Morning Report: 2008-04-20

An Iraqi victory, and thoughts on the Left.

Hit me, beat me, make me write good news. Obviously this sinister Pentagon program was a stunning success. Tigerhawk:

Even the New York Times, which has done its level best to promote the myth of Iraqi incompetence, acknowledges that the government has won the battle of Basra...

...but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

Ah, yes. Iraqi ground troops wiped out the Mahdi Army in Basra, but they couldn't do it without our Air Force. Quagmire!

Anyway, it really does not matter what the editors on 43rd Street think. Iran knows a battlefield defeat when it sees one ...

Full post at the link.

Le deserteur. Norm Geras ponders seven kinds of liberalism/leftism, and their defectors:

But then who would want to defect from a left which saw itself as uniting certain universal values, values like freedom and equality and justice, with the interests and struggles of the unfree, the wronged and the oppressed everywhere? Well, I don't know who would want to defect from this kind of left. But when I ran into them I'd try to persuade them not to defect. I'd tell them that there's a left worth belonging to, and that those who belong to it should limit their defections to parting company with the lefts that discredit its values and its better traditions.

Me, too. Read the whole thing.

Commentary. Short post today, as I'm worn out from last night's seder. Happy Passover to all those who are celebrating.