It's been a while since I've blogged about anything overtly political, and that's probably for the best. Aside from a few message board discussions, I try to avoid the kind of unproductive spleen-venting that comes from writing too much about the political narrative in our country.

But... hey, why avoid an old friend, right? I was skimming the news feeds over lunch today and stumbled across an interesting post on Hang Right Politics. Discussing the perception of Democrats as 'soft on defense:'

You cannot trust [the Democrats]. They don’t have the resolve to see something through. And this war is just too hard. Ours is the instant gratification society and this war doesn’t fit the mold. We got spoiled during the first Iraq war and we expect it to always be that easy. Even driving the Taliban out of power from Afghanistan was duck soup compared to Iraq.... So the votes last week on cutting and running in Iraq showed what Democrats are really made of. If they can’t win easily, they don’t have the stomach to see it through.

Despite the suggestions of my more conservative friends, I'm not and have never been a Democrat. I think that they'd be just as bad at representing my interests in Republicans (albeit in different ways), so I have little vested interest in defending them when they're taken to task for bad decisions.

The article above, however, isn't an attack on Democrats: it's an attack on reality as we know it. It's not even an attack on distant history, either. The poster, COgirl, is creating a new administration-friendly version of the years 2002 and 2003 from scratch. In this alternate reality, the Administration laid out the case for an expensive, decade-long war of attrition against entrenched terrorists in Iraq. The Democrats went along with it, but now -- impatient -- they want out. For those who weren't paying attention then, and might be prone to nod thoughtfully at the revisions, let's revisit the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.

• The administration said that the invasion would be a military cakewalk.
• The administration said that the invasion would pay for itself.
• The administration predicted victory and the stabilization of Iraq in weeks or months, not years.
• The administration ignored and ostracized advisors who said the post-invasion occupation would be dangerous and difficult.
• The administration dismissed the concerns of Democrats and other war opponents as defeatism.
• Once the initial invasion was over, it took the administration a year to admit that things were more dangerous and complicated than they'd expected.

I could go on, but those points seem to jump out. One can argue that the invasion of Iraq was necessary, regardless of the cost. One can argue that Democrats oppose military intervention when they should support it. But to suggest that the problem here is impatience on the part of Democrats because their expectations about Iraq were too optimistic is absurd.

If there were any unrealistic expectations about the speed with which we could stabilize Iraq, they existed because the Bush Administration and supporters of the war actively argued in favor of those overly optimistic predictions. When challenged, they shouted down critics and pushed ahead. Now, with the critics' predictions playing out in detail, COGirl and others turn on a dime. "We told you it would be a long, hard fight -- Democrats just don't have the stomach for it!"

Uh-huh. Yeah. That's it.

One of the basic rules of being a dependable person, in my opinion, is to admit when you're wrong and adjust to reality. Pretending that you were right all along and calling names at the people who warned you... That's just sad. You can disagree with their proposed solutions, but unless you own up to what happened you'll keep making the same mistakes.

Update: Not an hour after I posted this, another neocon acquaintance of mine opined that Liberals and Democrats have unrealistic hopes of 'ending terrorism,' and that's why they're down on the war. Did a new memo full of talking points go out to the bloggers, or something? This is weird.