Democrats want to defeat the enemy. Their enemy is George W. Bush.
Judging by the speed with which previously extreme policy positions have become mainstream Congressional orthodoxy, the Democrat party is largely being driven by the nutroots and others on the far left. This is of course amplified by the Presidential primary race that is dragging everybody down to Silky Pony’s level of opportunistic soundbite politics.
Harry Reid has joined the club, and is now openly talking about defunding the troops, just weeks after almost the entire party leadership said they would do no such thing.
“In the face of the administration’s stubborn unwillingness to change course, the Senate has no choice but to force a change of course,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who signed on Monday as a co-sponsor of Reid’s proposal with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
Yes, you read that correctly. Harry Reid co-sponsored this disgraceful stunt with John ‘Jengis Khan’ Kerry and Russ Feingold, Prince of Peaceniks. The unwillingness to ‘change course’ that Kerry refers to is actually an unwillingness to ’surrender’, because we have implemented a ’surge’, changed the Rules of Engagement to allow the soldiers to adopt a more aggressive footprint, changed commanders and effected a strategy of ‘clear and hold’ in the mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad. We weren’t doing these things previously.
Reid has previously stopped short of embracing Feingold’s position. When asked whether he would ever consider pulling funds for the troops, Reid said Congress would provide troops what they needed to be safe.
Reid’s latest proposal would give the president one year to get troops out, ending funding for combat operations after March 31, 2008.
Meanwhile, the Bush White House seems at long last to have stepped up the media counter-offensive, and is attempting to offset the drumbeat of Iraq-defeatism with a more assertive assault on the motives and actions of the Democrat leadership. They haven’t gone far enough in my opinion, but it’s a start.
In Alabama (where else?), Dick Cheney spoke at a fundraiser for Senator Jeff Sessions, and devoted most of his time to blasting the Democrats for their reckless and irresponsible posturing.
“This action by the House of Representatives is irresponsible and sends exactly the wrong message to our enemy,” Cheney said. “When members of the Congress speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they’re telling the enemy to simply watch the clock and wait us out. It’s time the self-appointed strategists on Capitol Hill understood a very simple concept: You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy when you’re going to quit,” Cheney said as the audience jumped to its feet applauding.
These type of comments convey exactly the right message, but the White House needs to reiterate this position again, and again, and again. One thing the left has long understood is the extent to which the message can drown out the underlying realities, demonstrated by the decades-long propaganda war fought pretty successfully by the Soviets - their entire system was bringing ruin and misery to hundreds of millions of citizens, yet the left-infiltrated US media was cheerfully reproducing their fairy stories from the land of plenty.
The same media manipulation continues today; when the Berlin Wall fell, all the true believers in the west didn’t fall with it - they’re all still working for the New York Times and AP, and they’re still true believers, and they’re still pushing their agenda within their news coverage. They’re still at the BBC and they’re still at NPR. They’re still at PBS and they’re still at Reuters.
It is therefore difficult to get out a conservative message in the MSM, more difficult yet to get out a message that conflicts with the prevailing global wisdom, and even more difficult to do so in the face of relentless attacks from an emboldened Democrat party in Congress. But this war is as much about the message as it is about guns and bullets. Every single time John Kerry or some other self-appointed military commander makes a statement proposing we wave a white flag, it should be met with a salvo of return fire from the White House.
The message is simple: We must stay until we win. Winning means ending the large-scale terror attacks, creating a stable political climate, and restoring a measure of normality and security to the daily lives of Baghdad’s residents. If we leave before that mission is accomplished, we have failed, and we will be followed to the United States by a motivated group of battle-hardened, victorious Mujahideen bent on introducing death and destruction into OUR daily lives.
It’s not a sexy task, but the repetition of that simple message is job one for this White House, for the remainder of this Presidency.
Yeno says:
Martin: I very much appreciate that you define winning in this piece — it is so easy to trumpet on and on and not mention what ewinning is supposed to mean! I would like that kind of victory too — all Americans should. But we have to face the fact that Iraq is in a civil war — There is unfinished business between Sunnis and Shiites, with out boys (and girls) in the middle. So who do we side with to bring peace to Baghdad, etc.? Ex-Baathists allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or Iranian-backed Mahdi army and their ilk? Personally I’m sympathetic to the ‘withdraw to Kurdistan’ option, but that looks unlikely. I would love to stay and win. But I don’t see anyone outlining a feasible plan to do so. I say to our leaders, Tell us what to do (other than the unhelpful ‘Sit down and shut up’) — but there’s no real answer.
Major in Maylene says:
Yeno:
I beg to differ. Go over to blackfive and read the Fishwrap post - what the non-MSM observers are seeing. With only two of the five brigades in action, the surge in making things change in a big way.
