Posted on 04/21/2007 8:54:48 AM PDT by GMMAC
The Democrats' cynical timing
David Frum, National Post
Published: Saturday, April 21, 2007
This war is lost." No, that was not said by some angry protester, not by some gloating terrorist, but by the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid, in remarks to journalists Thursday.
That's the same Harry Reid who voted only three months ago to confirm General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus appeared before the Senate -- Reid's Senate -- to describe a new strategy in Iraq, backed by almost 28,000 additional US troops. Petraeus detailed his plans and warned he would need at least six months to achieve success. Reid voted to give him that chance. So did 80 other senators: Petraeus was confirmed 81-0.
Those 28,000 troops are flowing into Iraq at this very moment. They will continue to arrive into the summer.
But the new "clear and hold" strategy has already gone into effect: U.S. troops carried out 7,400 patrols in Baghdad in the first week of February 2007 - and 20,000 in the second week.
Despite last week's atrocious bombings in Baghdad, the surge is already yielding results.
At a press briefing Friday in Washington, Pentagon officials pointed out that attacks on civilians in Baghdad dropped by 50% in the first six weeks of the new plan as compared to the six weeks before the plan began. Civilian casualties across Iraq declined by 24% in the first six weeks of the new plan as compared to the six weeks before.
Baghdad's Shiite militias have gone to ground, and U.S. military intelligence believes that the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has fled to Iran.
For the first time since the January 2005 elections, strong and positive news is coming to Iraq. And this is the moment that the leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate chooses to throw in the towel?
Reid's office hastily issued a semi-retraction: "As long as we follow the President's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course -- and we must change course."
What might such a course look like? Reid is clear about only one thing: The new course begins with a withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Democrats disagreeamongst themselves when that withdrawal should start. Reid says 12 months from now. Some of the more liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives say six months. The most radical want to start the pullout in just two.
But almost all Democrats agree that the right time to announce their decision to quit is right now, right in the middle of the surge, right in the middle of the battle.
Some cynical Republicans wonder whether Democrats want to cut off the troops now precisely because they fear that the surge might succeed.
Others suspect that the Democrats are just posturing: They count on the President to defy them and continue the surge anyway. If the surge works, the public will forget or anyway not care that the Democrats opposed it. If it fails, they can say, "I told you so."
Whatever the motive, 40 years after Vietnam, the Democrats remain a party desperately uncomfortable with military force. Democrats can tolerate the use of force only for very short intervals, so long as casualties remain low and the media remain indulgent, as happened in Kosovo in 1999. But let the war prove long or hard, let events unfold in surprising or frustrating ways, then they just fold up like accordions.
Even relatively hawkish Democrats cannot resist. Look at Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Long robust on Iraq, Biden now shrugs off the surge's early successes. The surge, he wrote in an April 12 oped, is just "squeezing a water balloon." If conditions improve in Baghdad, well that's just a preliminary to deterioration elsewhere. He has called for withdrawal to begin within 3 months.
The U.S. public has soured on Iraq, and politicians like Reid and Biden have absorbed that mood. The Democrats benefited from this sourness in 2006, and they are betting everything on benefiting more in 2008. Well maybe.
But here is another bet. Since Vietnam, Democrats have struggled desperately and unavailingly against their image as the party of weakness on national security. In March 2005, a group of elected Democrats headed by Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh warned their colleagues: "No political party will gain or hold power --nor will it deserve to--if it cannot provide people with a basic sense of security." They added: "While we have roundly condemned the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq, it is essential that partisan enmity not obscure America's vital interest in helping the newly elected Iraqi government succeed." Good advice -- but advice that has long since been discarded as Democrats in Congress rush to embrace defeat.
DFrum@aei.org
© National Post 2007
PING!
“The U.S. public has soured on Iraq, and politicians like Reid and Biden have absorbed that mood. The Democrats benefited from this sourness in 2006, and they are betting everything on benefiting more in 2008. Well maybe.”
millions of negative tv images on iraq by the democrap tv,
and a president that did not sell the war well,
and rumsfeld, franks, bremer, et al that screwed up the war...
vietnam redux.
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Much conjecture but the Bush metric remains as the fact on the ground. The public will know the surge is succeeding when we start to stand down. The media won’t be able to hide that.
I wonder what their response will be when the millions who die because of their policy will perish in NYC, Chicago, LA, and DFW?
The Democrat party is 100% invested in our defeat. The surge in troops seems to be working. The Democrats must ensure defeat to survive. That is what this is all about. Harry Reid and his ilk do not give on damn that what they say causes United States Military Troops to die. They are beyond contempt, they are simply scum.
