The No. 3 Democrat in the U.S. House is warning of bad news ahead in Iraq.
By bad news, though, Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) doesn’t mean increased U.S. casualties, or more terrorist bombings.
Clyburn actually means good news.
Specifically, he’s concerned that Gen. David Petraeus, the chief U.S. commander in Iraq, will tell Congress next month that the ongoing troop surge has led to a significant improvement in the situation on the ground.
And that, complains Clyburn, would be “a real big problem for us.”
That’s right – the Democrats are deathly afraid of U.S. success in Iraq.
That’s not surprising: Iraq, after all, has become the linchpin of their political hopes. New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer has boasted of polls showing that “the war in Iraq is a lead weight attached to [Republicans’] ankles.”
But few Democrats have been as candid as was Clyburn when he bemoaned to The Washington Post that the surge just might be working, after all.
After all, the paper noted, Democrats have been anticipating that Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, would (at best) present a mixed report to Congress on the surge.
And that, Democratic leaders believe, would give added strength to their cut-and-run strategy.
But a generally positive report means that more moderate Democrats would hesitate to join the surrender bandwagon – hence Clyburn’s “real big problem for us.”
No doubt.
Of course, as Byron York notes at National Review Online, “If Bush wins his bet, Iraq will be a better place, the Middle East will be a better place and America will be a safer place.” Unfortunately, nowadays what’s good for America isn’t necessarily good for the Democrats.