Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have pretty much shown how they plan to sabotage what's left of the Iraq war effort. It will be the death of a thousand cuts, with constant legislative roadblocks.
Today,they sent the president a letter which I can only characterize as insulting and defeatist, as much disdain as I have for many of President Bush's war policies.
"As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results," the two leaders wrote.
"The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.
"It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.
"In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops."
Pelosi and Reid also told Bush in the letter that they planned to send him new legislation to "limit the US mission in Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of US forces, and bring the war to a responsible end."
Reid had already said yesterday that Senate Democrats would attach troop withdrawal deadlines to a Defense Department Authorization bill, scheduled for debate in a few weeks.
So much for the agreement between Bush and the Democrats that they would agree to fund the war and reassess things after General Petraeus' report to Congress in September.
Reid told reporters that he's going to put the Senate through another round of votes on the Iraq war before the July Fourth recess. And what's more he admitted that he's doing it for partisan political purposes, as part of a strategy to mollify the Angry Left base of the party and show them that Democrats are not giving up on efforts to withdraw and end the war...even though the measures are unlikely to pass.
"We're going to hold the president's feet to the fire" Reid bragged to reporters after his closed door meeting with the Senate Democrats.
Reid says he plans for the Senate to cast separate votes on whether to cut off funding for combat next year, order troop withdrawals within four months, mandate the length of combat tours and rescind the congressional authorization for the Iraqi invasion.
In short, he, Pelosi and their colleagues plan to sabotage the war effort by any means necessary.
Aside from the morality of saying that a strategy has `failed' while it is just beginning to be implemented, undercutting a commander in the field and the troops serving with him while the fighting is still going on, you have to wonder at the basic patriotism of elected officials who would act in this manner.
While I personally have my doubts about the efficacy of Patraeus' surge strategy given the basic nature of what's going on in Iraq, the last thing you'd ever see me do, especially as an elected official, is to mouth off in public like this..let alone concoct a legislative strategy to cut the legs out form under a commander I voted to confirm.
Congress agreed to wait until September to assess what's going on, and Reid, Pelosi and their colleagues are now reneging on that agreement.
It is, in a word, despicable.
If I were President Bush, I would waste no time in pointing out these contradictions. And instead of accusing Americans unwilling to support a blanket amnesty for illegal aliens of `not doing right by America' I'd be holding the feet of Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis in Washington to the fire.
But then, if I were President Bush, I'd have been fighting this war to win from day one, rather than merely fighting not to lose...
We need real leadership desperately, both in Congress and in the White House. Whatever else one might disagree with Rudy Giuliani on, he has one thing right...we need to get off defense and start fighting the War on Jihad on offense.
In my opinion, part of that involves labeling the sort of sentiments expressed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi as exactly what they are.
Which, of course, is why the president will do nothing of the kind.
Since Jorge Arbusto will not show leadership and call the Democrat defeatists out as the traitors they are, other Republican leaders should show the spine to do this.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that it is to early to call the surge a failure, I always felt that the strategy needed more than a few months to have any chance of being successful. For this strategy to have had any chance to be successful, the politicians should have been willing to give it a minimum of a couple of years and not only a few months.
To the best of my knowledge no one has ever won ANYTHING whne they fought not to lose. If we continue fighting not to lose, we will lose. This is not like Vietnam. Unlike the enemy in Vietnam, this enemy will follow us home.
The politicians could probably get the American people to support the war effort, if they were to explain the stakes to the American people. The problem is I don't even think most of them understand the stakes. If they even partially understood the stakes, our elected leaders would, at a minimum, do the following: 1.) Place a moratorium on immigration from Arab lands and 2.)secure the borders.