[rrpjr]

Entertaining, Fintstone, thank you. I saw it only as a caricature of Leftist attitude, yet not far off the mark:

Protestor turnouts have indeed been weak, intellectuals are indeed tripping over themselves to deny Bush credit, as well as contorting themselves to explain away the positive changes in the Middle East as “inevitable” (I even heard one on TV recently shrilly challenge a conservative: “you can’t prove this was Bush’s doing!”). They have from the start been Cassandras about Iraq and Afghanistan (RW Apple’s “quagmire” claims two weeks into the Afghan campaign, Noam Chomsky’s predictions of US incited “genocide”, the cataclysmic fears of death and mayhem on election day), and, yes, they are never compelled by the major media to retract or even explain any of their absurd and defeatist alarums.

They don’t call for more democracy, do not protest Syria's occupation (a protest joined by one of the most diverse collections of people in the world – conspicuously absent the Western Left), and do not ever raise a harsh word against the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

As for longing for failure in the Middle East – while this seems a proposition very hard to believe, and even churlish to suggest – what are we to make of the near total absence of public support for democracy for a legendarily oppressed people?

And, yes, the French are now making nice with Bush.