Reality versus the Wall Street Journal.

I hate having to pick on the OpinionJournal's boy wonder Brendan Miniter all the time, but he invites it with his intellectually bankrupt but consistently partisan "analyses."

This was yesterday's blather du jour:

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It should now be clear--if it wasn't already--that the Democratic Party is the party of withdrawal.

Oh, how I wish that wasn't complete crap.

Had John Kerry won the election last year, the U.S. would today be packing its bags and preparing to leave Iraq under something similar to the Murtha plan. The fallout from that would be disastrous. "Rapid reaction force" or not, Iraq would descend into political chaos and then perhaps fall under the power of a dictator.

But as it stands, everything's rosy in Iraq. The media just refuses to report the good news (through September, Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff had a column on OpinionJournal titled "Good News From Iraq!").

Following that, no U.S. president for a generation or maybe two would have the political muscle to topple a rogue regime anywhere. In the meantime, the U.S. would be on the run, while terrorists and the dictators who nurture them would have the upper hand.

Considering any country can be portrayed as rogue (Iran is anything but) I'm not sure this would be a bad thing.

But it's not gonna happen. Remember when the prevailing wisdom held that "Vietnam Syndrome" would hobble the U.S. for generations? Well it was less than ten years between helicopters taking off from the embassy roof in Saigon to Reagan sending marines into Beirut and army rangers into Grenada. You spend a half trillion on the military each year, and you'll figure out someone who needs killin.'

It turns out, however, that the politics of national security favor staying the course. Both the president and vice president have hit back hard in this debate, noting the importance of winning in Iraq.

I have no idea what the "politics of national security" means, but as far as the politics of politics go, Miniter is increasingly a voice in the wilderness. Allow me to point out that on the day he wrote this a a new Harris Poll found that 63 percent of Americans think we should withdrawal from Iraq in the next year. Also yesterday, Iraqis of every stripe came together in a summit to ask the U.S. for a timetable for withdrawal. Among the positions that united them -- as Evan pointed out in Peek -- was that Iraqis have a legitimate right to resist the U.S. occupation.

The Whitehouse responded in perfectly Orwellian form:

In Washington, Sate Department spokesman Justin Higgins praised the conference's unified position, but reiterated President George Bush's vow.

"As President Bush has said, the coalition remains committed to helping the Iraqi people achieve security and stability as they rebuild their country. We will stay as long as it takes to achieve those goals and no longer," he said.

But for Miniter, this is all about the Dems, not anything actually happening in Iraq.

Way to go, Junior, you're right again!