Party like it's 1996!

Everybody's favorite (OK, my least-favorite) Senator appeared again this week on FNS. In a discussion with host Chris Wallace and fellow guest, Senator Arlen Specter, Chuck Schumer had this to say on the subject of Iraq and Harry Reid's comment last week that the war there was a lost cause:

WALLACE: Senator Schumer, do you agree that the war in Iraq is lost? And is that the consensus of Senate Democrats?

SCHUMER: OK. Well, what Harry Reid is saying is this war is lost — in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.
We are not going to solve that problem. And we could stay three months or three years, and as soon as we leave, the Sunnis and Shiites, who have had 100-year enmity against one another, would continue shooting.

The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this — we Democrats believe it — if we change our mission and focus it more narrowly on counterterrorism, going after an Al Qaida camp that might arise in Iraq. That would take many fewer troops out of harm's way. That's what we're pushing the president to do.

So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win.

But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win.

That's a plan I could almost get behind if not for the fact that history doesn't look too kindly on that approach.