Edwards Returns To The Fight

This post from ABC’s Political Radar site tells us that John and Elizabeth Edwards are lending their voices to the Iraq/Recession Campaign, which is…

…an effort organized by several groups, including the Center for American Progress, USAction, MoveOn.org, SEIU, VoteVets.org and Americans United for Change. The coalition fights for a halt in war spending to bring focus to economic issues at home.

Speaking from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., Edwards and his wife Elizabeth said they are proud to throw their support behind the campaign.

"The war in Iraq at least from my perspective needs to be brought to an end for a lot of reasons--including reestablishing America's moral authority in the world and making America a force for good again," said Edwards on a conference call launching the campaign.

"I don't have the empirical data I just know what I've heard over and over and over, is people don't understand why we're spending $500 million dollars and counting in Iraq at the same time that we've got 40 plus millions of Americans who don't have any health care coverage, 37 million living in poverty. People are terrified about being able to pay their bills. It doesn't make sense to them and they see no end in sight."

And just as a reminder, here is the 2005 Op-Ed piece that Edwards wrote disavowing his vote for the war.

This gives me an opportunity, by the way, to venture into wingnuttia courtesy of yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, in particular Mark Bowden’s column, in which he says that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should “start making sense” about Iraq.

See, even though Bowden, like Edwards, now sees that the invasion was wrong, the problem as far is Bowden is concerned is that liberal opinion has “congealed and dried” on withdrawal (actually, Bowden should consult Fareed Zakaria, who has basically said that the war is over despite stories like this one – I think someone needs to start making sense all right, but it’s not Clinton, Obama or anyone else who supports withdrawal – and not to be outdone, “Senator Honor And Virtue” says here that the war will be over “soon,” no doubt trying to create a distraction from that little dustup with a certain lady lobbyist).

Here are more rose-colored prognostications from Bowden…

It is certainly possible that these gains are illusory and temporary, and that hopes for lasting stability and a working democracy will unravel, but it is also reasonable to suppose that moderate Iraqis have glimpsed the abyss and are backing away from it.

The war is not won, but failure no longer appears inevitable.

Wow, what a great motto for an Army recruiting ad; I can hardly wait for the quick-editing, video-game simulation of soldiers storming an enemy compound, rounding up insurgents and handing out candy to ever-so-grateful Iraqi children while the words “The war is not won, but failure no longer appears inevitable – be all you can be” splash across the TV screen in just under 30 seconds!

And I’ll just blow off much of Bowden's remaining propaganda – it actually would make me ill to dissect his entire column and refute the same arguments over and over and over and over (including the highly unserious notion that somehow, Incurious George has “changed course” in Iraq, leading to our present “success”)…

Talking sense about Iraq for Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would mean acknowledging the remarkable and courageous achievements of Petraeus and his troops, and admitting that their efforts have opened an unexpected door to a happier ending.

In which “failure no longer appears inevitable,” let’s not forget (and to take a stroll down memory lane, as it were, here is a link to the background on the MoveOn “General Betray Us” ad with many, many links to news sources that totally undermine the credibility of the head of our forces in Iraq).

Oh, and did I mention that Bowden has absolutely nothing to say about the Iraqi “government” and its total inability to meet any of the milestones projected for it by George W. Milhous Bush, among others, here?

And finally, here is some polling data that Bowden should read, assuming he hasn’t done so already (and these numbers don’t appear to be trending anywhere; possibly down, but certainly not up).

So I suppose the majority of the people of this country need to “get serious” about Iraq also, as far as Bowden is concerned.

How serious is this, then?

Update 2/26/08: And by the way, the legacy lives on.