Is there anyone more self-righteous and also more sophomoric on TV than MSNBC’s resident ranter Keith Olbermann? Who can watch this guy for more than two minutes? Today he disgorged this hysterical fit against Dick Cheney. He regurgitated it again on air with the treacherous, self-serving Richard Clarke who first agreed with Olbermann that everything Dick Cheney says absurdly and obviously a lie, and then said what we have to do is get all 130,000 troops out of Iraq now. Which raises the interesting but unasked (by these two) question: why hasn’t Obama done that? He promised to. In fact it was the heart of his campaign, the promise that got him elected (rather than say Hillary who was pilloried for not joining the bring the troops home now bandwagon). Of course if there actually is a war — and not just an unnecessary, unwarranted excursion of American troops bent on occupying a foreign land and harassing its inhabitants — if you bring the troops home now, you essentially throw in the towel, surrender to the enemy. For five years in Iraq the Democratic Party was the party of surrender (there aren’t actually two ways about this). Then Obama became president and lo and behold he is pursuing policies identical to the ever hated, ever despised, ever ranted about George Bush. How is he doing this? My friend Ron Radosh has just counted the ways. But you don’t have to do that. Just ask yourself why has Obama committed to keeping 130,000 troops in Iraq? There’s only one possible answer: Bush and Cheney were right, and Pelosi and Reid and Kennedy and Kerry and too many to number were wrong. Including the Olbermann clown. And are still wrong. We are there because there is a real war and if we leave now we lose and the next war will kill more people and be even worse than this one has been.