[rrpjr]

Yes, the Left's (and much of the media's) effort to cast a pall over Iraq in every respect -- from military management to troop morale -- is relentless. One sometimes cannot escape the impression that America's setbacks bring them some kind of satisfaction -- that they have some interest in our failure. I use the LA Times as my meter for liberal gloominess -- everything is couched in terms of a mission destined to fail. Good news simply cannot make it into the pages of the LA Times. Likewise, stories of historic and exciting outbursts of democracy around the world evoke the barest acknowledgments of newsworthiness, as if the newspaper begrudged these countries their new freedoms. Reading yesterday about the Ukrainian elections, one of the most dramatic stories in world politics in my lifetime, I had to get through several paragraphs before I found reference to who had "allegedly" poisoned whom, as if it pained them to make a moral distinction between the pro-West Ushenka (sp?) and the corrupt Russian-leaning president opposed to Ukrainian independence. You would never guess by reading the Left newspapers that these were milestone moments in freedom. This confuses me: I grew up believing Liberals loved freedom, and believed even more strongly than conservatives in knocking down tyrants and liberating people. Now, however, the very idea of "pro-Western" governments sprouting up everywhere seems to give them a sour stomach. There is something larger going on here, a problem in the soul of liberalism, I think.

Check out the new Weekly Standard: an Army Reserve officer just back from Iraq tells an interesting story. Good stuff.