Not Stupid--Uninformed

The anti-war left is demonstrably ignorant of, and unwilling to reassess the success of, the global war on terror. Though there's no answer to the "why?" question, Austin Bay explains "how":

Collect relatively isolated events in a chronological list and presto: the impression of uninterrupted, widespread violence destroying Iraq. But that was a false impression. Every day, coalition forces were moving thousands of 18-wheelers from Kuwait and Turkey into Iraq, and if the "insurgents" were lucky they blew up one. However, flash the flames of that one rig on CNN and, "Oh my God, America can't stop these guys," is the impression left in Boise and Beijing.

Saddam's thugs and Zarqawi's klan were actually weak enemies -- "brittle" is the word I used to describe them at a senior planning meeting. Their local power was based on intimidation -- killing by car bomb, murdering in the street. Their strategic power was based solely on selling the false impression of nationwide quagmire -- selling post-Saddam Iraq as a dysfunctional failed-state, rather than an emerging democracy. . .

In World War II, destroying Nazi divisions and taking islands from the Japanese provided hard yardsticks to gauge military success. Irregular warfare rarely offers such a clarifying quantitative measure. Over the summer of 2004, I had the benefit of anecdotal measures. Iraqis I talked to would tell me they intended to vote in the January elections.

The elections would be "the big island," the defining moment in the post-Saddam political struggle, and it would be the Iraqi people providing the public yardstick.

That's precisely what happened. The Jan. 30 election provided the broad and deep perspective the police blotter obscures: This is a war of liberty against tyranny, and it's a war we are winning.

And Instapundit reader John Beckwith connects the dots 'forward into the past':

I think the 'quagmire narrative' might have become a self fulfilling prophesy. . .

[But], by last fall, I was getting 90% of my Iraq news from blogs that provided an on the ground perspective from soldiers and Iraqis in theater instead of the major media outlets. This led me to be cautiously optimistic despite the problems we have there. Certainly this affected my vote on Nov 2. I doubt I was alone and I think this was a consequential election.

Finally, the attacks on Iraqi Christians should have been a clue, says Chrenkoff:

While the Muslim communities in the West are thriving, in a sad contrast, the few remaining Christians throughout the Middle East seem to be endangered species.

Forget the Election 2004 demographic data. On top of being the party of the rich, the elite and the privileged, are Democrats also the party of the uninformed?