As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity.

Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme but an attempt to win an argument by attacking your opponent rather than engaging his ideas? Has anyone come back from Iraq recently and not seen progress? Wouldn’t an effective rebuttal of O’Hanlon’s and Pollack’s article sought out such friendly sources?

When it comes to dealing substantively with Iraq, the left has a problem. For four joyous years, the left could properly point to a series of Bush administration miscalculations and screw-ups. In spite of being the first MBA president, President Bush spent years without having his entire administration working out of the same playbook. Donald Rumsfeld wanted to topple nations, not build them. And Colin Powell – well, who knows what his shop wanted? All we know is that State’s viceroy in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, made a series of grievous miscalculations such as the disastrous DeBaathification program.

Historians will long debate how much blame President Bush will get for these blunders. War is a tough business, and even successful ones are chock-full of screw-ups. Abe Lincoln doesn’t take much of a rap in the history books for letting the inept George McClellan or the buffoonish “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker run his armies during the Civil War. The fact that he got it right by the end of the war essentially erased many of those mistakes.

Since David Petraeus came to command in Iraq, unanimously confirmed by our prescient and wise senators, have you noticed what we haven’t heard? We haven’t heard any stories of operational stumbling. We haven’t heard any stories of strategic cluelessness. We haven’t heard anything that resembles the breakdowns at Abu Ghraib or the temporizing in Fallujah. In short, General Petraeus is running things superbly in Iraq.

For some on the left, this comes as a painful development. Tales of Bush administration incompetence have become a happy staple of the left’s list of grievances against the administration. While they still have Alberto Gonzales to (rightly) carp about, things on the competence front have improved in Iraq. Dramatically.

SO HOW HAS THE LEFT reacted to this positive development? Poorly, angrily, and childishly. In other words, characteristically.

Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard today wrote on Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda. Boyda sits on the House Armed Services Committee, and had to endure hearing a positive report on the situation in Iraq from General Keane (ret.). It was all too much for the fair Representative. Rather than listen to the gibberish the three star general offered, she stormed out of the hearing room. Upon her return, she offered the following declaration:

As many of us -- there was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while. So I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things -- after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.

But let me first just say that the description of Iraq as in some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation -- things are going so well -- those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, here's the reality of the problem. And people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue.

Positive news out of Iraq divides the nation? Who knew? Remember, tragically enough, this was a congresswoman talking.

This attitude is the primary reason why the left’s collective head may explode if the news from Iraq takes a turn for the better. It's also why we’re beginning to see the left hit strange new lows. As Charles Johnson noted, the Daily Kos had a Diary theorizing that George W. Bush had Pat Tillman killed because Tillman was planning to meet with Noam Chomsky. Andrew Sullivan is also focusing on Tillman’s tragic death; with no fresh horrible news to work with, the Tillman tragedy provides the left this week’s tool to bludgeon the administration and the war effort.

And then there is of course Scott Thomas Beauchamp. It was ten days ago that New Republic editor Franklin Foer told the world that he had corroborating evidence to support Beauchamp’s tales of “mild practical jokes.” Foer has still yet to descend TNR’s Mt. Olympus to share those details with a curious public. We do know that in an apparent search for atrocities, TNR sent its own private uniform-wearing embed into Baghdad to get the grimy details. When their embed produced stories that left the rest of the world incredulous, TNR still thought it had a wonderful scoop on its hands.

The left doesn’t want good news out of Iraq, and it certainly doesn’t want the American public supporting the war effort. In a story that James Taranto noted last week, the New York Times asked in its most recent poll a recurring question that they also asked in past polls: “Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the United States have stayed out?” When asked the same question in May, the 35% of the public said yes, 61% said no. This time around, 42% said yes and 54% said no, narrowing the percentage of people who consider it a mistake to invade Iraq vs. those who thin it was the right thing to do from 26% to 12%.

The Times found this result so “counter-intuitive” that they re-polled the question. Much to the paper’s surprise/horror, they got the same result. It’s odd that the Times settled on the word “counter-intuitive” to describe the polls’ results. With the situation improving in Iraq and the war effort having dramatically improved, why would you be shocked that the public feels a bit better about the war unless you’ve come to adopt your own echo-chamber rhetoric as gospel truth?

The left and other anti-war figures like Andrew Sullivan have a lot invested in this war failing and failing miserably. They have a lot invested emotionally, intellectually and most of all politically. That’s why they routinely dismiss or ignore good news out of Iraq and hype bad or even potentially fabricated news like the Thomas Diarists.

It’s been interesting watching their tactics evolve over the past few weeks, from the publishing of the Thomas Diarists to the smearing of David Petraeus. Interesting, but also revolting.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com