Quit Iraq? Now, when things are going so well?

Right, Al Qaeda was not in Iraq in 2003, concedes Ralph Peters in NY Post.  “But it’s 2008, not 2003. And our next president will take office in 2009. It’s today’s reality that matters.”

To argue the 2003 scenario is “as if, in June 1944, critics had argued from facts frozen in June 1939. (‘Why invade Normandy? Hitler’s content with Czechoslovakia.’)”

War’s not like that, says Peters.

[T]he situation changes, enemies evolve and goals shift. A war to preserve the Union becomes a war to end slavery; a war to defeat one set of totalitarian systems empowers a new network of tyrannies. It’s a rare war whose end can be forecast neatly at its outset.

How many newsies are saying that?

To date, not one “mainstream media” journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we “bring the troops home now.”

There’s plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well.

Consider these items that contribute to today’s lay of the land:

* After our troops reached Baghdad, al Qaeda’s leaders made a colossal strategic miscalculation and publicly declared that Iraq was now the central front in their jihad against us. Matter of record, in the enemy’s own words.

Some Sunnis “rallied to the terrorists,” at which point:

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates then embarked on a campaign of widespread atrocities: videotaped beheadings, mass bombings of civilians, assassinations, widespread rape (of boys and girls, as well as of women), kidnappings and brutal efforts to dictate the intimate details of Iraqi lives.

. . . .  Suddenly, those American “occupiers” looked like saviors.

Millions turned against al Qaeda, U.S. and Iraqi forces defeated them,

At present, the terror organization’s own Web masters admit that al Qaeda is nearing final collapse in Iraq.

So now we quit?