When, in late October, Democrat Nancy Pelosi contended on television that "the war on terror is the war in Afghanistan," she may or may not have implied Islamist fascist invasions and abetments in some sixty countries, including Iraq; but either way Republican Dennis Hastert thought that "foolish, naive, and dangerous." Hastert's party lost last night to Pelosi's, even so.
Just tonight Fox News anchor Brit Hume, interviewing Pelosi, drew this out of her: Iraq is "not a war to be won but a situation to be solved." It's a what? asks Mona Charen.
Two things can come of this. Either the American electorate, daily broadcast House Speaker Pelosi's phoned-in casuistry, will recognize the Republican Party as imperfect but rational, and reject the left; or this is really what the country wants, and foreign policy will become a series of morbid velleities, as per Darfur. The second is an insidious consolation, especially after an electoral defeat — but the first, especially with the unchecked rise of alternative and rightist media, is more likely.