The Iraq Imperative
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007 4:30 PM PT
National Security: As politicians tell people what they want to hear, real leaders administer the harsh medicine of truth. As President Bush explains why we must win in Iraq, most in Congress delude themselves.
A New York City tabloid might be expected to reject an op-ed submitted by a former Klansman. But there it was in Tuesday's New York Daily News. Sen. Robert Byrd, many moons ago elected the "Exalted Cyclops" of his local Crab Orchard KKK chapter, co-wrote a piece with New York's own Sen. Hillary Clinton calling for surrender in Iraq.
"If the Bush administration believes that the current war, as it is being executed, is critical to America's future, then it should make the case and let the people decide," Byrd and Hillary thundered.
Bulletin: The president has been using the bully pulpit to do exactly that for years, most recently in Ohio on Tuesday. Unfortunately, too many in both parties in Congress won't follow suit and tell their constituents the truth.
Byrd and Clinton quoted the president's most recent State of the Union, in which he noted: "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq."
"We could not agree more," wrote the senators. "This is not the fight Congress authorized, Mr. President."
But read Bush's full quotation: "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in. Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk."
Imagine a senator during World War II complaining after the Nazi surprise assault in the Battle of the Bulge, with more than 80,000 American casualties, that "this is not the fight Congress authorized, Mr. President." He would have been ridden out on a rail by his fellow senators of both parties.
The shortcomings of Baghdad's parliament are no excuse to abandon our troops' military mission: achieving security will beget political progress.
As in Iraq, much was at stake in Vietnam 40 years ago during the Cold War, but Iraq trumps that conflict: The Viet Cong were never going to follow us home and bomb our malls or campuses.
After so many decapitations — of Westerners and insufficiently fanatical Muslims — and bombings targeting children, we should have a grasp of how evil the enemy bent on destroying us is.
In case we don't, former Green Beret and independent journalist Michael Yon recently provided a blood-curdling reminder, relayed to him by an Iraqi official describing al-Qaida's takeover of a city northeast of Baghdad:
"On a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al-Qaida invited to
lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of
thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said,
who was about 11 years old . . . at these luncheons, the
families were sat down to eat.
"And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed.
The boy had been baked. Al-Qaida served the boy to his
family."
As the president has said many times, "It's important to defeat the enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at home." Here at home — where they will murder us, and our children, in those same savage ways.
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