Harry Reid, The Omega Democrat

Call Harry Reid the “Omega Democrat.” A week after the execrable Jack Murtha confessed that “the surge is working,” and two weeks after the New York Times started preparing its readers for disappointment by admitting dramatic progress, the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States of America once again declared the Iraq military surge a failure.
He’s a lonely man these days. According to the Washington Post: “By every metric used to measure the war -- total attacks, U.S. casualties, Iraqi casualties, suicide bombings, roadside bombs -- there has been an enormous improvement since January. U.S. commanders report that al-Qaeda has been cleared from large areas it once controlled and that its remaining forces in Iraq are reeling. Markets in Baghdad are reopening, and the curfew is being eased; the huge refugee flow out of the country has begun to reverse itself. Credit for these achievements belongs in large part to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, who took on a tremendously challenging new counterterrorism strategy and made it work; to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of that strategy; and to President Bush, for making the decision to launch the surge against the advice of most of Congress and the country's foreign policy elite.”
But, for the dour Senator Harry Reid, the man perhaps condemned to be the last holdout, success is not an option. "The surge hasn't accomplished its goals," he insisted.
Now, the surge may not have accomplished his goals. But as every real American would define success as an enemy defeat, the surge has certainly accomplished that. Reporter Michael Yon has an almost unique distinction that sets him apart from most journalists who report or give expert commentary upon the Iraq War. He’s there. He’s been embedded almost full time for years. He reports what he sees, not the gossipy whispers that the mainstream media rely upon. When the war was going poorly, he reported it. Now that it’s going well, he reports that. And he’s been there for most of the way. A year ago, he was involved in firefights several times a day. Months have passed since he last saw combat.
When the enemy’s leader, Osama Bin Laden, released a tape exhorting his soldiers to renew their efforts, his words fell not on deaf ears, but dead ears. He has made a lot of martyrs and lost a lot of ground.
What’s good for the USA is problematic for Democrats. The Democratic presidential candidates have had to draw deeply on their nuance reserves as they try to recognize progress while insisting that the glass is half empty. No such subtlety for Reid. We’ve lost. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. He’s probably had a speech celebrating the next grim milestone in his hip pocket for months and he fears that he’ll be out of office before he gets to deliver it.
Reid and his fellow Defeatocrats have chosen to focus on the slow political progress in Iraq. Without a doubt, the Iraqi government is corrupt. Its parliament has shown not the slightest capacity to pass any of the significant legislation set before it. It cannot even achieve the modest mileposts it set for itself. Iraq’s political parties have placed selfish partisan advantage above the national interest. Many lawmakers are clearly in league with the terrorists. Who says Iraqis are not capable of a US style democracy? Except for the language, the Iraqi Parliament is indistinguishable from the Congress led by Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Next week, Will’s Smith’s latest movie, “I Am Legend” opens. It is the second remake of a 1964 classic about the last man on earth after a plague turns the rest of humanity into zombies or vampires. The most recent remake starred Charlton Heston and was called “Omega Man,” omega being the last letter in the Greek alphabet.
Harry Reid declared the surge a failure before it had even started. And now, as the epidemic of patriotic optimism has infected even his own party, he now seems determined to be the last Democrat to succumb to the overwhelming evidence that the surge has succeeded. With his short term future so grim perhaps Harry Reid is hoping that in a couple of decades the movie will be remade again, this time featuring him as the Omega Democrat.