Debating Democrats: War is Lost, But Don’t Call Us Defeatists!

The Democratic presidential candidates apparently labor under the belief that President Bush is the Republican Party’s 2008 nominee. That is not surprising, since they also believe that to defeat Islamic fascists we must stop fighting them.

Bush and the war in Iraq were the centerpiece issues in the candidates’ first debate. For 90 minutes they parried a discussion of grown-up ideas to fighting terrorism. Each instead claimed to be the fastest defeatist in the West. The only thing missing from the debate was a laugh track.

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel declared, “Understand that this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis.” Gravel later won the hearts and minds of his party’s moonbeam voter base when he claimed that the military-industrial complex, a term last heard from departing President Dwight Eisenhower, controls our government and our culture. He also accused his opponents of secretly scheming to drop nuclear bombs on the Middle East. That scribbling sound you heard was Jerry Brown writing checks to the Gravel campaign.

Senator Hillary Clinton: “The Congress has voted, as of today, to end this war. And now we can only hope that the president will listen.”

Senator Joseph Biden: “I am proud that I opposed this war from the start, because I thought that it would lead to the disastrous conditions that we've seen on the ground in Iraq.”

Senator Barack Obama, that last vessel of hope: “I'm proud of the fact that I put forward a plan in January that mirrors what Congress ultimately adopted. And it says there's no military solution to this.”

By the time moderator Brian Williams got to John Edwards, I expected Edwards to don a wig and quote Scarlett O’Hara: “Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides . . . there isn’t going to be any war.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) does not even believe the global war against terrorism exists. Williams asked the candidates, “Do you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror?” Kucinich did not raise his hand because, he said, “The global war on terror has been a pretext for aggressive war . . . the world is waiting for an American president who…doesn't see the world in terms of enemies.”

How are we supposed to react to mass-murdering terrorists who fly airplanes into our buildings and blow up European subways? Throw them a smoked goat barbeque on the South Lawn? But we all know the real enemy isn’t those silly terrorists. It’s our military-industrial complex.

The candidates were obviously not interested in discussing the terrorists’ global reach, their political and religious agendas or future threats to the U.S. if we end the fighting in Iraq. The out-of-Iraq position advocated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and all eight candidates is nothing more than a way to carve out a disagreement with their political opposition on our most significant foreign policy issue.

If the candidates truly believed that the best way to protect our homeland from future terrorist attacks was to end the war in Iraq, they would have rallied around Reid’s recent statement that “the war is lost.” Instead, Reid’s colleagues ran from his comments. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said in a Politico.com report, “I do not agree that the war is lost. It clearly has yet to be won, which is why we need new benchmarks and goals to measure a path to success.” The report stated that none of the dozen senators contacted supported Reid’s assertion that the war against Islamic fascism is lost.

Clinton: “He (Bush) is stubbornly refusing to listen to the will of the American people.”

Gravel: “Let the American people see clearly who’s keeping the war going and who’s not.”

Which is it? Do the American people oppose the war? Do they oppose victory? Do they support the war and the troops but want the troops to leave before they accomplish their mission? The liberals have argued more positions on the war than there are combinations of Whopper toppings. Have it your way, indeed.

Liberals change their collective mind so often on varying aspects of the war because they have no clear convictions regarding the fight against Islamic terrorists. That is why every surrender date they propose is well in advance of the 2008 presidential election. The war is an issue they are scared to death to face, because the only political victory they can now claim on the war is defeat for America. In the war against Islamic fascism, defeat for America means more dead Americans.

And a candidate will emerge from this group of the gravitas-challenged to represent one of the two major political parties. That is no laughing matter.

Each instead claimed to be the fastest defeatist in the West

Good one. Even Democrats need to have some goal. Since they're all anti-gun none of them can be quickest draw in the West.

For the next 20 years Democrats and other Communists will insist that “we brought it on ourselves” and that it was the “illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq” that has caused the latest moslem attrocity, and not their self-stated desire for jihad and glory.

Mo-REESE gra-VELL has to be the underdog of all underdogs. Cab driver and one-time Senator from Alaska, older than even John McCain, and the person who publicized the “Pentagon papers” during the Nixon era by reading them aloud on the floor of the Senate, he considers all the other Democratican candidates as rushing to nuke Iran, while he would be the voice of “reason” and “diplomacy”. Which means redployment and retreat out of the Middle East even faster than “Hurry” Reid wants.

This is the Democratican all other Democraticans want to be.

But don’t have the intestinal fortitude to come out and say aloud.

I agree.

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