Life Imitates Protest Music

That’s the heading of the lead item of Best of the Web Today, where James Taranto juxtaposes two quotes in a way that ought to be seared into the conscience of every decent American.

Here is the one from the protest song, a 1967 Phil Ochs ballad:

Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

And here is the one from life, in today’s Baltimore Sun:

Many acknowledged that Iraq could first plunge into vicious sectarian fighting. . . . Yet they flatly rejected the use of U.S. troops to stop the killing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s horrendous,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who has helped lead the drive against the war. “The only hope for the Iraqis is their own damned government, and there’s slim hope for that.”

And nobody will care what happens to Iraqis, outside of a small circle of friends.

America isn’t omnipotent and can’t stanch all the bloodletting in the world, just as the Monopoly players in the song couldn’t report every crime. But we have 150,000 soldiers in Iraq right now. They have done a great deal to reduce violence in Anbar and Diyala provinces, formerly epicenters of terrorist activity, and in Baghdad itself. Yet Rep. Obey and his fellow doves want to give up and let mass murder proceed.

Do they really hate George W. Bush that much? That they would punish him by executing the people of Iraq?

Addendum: Here is what John Burns, the lead New York Times reporter on the ground in Iraq, has to say about the role of the American military and the likely consequences of the Left’s strategy:

I find this to be very widely agreed amongst Iraqis that I know, of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds – the United States armed forces are a very important inhibitor against violence. I know it’s argued by some people that they provoke the violence. I simply don’t believe that to be in the main true. I think it’s a much larger truth that where American forces are present, they are inhibiting sectarian violence, and they are going after the people, particularly al-Qaeda and the Shiite death squads, who are provoking that violence. Remove them or at least remove them quickly, and it seems to me . . . that you have to weigh the price. And the price would very likely be very, very high levels of violence, at least in the short run and perhaps, perhaps - perhaps for quite a considerable period of time. . . .

[I]t seems to me incontrovertible that the most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence. And I find that to be widely agreed amongst Iraqis, including Iraqis who strongly opposed the invasion.

But the editors of the Times don’t listen to their reporters. Or perhaps they, like Rep. Obey, just don’t care.