If there is an illustration next to the word “gall” in the
dictionary, the picture may very well be of the Congressional
Democrat leadership, led (less than ably) by Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid (with Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha close
behind).
Under Reid’s political-victory-at-any-cost brand of
“leadership,” Congressional Democrats have done everything in their
power to ensure America’s defeat in Iraq, while simultaneously
attempting to place the blame for the loss squarely on the
shoulders of a President who either is unwilling to defend himself
and the military for which he serves as Commander in Chief, or is
incapable of doing so. The process began in earnest soon after the
110th Congress convened, when, on the heels of the Senate’s
confirmation of General David Petraeus as commander of
Multinational Forces in Iraq (MNF-I), both Democrat-controlled
houses attempted to ram through nonbinding resolutions condemning
the “troop surge” which had been requested by Petraeus, and which
was a key component of President Bush’s long overdue “new strategy”
in that war.
Next, again going against the wishes of America’s military
leaders (something which Reid and others have constantly berated
the President for supposedly doing), the Democrat Congress adopted
the “slow bleed” tactic, which was designed to combine a
multimillion dollar anti-military, anti-war campaign with
legislative action that would slowly but surely deprive the
warfighters on the ground in Iraq of the materiel they needed to
prosecute the war, in hopes that, once they had run so low on
funding, gear, and supplies that they could no longer effectively
fight, President Bush would be forced to bring them home. This
unconscionable “strategy” — simply turning off the spigot of
supplies necessary to keep our men and women in harm’s way alive
and functioning, in hopes of forcing a political opponent’s hand —
might have actually worked, had one Representative (Pennsylvania
Democrat Jack Murtha) not made the abysmally foolish (and
thankfully lifesaving) decision to go public with the plan. The
reaction to this horrific plan was severe enough that the
“strategy” had to be dropped — at least for the time being.
Senator Reid did not allow that minor setback to stop him
though; instead — once again, without consulting with the Generals
— he opted for the nuclear option, and went to the media with the
sudden pronouncements that “the was [was] lost” and that “the surge
[had] failed.” As usual, he and his defenders derided ay claims
that our enemies had heard or been emboldened by his words (as they
have with every statement and tactic made and utilized by the
Democrats in their fight against the American military); however,
such defenses rang even more hollow than usual as, within hours of
the statement being made, every Middle Eastern news agency from Al
Jazeera to Iran’s state news service had reprinted and rebroadcast
Reid’s words.
Only days after this gaffe (to be polite about it), Reid rammed
a bill through the Senate (and his counterpart in the House,
Speaker Pelosi, did the same in her chamber), which accomplished
what the Democrats had been trying to do for months, and set a date
for surrender in and withdrawal from Iraq. No senior military
leaders were consulted in this decision, either, though the
criticism that it was Bush who refused to “listen to the
Generals” remained hypocritically constant.
In the past week, Senator Reid and his band of Merry Dems,
guided by their “defeat Bush whatever the cost” mentality, finally
crossed a line from even remotely excusable action to being
overtly, obviously, and pathetically anti-military and
anti-American, when they — who have so often accused the President
of using the troops as political pawns — pulled a series of stunts
which were beyond the pale.
On Wednesday, as the seemingly weaker-by-the-day President Bush
prepared to make a trip down to Capitol Hill to beg Congress to
reconsider his immigration bill, Reid and Pelosi sent a co-written
letter to the Commander in Chief in which they reasserted that the
war was a lost cause, and that the “surge” — which is still
not even fully implemented — had failed miserably. Reid
followed this by demonstrating how brazenly callous a “leader” he
really is, as — for the first time since he became Senate Majority
Leader six months ago, and (not coincidentally) at the moment that
President Bush was arriving to meet with him — he took to the
Senate floor and held a “moment of silence” in remembrance of the
3,500 soldiers killed in Iraq.
