Radical anti-war groups retreat

The Politico is reporting: "After a series of legislative defeats in 2007 that saw the year end with more U.S. troops in Iraq than when it began, a coalition of anti-war groups is backing away from its multimillion-dollar drive to cut funding for the war and force Congress to pass timelines for bringing U.S. troops home."

Translation: victory for President Bush and the mission of staying on offense through victory in Iraq.

There's more: "In recognition of hard political reality, the groups instead will lower their sights and push for legislation to prevent President Bush from entering into a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could keep significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come."

The left's agenda in Iraq is becoming less coherent and comprehensible each day. The foreign basing of US troops is neither controversial nor inherently problematic. Rather, the presence of US forces in many foreign countries has had a positive, stabilizing effect since World War II. Obvious examples include Germany, Japan, and Korea.

The issue in Iraq is not the basing of US troops there, but rather bringing an end to the violence, which the current strategy is achieving with great success.

By contrast, if Nancy Pelosi had prevailed, Iraq would today be descending into a hell of violence and sectarian retribution that would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of lives while generating a massive refugee crisis and new venues for Iranian aggression and Al Queda operations.