There is no civil war underway in a political sense, but even if there were, what is different about a civil war vs the garden variety war? Do bullets fly faster?
Al Qaeda first convinced the Sunnis in Anbar to support them. They then threw in with the Saddam loyalists and attacked Iraqi and coalition forces. Al Sadr and his Iranian funded Madhi army stirred up trouble in the South. For the past year, our forces have been training Iraqi security forces and fighting these externally controlled enemies.
Iraqis are sick of the car bombs, death squads and the foreigners - Quds, Al Qaeda and occupation soldiers. Iraqi forces are taking to the field to pacify their country. In ever increasing numbers, local Iraqis are providing valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda cells and secret prisons where the sectarian violence is played out. Al Qaeda is being isolated, the Madhi army is fractured and Al Sadr and his leadership is hiding in Iran.
General Barry McCaffrey - no friend to Bush - recently returned from Iraq with a very positive report. He sees the Iraqi forces assuming the primary security and combat roles. 25 of the 32 Anbar tribes are now supporting the central government. He believes the war is winnable and the stakes too high to endure a loss.
In summary, the surge is working. A peaceful, prosperous and democratic Iraq can emerge unless we cut and run. We must win.
Vice-President Cheney at his Best! « Thespis Journal says:
[...] Check out Right Wing Champ, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Birmingham Blues (for the local moonbat flavor!) [...]
Yeno says:
Thanks for your note, MiM. I know there is good news in Iraq. I hear it every day — and I believe it. And I cheer when I hear it. I want a democratic Iraq with a multi-ethnic parliament, etc. But all that doesn’t change the fact that, for one thing, arouns the edges of the successes of the surge, Shia squads are clearing Sunni families out of Baghdad neighborhoods — this is real. Amidst all the victories and sacrifice on our part, this is happening. Is it exaggerated in the MSM and anti-war blogosphere? Yes, of course it is. But outright lies? I don’t often accuse my fellow Americans of that. (We can bend the truth a bit when we want to, though.) But it’s uphill work to try and turn popular opinion back once the folks at home have changed their minds. Worth trying? I hope so. But — to your point, why does it matter if there is a Civil War? Because as soon as we leave — whether it’s in one year or twenty-five years — the winners (Shiites) turn to Iran (or are bullied into submission by same) and then continue the work of clearing out Sunnis. Good, brave work by the surge — and I am SICK over Congressional Dems not being able to just Stand Back to let the surge do its work without this shameful undercutting — but I can’t help feeling like we’re holding up the collapsing roof of a shack over there, and we can hold it up for as long as we need to! but sooner or later we gotta let go and step outside into the sunlight. And will Iraq be better off without us? No way. But it’s not great for us to be there. (And Iran’s working on that nuke no matter what we do next door…)
Respect,
Yeno
Martin says:
MiM
There is only one acceptable outcome, and that is to win. Not just getting out, but winning.
Winning. An alien concept to our self-loathing liberal overlords.
Michael Webb says:
“We must stay until we win”?
You don’t care about winning. If you cared at all about actually succeeding, you would have been screaming for years about the criminally poor mismanagement of this war by this sad, strange excuse of a president. This war was lost, years ago, when post war planning was ignored and diplomacy was shunted aside. The war is over, and putting American lives in danger by making them intervene in a civil war is not just wrong, it is evil.
You really believe the enemy needs encouragement?
We can’t even make the freaking Green Zone safe.
The war is over and George Bush lost it.
It will be decades before we recover from this administration.
Yeno says:
We’ve been told to just sit down and shut up many times in this war in the name of supporting the troops. And we’ve behaved, flinched when the whip handle’s raised, only to find out this administration has no clue what it’s doing. Our army’s the best in the world, but this administration has done it some real dirt. All this will go on until Bush leaves office. I’m old enough to remember McNamara and Westmoreland saying these exact same things. Civilian populations don’t lose wars, but civilian administrations do! (N.B. the “stabbed in the back” myth of Weimar Germany where protests from a starving and decimated population were used as an excuse for losing WWI for the Germans.) BUT — Let the surge do its work, though, why not? I wish the Dems would just agree to that. Now when this war is lost it will be blamed on Harry Reid, which is ludicrous. Congress didn’t say a word for four years. That’s about as long a blank check as any president is going to get in this country (remember they only serve for eight, and picture Clinton trying to get Anything from Newt’s congress!) The War on Terror is a concept, not a military action. The War in Iraq is not the War on Terror, it is a real war like the wars we read about in school, that can be won and lost by planning, execution, propaganda, etc. We’re backing the wrong team in this civil war — there is no right team but the Kurds. And good lives are in the balance. But stay and do the job, sure. I think the real question, if this war is lost, will be, Was it an ignoble and ill-conceived effort from the start? or was it a good war gone wrong? Or the third view: it was a good war lost because Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi stabbed us in the back.