Is the Iraq War going badly? Jim Geraghty doesn't think so

From TKS:
Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic

Let me say a couple of things as someone who did support the war in Iraq. There is no question that the war is going very, very badly. But I think two things remain even if we do end up deciding that Iraq was a terrible disaster. The first is that there is an important connection between dictatorship and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Jim Geraghty:

Pardon me? “The war is going very, very badly”? Does that strike anyone else as a bit hyperbolic? We’ve got bin Laden calling Zarqawi to tell him his bombings aren’t helping, successful elections with a ripple effect across the Middle East, Cairo newspapers are starting to call the Iraqi insurgents “terrorists,” Saddam is rotting in a prison cell, Uday and Qusay are ixnayed, the insurgents are going after civilians because shooting at coalition forces that shoot back is hazardous to their health, Iraqis are demonstrating in the streets against the insurgents, and as an added bonus, Bashar Assad is grabbing Joe Klein by the lapels in a panic and begging him to tell the Americans that he’s “not Saddam Hussein.”

Have there been mistakes and problems and setbacks? Sure. They happen in war, or in almost any other human endeavor. If the task is worth doing, then it is worth the inevitable things that go wrong. And sometimes things go horribly wrong — innocents caught in the crossfire, Italian agents killed, or prison abuse. That doesn’t mean you ignore those problems. You try to avoid them and fix them when you can.

But there’s no maturity or wisdom in a position that says, “I support the war, but only the good parts. I oppose it when it goes badly.”