The Real Question: Do We Want Success?

“That poll about Iraq... came out last week and it posed various questions about whether folks thought the ‘surge’ was a good idea or not. Including the following: ‘Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?’ And here’s how the American people answered: 63 percent said yes, 22 percent said no, 15 percent said they didn’t know. Let me see if I understand that. For four years, regardless of this or that position on the merits of the war, almost everybody has claimed to ‘support our troops.’ Some of us have always thought that ‘supporting the troops’ while not supporting them in their mission is not entirely credible. But here we have 37 percent of the American people actually urging defeat on them. They ‘support our troops’ by wanting them to lose. This isn’t a question about whether you think the plan will work, but whether you want it to work. And nearly 40 percent of respondents either don’t know or are actively rooting for failure... What were the numbers like for D-Day?” —Mark Steyn