With this, Senator Reid made his point loud and clear: to him,
the soldiers in Iraq, who are bleeding and dying day in and day
out, are simply a useful tool with which to fight the war that
really matters — the war against President Bush and the
hated Republicans, for the victor’s spoils of political points and
future power.
How pathetic must a man — and a party — be, to be willing to
throw the country they purportedly help “lead” under the bus, and
to embrace and facilitate the killing of young men and women in
uniform, in order to pander to their base, and in order to
(hopefully) secure political power?
The Democrat position on America and on Iraq is clearly
exemplified by their Senate leader, and it is this: defeat at all
costs. No matter how many soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines
are killed (more, of course, make for better headlines, and
therefore a more public case for surrender), no matter how
obviously duplicitous and hypocritical their acts and statements
are, and no matter the long-term repercussions not only for the
middle east — whose abandonment they hope to force — but also for
America, the “anti-war” left, led in office by Senator Harry Reid,
will have its defeat.
Shortly after the 2006 elections, the left took the metaphorical
scalp of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rather than
sating the Democrats, the concession made by President Bush in
asking, and accepting, his resignation only whetted their appetite
for more. They got a second scalp only days ago, when current
SecDef Robert Gates announced that the administration was so afraid
of “contentious, backward-looking confirmation hearings in the
Senate” that General Peter Pace, the nation’s highest ranking
military officer, would be retired, rather than nominated for a
second two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In the days after Gates’s announcement, Reid held a conference
call for far-left bloggers in which he called Pace — one of the
Generals to whom Bush had supposedly “not been listening” —
“incompetent” and “a yes-man for the President.” A fellow
Congressional Democrat, California Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), made
similar comments to the media, saying that Pace had repeatedly
“showed his ignorance” and was guilty of “a serious dereliction of
duty” because of “a war we got into on a lie” and because of “the
policies of this administration.” So much for respect for the
military — or for even making sense.
The next head on the metaphorical chopping block will be General
Petraeus, the commander in Iraq and the man who, in September, will
be dragged before Reid’s Senate to testify as to whether or not he
has accomplished the ten-year task he was given in the nine months
he was allotted (while having to work against the constant flow
from the Democrat-controlled Congress of repeated statements — as
public, and on as international a scale, as possible — that he
would fail, was failing, and had failed, as well as that they would
deny him the money, troops, authorization, and time he needed).
For Reid and his cohorts, it will not matter what Petraeus says
this fall; their minds have long been made up that America will
lose this war, regardless of whether she actually does so or not.
To this effect, they have already begun to lay the groundwork for
their attempt at discrediting him. In the last few days, Reid has
cast aspersions on Petraeus’s honesty and willingness to attest to
the actual state of affairs in Iraq; in September, it will only get
worse. The end has been scripted by the left and the media and,
come this fall, regardless of what information is contained in such
simple notions as truth or facts, Petraeus and
the American military will have failed — and Reid and the
Democrats’ actions and statements (and ridiculous time constraints)
will have had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
President Bush’s post-9/11 words hold even more true now than
they did when he first spoke them: people around the world —
including on the home front — are, in fact, “either with us or
with the terrorists.” The anti-war side of the political leadership
in this country has advanced well beyond the supposedly
“non-binding” stage, and is making its choice of sides clearer by
the day. Our soldiers and our country are paying, and will continue
to pay, for this unconscionable behavior.
The Bush administration appears woefully inept at making its own
case (surprise) and at defending either itself or our military.
While that fact is regrettable at best, what it means is that we
the people must take an even more vocal and more active stand for
our nation and for those who are shedding blood at this very moment
to preserve it. The lies, the duplicity, the hypocrisy, and the
willingness to let Americans die for the shot at a bit more
political power cannot be allowed to continue unchecked, and if the
executive branch is so incapable of doing this job that it is left
solely to us, then so be it.
It is not a challenge which we can afford to take lightly, or to
avoid. In the words of John Kerry at the 2004 Democrat convention
(but slightly less creepy): Bring. It. On.
