Turning Point

Matthew Continetti at The Weekly Standard:

Antiwar Democrats immediately started dancing the Iraq shuffle, in which you ignore your opponent's arguments, shift the terms of the debate, and attack his motivation and character. Witness the left's reaction to a recent interview Petraeus gave to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Rather than rebutting Petraeus's findings, lefty bloggers accused the general of being a partisan political actor. Or consider the liberal, antiwar Center for American Progress's "Progress Report" of July 31, entitled "Bush's Enablers." The email newsletter is sent to left-wing political operatives, activists, and journalists throughout the country and is a reliable barometer of progressive opinion.

Rather than rebut O'Hanlon and Pollack's evidence of progress in Anbar, the reduction in (still high) civilian fatality rates, and the growing capability, integration, and accountability of Iraqi army units, the Progress Report said the authors were "cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they supported from the beginning." Rather than acknowledge the extraordinary alliance between coalition forces and the tribal sheikhs who rule Anbar, the Progress Report redirected attention to the problems facing the Iraqi national government--problems O'Hanlon and Pollack acknowledge in their op-ed. And rather than assuming its opponents argue in good faith, the Progress Report accused O'Hanlon and Pollack of "providing political cover for the administration's misguided war policies."

And so it goes. In recent days, however, surge critics seem to be performing the Iraq shuffle more frequently. A well-publicized instance came on July 27, when Democratic congresswoman Nancy

Boyda of Kansas stormed out of a House Armed Services Committee hearing in which Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, and Lawrence Korb, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, gave divergent takes on the surge. Keane reported on the progress he had seen in mixed Sunni/Shiite neighborhoods during a recent trip to Baghdad. It is Gen. Petraeus's strategy of securing the Iraqi population that is responsible for such progress, Keane said.

"There was only so much you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while," Boyda said when she returned to the hearing. ...

Go read the whole thing at the link.

HT: TNR / The Plank.