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*1983 -- New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro joins the Democratic chorus opposing President Ronald Reagan's decision to send troops to Grenada. In spite of Reagan's rescue of American medical students and halting a Communist takeover, she charges, according to the New York Times, that it was "an inappropriate and precipitous use of military force." A year later Ms. Ferraro becomes the Democratic nominee for Vice-President. Her chief foreign policy adviser, according to the Times, is future Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

* 1983 -- Senator Edward Kennedy leads Democrats in disparaging Reagan's idea of shooting down nuclear tipped missiles from space as "Star Wars" -- fighting a system that only this year was invoked as a way to save the West Coast of the United States from a North Korean missile attack.

*1984 -- Walter Mondale campaigns for president on the idea that America should have a "nuclear freeze" with the Soviets. He vows to stop the "illegal war" in Nicaragua "in my first hundred days," accuses Reagan of wanting to "turn the heavens into a battleground," and ginning up an "arms race" with the Soviets. Dismissing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, Central America and Communist treatment of Jewish dissidents, Mondale pleads for arms control. The concept of victory and ending the Cold War is never discussed.

* 1985 -- Reykjavik Summit: When Reagan walks away from a bad deal he is sharply criticized by Democratic Congressman Ed Markey for giving up "a chance to cash in on Star Wars" by refusing to trade away the entire SDI program. Later, it is this refusal that is credited with winning the Cold War.

*1988 -- Michael Dukakis runs for president opposing efforts to defeat the Communist government of Nicaragua, saying his election would not be about "overthrowing governments in Central America."

* 1991 -- By a five-vote margin the Democratic-controlled Senate votes to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after he invaded the country. The majority of Democrats vote no. This includes now-Senator John Kerry, who said the U.S. was "once again willing to risk people dying from a mistake."

For five decades now, beginning with that hot August Chicago night in 1968, the modern Democratic Party has adopted the attitude, philosophy, policy and practices of appeasement. All of this -- and much more -- was well before Bill Clinton even got near the Oval Office. An office he won only when Americans understood the Cold War was finally over, believing that there were no serious threats on the horizon. Only then did a modern Democrat once again live in the White House.

In context, with this history, it just isn't hard to understand why so many Americans don't buy Clinton's defense of his failure to get Osama bin Ladin. It's also why the demands to "get out of Iraq" from Democrats, combined with impeachment threats, are increasingly understood as just the latest in a very long -- and now self-evidently very dangerous -- pattern.

A pattern of acts of submission.

Jeffrey Lord is the author of The Borking Rebellion. A former political director in the Reagan White House, he is now a writer in Pennsylvania.

topics:
Foreign Policy, Trade, Bill Clinton, Islam, Military, Iraq, Iran, NATO, Communism, Fascism