REWRITING HISTORY

If the Democrats have their way, history will be rewritten and they will be absolved of taking any responsibility for having bad thoughts about Saddam Hussein from the late Clinton years up to and includine the days before the Iraq war. Here's Jonah Goldberg:

Meanwhile, the Democrats cannot even admit they made a mistake supporting the war - except in that they believed Bush's "lies." But how could Bush have lied? How was he to know the intelligence was wrong? Without knowing that, he could not have lied. But the Democrats will not allow for the possibility that the very same intelligence that prompted Clinton to bomb Iraq also informed Bush's decision to topple Saddam. And they will not even concede that, after 9/11, the argument over WMDs wasn't the best - never mind the sole - argument for toppling Saddam but the easiest one.

"Never again" was the new rule after 9/11, and - after ousting the Taliban - Saddam was the next obvious target. He applauded the attack, funded suicide bombers, defied the international community and, we now know, pretended he had WMDs. Remember: "Regime change" became the official policy of the U.S. in 1998, not 2002. Post-9/11, where would you start?

But the Democrats don't care. They don't care about all the previous investigations or that the planet is watching this spectacle. Or that their shabby accusations feed the very worst theories about America's role in the world. Heck, Howard Dean is recycling the charges in fundraising letters. They don't care that Iraq is poised to become either one of America's greatest achievements or its worst debacles. They want timetables, apologies and scalps.

But does anyone doubt that if there were no insurgency, with Iraq as far along in the democratic process as it is now, the Democrats would be boasting about their bi-partisan support for the war and cackling about how Democrats were right about "nation-building" all along?

The truth is that the Democrats don't care much about anything except their Bush hatred these days. Hugo Chavez and his paranoid rants would make an excellent Democratic National Committee Chair (well, perhaps not much better than the delusional person already there).

Let me make a prediction. The Democrats can bask all they want in the glow of flawed Bush popularity polls and riots in South America protesting the President and the U.S., but they are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the march of history. Soon they will have only the most bizarre and extreme of American politics as their constituency (yes, even more so than today).

Freedom, Democracy, and the free markets that thrive within them are on the move, and you are either for them, or you are against them. The Democrats are hoping to hedge their bets and are trying to rewrite history now. My prediction is that when they lose the whole enchilada--assuming they still exist as a coherent political party--they will be trying to rewrite history to take credit for freedom's success.

Because, you see, they are not actually capable of participting in history real-time; making the hard decisions that change the world for the better; and sticking with a set of principles that support and enable the good-- they can only rewrite the past and try to make it fit whatever agenda they happen to have at the moment.