Posted on 01/13/2007 10:02:28 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
The bipartisan opposition to President Bush's troop-increase plan has proved more intense than his advisers hoped and has left them scrambling to find support, but the White House is banking on the assumption that it can execute its "new way forward" in Iraq before Congress can derail it.
The plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq was virtually guaranteed to provoke a furor in Washington, Bush advisers said, but the storm was exacerbated by the slow, leaky way that the White House reached a decision. The policy review stretched two months after the election and the essence of the plan became known long before Bush announced it, making it a political pi?ata for opponents.
Without Bush making the case for it until last week, resistance hardened, and aides now harbor no hope of winning over Democrats. Instead, they aim mainly to keep Republicans from abandoning him further. Bush invited GOP leaders to Camp David this weekend and will argue his case to the nation on CBS's "60 Minutes" tonight. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley will also hit the airwaves today.
"We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical," Bush said in his radio address yesterday, adding: "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."
Many Democrats, in fact, have proposed alternatives centered around pulling out troops, an idea Bush flatly rejects. So hopes for a bipartisan consensus after Democrats captured Congress in the November midterm elections have evaporated, and Bush appears more isolated than ever.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
There are no shortage of cowards in the GOP.
DING DING DING DING!!!!! We have a winner for "Understatement of the Year".
Wonder what these idiots will do when the plan works. And it will. Iraq is not Vietnam (which we never lost till after we left) and we probably are a lot closer to winning then the MSM thinks. My money still is on the President.
Same ole, same ole....they just can't shut up... I would give my life for President Bush. He is one of the very few I trust... now "Lets Roll." Semper Fi
Old tongue tied W will never learn. He need to eschew the Seditious Leftist Backstabbing Democrat Media.
Oh, well. Maybe President Romney will be more media savvy.
Pres. Bush just told them that if they have a better idea to speak up.
I hope they realize that means to put up or SHUT UP!
They are playing politics, and poll watching rather than looking out for national security.
Pres. Bush is giving them a chance NOT to look like cowards..it is their fault if they don't realize that.
BUMP!
Well stated!
The Democrats are traitors and certain Republicans are cowards and the media's angle is that it's Bush who looks bad. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland that is today's America. I give up. America is lost.
Meh, get a grip on yourself and look at your last post. If you agree to that then get lost!
Aww you don't mean that. If you do, then I'm glad you weren't around during the American Revolution. As long as there are FReepers and like-minded - America is not nor will be lost.
When the going gets tough.........
BUMP.
MikeA can't really mean that.
And what are you doing up so late missy? :o)
I might ask the same of you....LOL.
I'm getting ready to log out for the night.
Same here. Sleep well, my FRiend.
I think we have seen the pain threshold of the American people, and it is low. Note that this is with volunteers. I wonder what would happen if we had to fight a war that required a draft - would a draft bill even go through? If we leave Iraq, there will be a bloodbath there, as Shiites finally start butchering Sunnis en masse, without Uncle Sam standing in the way. That might also kick off a Hundred Years War between Shiites and Sunnis, as they vie for supremacy in the region.
The Colonists were a different breed. Americans of WWI and WWII likewise were able to look beyond beyond their small existance and see something much larger, something worth fighting and even making the ultimate sacrifice for.
Now, we are a collection of individuals, each with our own interests. The pursuit of pleasure and the leisure culture that has flooded American society since the 1960's breech of the dike called Morality (fueled by the prosperity of the 1950's) has replaced faith with existential despair; most simply ask, with respect to noble ventures with a larger purpose, "What's the point?"
MikeA is frustrated. So am I. He is frustrated because, whether he realizes it or not, the America of the twenty first century is not made of the same stuff as the America of the 1940's. We have pleasure and convenience to the degree that the temporary removal of them is cause for personal crisis. We have never experienced a true depression. We are soft and selfish.
9/11 offered a temporary reprieve, bringing Americans together in a way that transcendended the mundane. We glimpsed the remnants of our former glory in a fleeting moment. Awakened from the slumber of apathy, we united in a special bond and took up arms to defend what we hold dear - not just our own personal comforts and freedoms, but the transcendent ideas about human dignity and Creator-endowed liberty expressed so nobly in our founding documents that form the rubric of these freedoms.
Something is amiss. We're here on FR because we all share frustrations and, to a degree, a common vision for our cherished republic. We all share in common hopes and dreams for our families. But who, besides President Bush, is leading? Who, besides President Bush, is doing right despite the ill-grounded snipers? Who retains that old-style moral fiber, that firm grounding in moral absolutes derived from the Book that provides the foundation for all government right down to the family? Who is unfraid anymore to champion the noble cause of our founding fathers on the grounds that their Biblically-rooted ideals are very curing compounded needed to harden the sandy foundation on which rest the leaning houses of those marching steadily toward a society in which all ultimate truth and meaning is utterly lost?
My two cents.
Nothing is amiss. That thing that our ancestors had is still here. The evil ones deny us just as they denied them but that is to be expected. We have it all, more than anyone ever had it before. We can do whatever we want. So let us be FRee.
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