WHATS WRONG WITH DEMOCRATS?
Increasingly, quitting looks like the new American Way of War. No
matter how great your team, you can't win the game if you walk off the
field at half-time. That's precisely what the Democratic Party wants
America to do in Iraq. Forget the fact that we've made remarkable
progress under daunting conditions: The Dems are looking to throw the
game just to embarrass the Bush administration. Just set a time-table
for our troops to come home and show the world that America is an
unreliable ally with no stomach for a fight, no matter the stakes
involved. Tell the world that deserting the South Vietnamese and
fleeing from Somalia weren't anomalies — that's what Americans do.
What do the Democrats fear? An American success in Iraq. They need us
to fail, and they're going to make us fail, no matter the cost. They
need to declare defeat before the 2006 mid-term elections and ensure a
real debacle before 2008 — a bloody mess they'll blame on Bush, even
though they made it themselves.(Ralph Peters)
"We Democrats need not worry. The 2008 election is three years off, and
that gives us at least two more years of mischief before we have to
start coming up with some positive ideas of our own, which won't even
be necessary if we're able to pressure Bush into the catastrophic
mistake of a precipitous withdrawal.
"So cut us some slack. We're just doing what is in the best interests
of the country, which is to hoodwink the people into returning us to
power." (David Limbaugh)
One indication that Murtha's comments can only encourage the enemy not
to quit is that they flashed around the Arab world on al-Jazeera TV
within moments of his making them. What must Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head
of al-Qaida in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden think of this? Just that their
prophecy is coming true: America doesn't have the stomach for war and
if the terrorists can hold us off for a while, we will give up.
This is a world war, the results of which can only end in defeat for
one side. There is no "coming home" from this war. We are engaged
whether we like it or not. Religious fanatics aren't going to
participate in a U.S.S. Missouri moment, signing documents of
surrender. They must be crushed and demoralized so that they will have
no hope in this life or the next of achieving their dreams of a
worldwide caliphate. Those are the stakes. Democrats had better ask
themselves whether politics or national survival means more to them and
what actions and words help or harm America and our troops. (Cal
Thomas)
The Democratic mindset — cakewalk or cut and run — has already had
parlous consequences. It is the reason why President Clinton did not
take meaningful action against Al Qaeda in the 1990s. He figured that a
serious military response — an invasion of Afghanistan or even a covert
campaign to aid the Northern Alliance — would run steep risks, like
body bags coming home. So he limited himself to flinging a few cruise
missiles at empty buildings, leading our enemies to think that we were,
in Osama bin Laden's words, a "paper tiger" that could be attacked with
impunity. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq today, aside from sparking
a Balkans-style civil war in which hundreds of thousands might die,
would confirm this baleful impression and encourage Islamo-fascists to
step up their predations.
"Things may develop faster than we imagine," Al Qaeda's deputy
commander, Ayman Zawahiri, apparently wrote to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the
top terrorist in Iraq. "The aftermath of the collapse of American power
in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy."
Even more noteworthy is that so many Democrats seem so sanguine about
letting history repeat itself.(Max Boot)
WHAT IS WRONG WITH BUSH?
The President has just honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
someone whose life features a sordid personality, ugly career, vicious
politics, and extremist religion. Awarding of the Presidential Medal of
Freedom to Muhammad Ali gratuitously celebrated a man profoundly
opposed to Bush's own, his party's, and the country's principles. It
represents, I submit, the nadir of his presidency. (Daniel Pipes)
The president seems to have bought into all the worst slogans of the
State Department and the CIA: Stability is more important than
revolution, exit strategy trumps victory, and so on. It may get him
love letters from Foggy Bottom, and maybe even benign treatment from
the New York Times, but it will also get him new attacks, both in Iraq
and elsewhere (most certainly including our own country), and it will
fuel a new counterrevolution that will make our mission far more
perilous.
Remember Churchill's great judgment on Chamberlain at Munich: He had a
choice between war and dishonor; he chose dishonor, and got war.
Bush should not want those terrible words to define his second term,
but he is certainly moving in that direction right now.
READ THE UGLY
DETAILS:(http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/ledeen120105.php3)
(Michael Ledeen)
WHATS WRONG WITH THE REPUBLICANS?
The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's
overrun by crooks, but because it's packed with cowards — and has
degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years
ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the
creative genius of American society. (Tony Snow)
WHATS WRONG WITH THE CIA?
The Dec. 1 edition of The New York Times carried a story about the
damage done to U.S. interests by the revelation that the CIA maintains
a number of secret interrogation prisons for terrorists in Europe and
elsewhere. How did this bit of classified information become public?
It was a leak from within the CIA (to The Washington Post in that case)
— and a breathtaking one at that. Though the agency has been steadily
leaking damaging stories about the Bush administration since 9/11, it
has now crossed a new threshold with a leak that severely damages CIA
activities and arguably harms national security — all for the sake of
crippling George W. Bush. Political correctness reigns in the U.S.
government at every level, and the CIA is no exception. The result is
an agency that is conducting a steady leak campaign against President
Bush designed to discredit the Iraq war and undermine the war on
terror. The CIA is no longer in the business of political
assassination. It has, however, moved on to character assassination.
The oversight committees of the Congress would do well to investigate.
(Mona Charen)
