to convince its adherents that the negatives outweigh the positives, that the threat is real, and that their activities are dangerous.
Probably for the killing to stop...
We should start calling the dimwits “The Defeatist View”.
In other words; it you want to lose everything you have; vote Democrat. No one has ever won anything with a defeatist attitude. The only thing they have done is prolong the misery and pain.
Newest book, just out July 26, 2007, by Col. Buzz Patterson who wrote "Dereliction of Duty" about Clinton.
What the left wants is pretty easy to describe:
1) Political power. They believe that when they have political power, things they say are problems now with *cease* being problems, precisely because they are in power, nothing else being done. Iraq will no longer be a problem, nor will “man made global warming”, nor will anything else they talk about today.
2) When they have political power, their primary goal is to keep political power, much more than using it. Its use from that point on is *solely* to keep them in power.
3) As far as actual agenda, they generally believe that movement in the direction of socialism is good. But they are indifferent as to whether socialism, or movement in that direction works, just that it distinguishes them from those who do not want movement in that direction. It is an article of faith, with outsiders recognized by their inability to perform ritual properly.
4) They are group and consensus oriented, in that it diminishes personal authority and responsibility. In many, it approaches a herd instinct, with a conscious attraction to mediocrity, rejecting failure or success in favor of the anonymity of the mob. They are willing to surrender what is good in order to try and avoid what is bad. In a way it is similar to some religions, where all credit is given to the deity in exchange for no punishment from the deity.
5) A strong characteristic of the left is embracing deficiency, or as it is sometimes called “defining deviancy down”. They assume that everyone is equally deficient or corrupt, so are intensely suspicious and hateful towards those who claim to be neither. Instead they see the deviant as needing to be elevated and uplifted, as superior to those without deviation, as they are “inhibited”, and lack the “freedom of license”. Conversely, they have a need to tear down heroes, to soil them and expose any flaws they may have, or imagine flaws if they have none.
Note in this regard the careful Clintonian triangulation: damn the Patriot Act, renditions, wire-tapping, Iraq, etc. but never to the extent of cutting off funds for such efforts (that just may have succeeded in keeping us safe from another 9/11). She is the proverbial pied piper, whose song of woe helps to lead the other Democratic lemmings to the abyss at which point she steps aside and lets them tumble over.
How will Hillary avoid going over the cliff with them?
Democrats think Neville Chamberlin was right.
Democrats think the USSR would have survived if THEY had been in charge. (they are right, fortunatly Ronald Reagan won)
The logical conclusion to the leftist march is the complete destruction of our individual liberties and government control of every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave, i.e., communisim. Communist countries are ruled by tyrants and dictators. Ergo, it is logical for leftists to align themselves with kindred tyrants and dictators, wherever they are found.