Demrats' Dead End
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Iraq: The Democrat-led Congress will hand President Bush a bill that requires troop withdrawals to begin this fall. Bush has said he'll veto it. Good. Now it's time for the rest of the GOP to denounce this charade.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said Bush is in a "state of denial" over the surge in Iraq. In fact, it's the Democrats who are in denial.
The $124 billion pork-filled bill was scheduled for a vote late Wednesday. Whenever it's passed, the bill they present Bush will be vetoed. Though it's possible they'll be able to override the veto, it's not likely. So what we have left is pure politics.
"On Iraq, the American people want a new direction, and we are providing it," said Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat and one of the lead congressional negotiators on the legislation.
She's right — they do have a new direction. It's called reverse. Or in military parlance, retreat. But what's truly amazing is that the Democrats can't understand just how bad they look right now.
Consider that this is the week that Gen. David Petraeus, who was only recently put in place to head our war effort, is scheduled to update Congress on the progress in Iraq.
You'd think that Democrats would want to hear that before casting a hasty vote to begin withdrawing our 140,000 troops on Oct. 1 of this year. But you'd be wrong.
As far as Reid is concerned, it doesn't matter what Petraeus says. If Petraeus presents anything other than the gloomy, defeatist picture that Democrats have staked their political futures on, Reid says, "I don't believe him, because it's not happening."
But Reid isn't the only one.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who three weeks ago found ample time to gallivant to Damascus to meet with Baathist Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, said she had a "scheduling conflict" that would prevent her from listening to Petraeus' presentation. Lots of time for terror-supporting dictators, no time for heroes.
Again, this underscores how unserious the Democrats are about national security and the war on terror. They have, by their own admission, a policy based on raw politics — not on moral right, winning the war, what's best for the troops. Just sheer, raw politics.
The president has made clear the danger in such a strategy.
"An artificial timetable of withdrawal would say to an enemy, 'Just wait them out,' " he said Monday. "It would say to the Iraqis, 'Don't do hard things necessary to achieve our objectives,' and it would be discouraging for our troops."
The logic of each of those statements is airtight. Not so the Democratic leaders' own logic in saying if Bush vetoes the bill, "He will be the one who has failed to provide our troops and our veterans with the resources they need."
No, it will be the Democrats, who are openly, cynically sabotaging the war effort for short-term political gain.
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani made some rather tough, but completely deserved, comments about his political foes on Wednesday, saying "The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."
Amen to that.
But maybe those words weren't harsh enough. Playing politics with a war, as the Democrats have done, is despicable. It's a good thing Bush will veto their surrender bill. It will make the deadly serious choices we face in the coming two years all the clearer. |