They will blame it on the Republicans. Face it the war is lost, but not the one in Iraq. The war was for the American Media and we lost and lost badly. Rosie O’Donnell is now the voice of America. Her most irrational, traitorous rants go unchallenged. Yet any effort of a conservative to justify our political view is regarded as a hate crime.
The media picks the conservative candidates. Rudy and Johnny M are hardly the choice of conservatives. The fairness doctrine will soon silence the few remaining conservative voices on talk radio. And the gun grabbers will ensure that there will be no resistance to the left wing tyranny. The soviets proved it time and again it doesn't matter what you say if yours is the only message that the people hear.
If millions die in NYC, LA, etc, the democrats can say, "See, we were right. Bush was wasting time in Iraq and not protecting us at home."
You get the picture.
We need to work on getting the press to change this guy's moniker. How 'bout "radical terrorist and wanna-be cleric Mookie al-sadr?"
Time to pull out of Kosovo!!
Pray for W and Our Troops
Democrats basically need to be referred to as the Loser Party from now on.
Reid’s office hastily issued a semi-retraction: “As long as we follow the President’s path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course — and we must change course.”
Nice try Harry.....your retraction won’t work...
Yes it will, because the MSM is using the RESTATED version on the news. They actually gave him a Mulligan.
Maybe so but the MSM did show his original statement enough times that the cat will be hard to put back in the bag.
People don’t usually give politicians much slack in retracting or altering their original statements.
Let’s talk about what else has happened since Vietnam, politically speaking. Specifically, electorally speaking.
Actually, let’s go back a bit. In the last 48 years, the White House has been occupied by Republicans over Democrats, by a year count of 28 to 20.
However, if you start counting from 1970 - that’s 38 years, for those in Rio Linda - the number changes to 26 years Republican, to 12 years Democrat. 1970 was about the midway point of Vietnam, and two years later, their big antiwar candidate McGovern was trounced by Nixon. But I digress.
Let’s jump to 1980...in the 28 years since, the record is 20-8...the 8 represented by two presidents named Clinton (did they not say repeatedly “two for one”?
My point is that for all of the times that we suffered having Democrat leadership in the House and Senate, current times included, the results of the Presidential elections have been quite differeent. And someday, someone with great courage (in the government) will mention the obvious, about the Iraq vote and war.
In 2002, the Democrats had control of the Senate - with about as slim a margin as they have now, I might add - due to Jim Jeffords shifting to Independent. It was a year after 9/11, a year after they passed a vote authorizing the President to do whatever it took to protect this country from a repeat of what had just happened, and was still a gaping wound at the time.
So the Democrats, as Frum properly noted to be weak on defense since (at least) Vietnam, had a golden opportunity to prove that they were the “strong on defense” party, and a parade of Democrats from both houses talked about how vital it was to defeat Saddam Hussein (including Kerry, BreckGirl, and a bunch of these other mierda).
Interesting enough that this joint resolution happened right before the 2002 midterm elections. I submit, as I have since joining this board, that when the Democrats not only failed to regain the House, but lost the Senate, that they couldn’t run fast enough against the war, and against the President, rightly figuring that the DriveBy Media would give them cover.
In terms of the House and Senate, the Left might be right - if I recall, the Dims had the House for 40 years straight, before the “temper tantrum” of 1994, and just now got it back - but the statistics go against them for regaining the White House with people like Reid, Pelosi, Kerry, Biden, et. al. in their caucus.
My two cents.
Thanks for the ping.
I have to disagree with Frum’s point that Biden and Reid have absorbed the public’s souring on the war.
I think Biden, Reid, Murtha and the rest have CAUSED the American public to be soured on the war.
I saw on the Fox ticker that Minn. Sen. Klobachar gave the Dem response to Bush’s weekly address.
Bush spoke about the tragedy of Virginia Tech, with prayers for healing.
Klobachar said they need to SEND A MESSAGE to the Iraqi government that the USA won’t be their indefinitely.
How much NICER it would have been if she would have sent a message to THE TERRORISTS..that their act is getting tiresome...and they aren’t long for this world.
The Dems are really good at threatening Prs. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Condi, ....and the Iraqi Government....but, cater to the propaganda needs of the terrorists.
PING
They will blame it on the Republicans.
And they'll have the perfect explanation: "Bush paid no attention to border security." Doesn't matter that it's hypocritical on their part to say it.
Interesting. I daresay if there were still Democrats such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Scoop Jackson, we wouldn’t be witnessing the takeover of the once great (though completely wrong on the issues!) party by true socialists.
The Democrats have let this happen to themselves- and I don’t see an end in sight.
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