Inane Instapundit post of the day

Glenn Reynold's points to this post by Confederate Yankee, an apparently confused right-wing simpleton, who, in a very cute wide-eyed manner asks,

"DEAR NEW YORK TIMES: When the largest single fatality-causing event for your (well, our) soldiers in recent months is a single vehicle wreck, isn't it officially time to retire the theme that we're losing the war?"

Dear Confederate Yankee, it really depends on what you mean by the phrase "win the war". If winning the war for you merely means less American soldiers dying in battle, then yeah, America is probably winning the war. But if that were to be the only criterion of victory, what's stopping the US from pulling out of Iraq entirely? Wouldn't that be the ultimate victory in the war? No troops in Iraq, no troops getting killed?

Now on the other hand, if you weren't as much of a simpleton as you appear to be if one were to judge you by the contents of your blog, and actually stopped to think about what the fuck it is that you are asking, you would realize that even your beloved president believes that winning the war is about more than just American soldiers not being killed. Winning the war involves stabilizing Iraq politically, kickstarting the Iraqi economy, improving the standard of living of its residents to such an extent that they wouldn't look back at life under Saddam as having been the lesser of two evils. Winning the war also involves reducing Iraqi casualties due to terrorist attacks. Right? Right? 'Cause isn't that what this war is about, isn't it all about the poor downtrodden Iraqis who've suffered so much under the tyrant Saddam, isn't it about forcing democracy down their grateful parched throats? Isn't it about giving them a better life? And has America won that war? Nah, I didn't think so either.

But wait, didn't you guys say that winning the war is about making Iraq a terrorist base so that we can fight them there and not here. Or was winning the war about successfully not finding WMDs? Fuck man, you lost me now. See, that's why you shouldn't keep redefining the purpose of the war. 'Cause when you do that, whatever point it is that you were making ceases to hold any meaning. And then there's really no standard of victory that you can point to and claim that we've achieved it. Which is why I thought it was pretty simplistic of you to ask the NY Times such a naive question.

And Glenn Reynolds, Jesus man, do you even read the posts you link to? Do you even spend a single moment pondering over what the post says or means? Maybe you should. Or maybe it's me who's being naive now. One thing's for sure, though. The righties are panicking. They are falling over each other's feet, trying to come up with newer and more implausible justifications for why their community of lunatics is right and the rest of the world is wrong, trying to desperately look for silver linings where none exist.