And The Beat Goes On

December 5, 2006

As we head into the Christmas Season facing the prospect of a change in power in Washington D.C. from Republican control back to Democrat control, we are also faced with the continuing battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, the War on Terror. Along with the shift in power we also see the Democrats angling for controlling the war, the war they too voted for but oppose now, so they say. Not even in power yet they are making their positions known and making their calls on the war, seemingly forgetting they don’t run the war, but that power to Command the Military and wage wars is vested in the President, by our Constitution.

Granted, they control the purse strings to fund our Military Forces, but we also have the Speaker of the House to be, Nancy Pelosi (D.Ca.) saying just today that ‘We won't cut off funding’ for Iraq . “Let me remove all doubt in anyone’s mind; as long as our troops are in harm’s way, Democrats will be there to support them, but… we will have oversight over that funding,” she said.

Incoming Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D. Md.) added, “None of us want to fail; none of us want to see Iraq as a failure.”

Dennis Kucinich, (D. Oh.), failed Presidential hopeful and well known critic of both the war and President Bush disagrees. His answer is to “vote down” the $130 billion Iraq war supplemental spending bill that will be on the House floor in the spring adding, “Bush would be forced to end the war.”

Kucinich also says, “This war is not only the president’s, this war belongs to Congress as well, to Democrats and Republican alike….”

Yes, Mr. Kucinich, the war belongs to all of us, meaning the public as well. If your suggestion is followed, though, the failure and resulting bloodbath will belong solely to you and those who follow your misguided plea to “cut and run” from a war we are winning, regardless of what the lamestream media and others claim.

Democratic pollster Jeremy Rosner takes the opposing view stating, “Despite the war’s initial bipartisan authorization, Iraq belongs to George Bush, Democrats will still need to take care not to give Bush and his team any easy pretext for shifting responsibility for the outcome in Iraq.”

Mr. Posner espouses the very problems we have been facing since the onset of the war, politicization instead of support and decimation of the enemy. We saw public support wane for Viet Nam due to this same type of politicization and misleading reporting, even though it was Democrats that got us so deeply involved then. Of course, if memory serves, it was Conservative Democrats that saw keeping the South Vietnamese peoples free as important, not the Liberal Democrats so prevalent within the party today.

Feeding this anti-war sentiment was today’s reply by President Bush’s nominee to replace retiring Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates as he won unanimous committee approval when he stated, in reply to Senator Carl Levin’s (D. Mi.) question, “is the U.S. is winning in Iraq,” with a “NO SIR!”

Of course, this immediately went out over all the airwaves, both national and international, to show that Bush is losing support for the war. Of course, the neglect all too often to include the rest of what Mr. Gates said when he added, “I want to make clear that that pertains to the situation in Iraq as a whole." He went on to say, "Our military wins the battles that we fight. Where we're having our challenges, frankly, are in the areas of stabilization and political developments and so on."

To me, the “so on” he mentions must also include the negative reporting we constantly see in the left’s lamestream media as well as their eagerness to publish any state secret pertaining to the war they can find.

Evidence of this was printed in an op-ed just today in the New York Times with the article When Iraq Went Wrong. The author, Tim Pritchard laments,

“If the details of what happened at Nasiriya had been gathered, recognized and analyzed more soberly early on, instead of trampled on in a rush of triumphalism, coalition forces might have learned useful lessons for the reconstruction of Iraq: the limits of military power, the importance of a proper understanding of the complexity of a place and its people, the perils of underestimating an enemy. Instead, of course, President Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and made his hubristic speech announcing the end of combat operations under a banner announcing “Mission Accomplished.”
The battle of Nasiriya taught that there was, contrary to first appearances, no simple route to Baghdad. It should also serve to remind those in Washington that there will be no simple route out of it.”

Labeling the bloody battle of Nasiriya, where Private Jessica Lynch became well known, as an unobserved indicator of the difficulty facing our mission there, he mistakenly makes the case that the administration thought and felt it was going to be an easy task to depose Saddam Hussein and win over Iraqis. Sorry, but nowhere has President Bush ever said he expected an easy go of matters and the continual portrayal of the “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as a declaration of the war being over shows me that it was the left who thought it would be easy, as any video game is.

Sorry, but this war, like others, isn’t a video game. True, Bush did say Major Combat was over and at that time, it was. Of course, about this time, the leftist arm of the Democrat Party started in with their anti-war rhetoric, much of it being led by failed Presidential hopeful, Senator John ‘F’in Kerry (who I believe may have served in Viet Nam).

As happened in Viet Nam, ones like Kerry, Kucinich and others jump on the anti-war sentiment thriving within the left in a nonsensical belief that Americans wish to just leave Iraq to its own accord. They mislead polls expressing waning support for the war effort, not realizing how many dissatisfied currently desire a much stronger response.

We even have Democrat Tom Vilsack saying Bush wants to run out the clock on Iraq, leaving the tough decisions to the next administration. Vilsack, who has announced his intentions of seeking the party’s nomination for President in 2008 said, "We've deployed some of these troops two and three or four times over there. Our military is under a lot of stress, I don't know where these troops are going to come from."

Apparently, Mr. Vilsack, like too many others speaking for our troops, has never asked them. Then too, with all the negative reports being the only message the American public gets, is it any wonder he “doesn’t know where the troops will come from?” Is it possible the effects of their own anti-war, anti-Bush rhetoric for so long now is coming around to bite them where it hurts most? To me, it appears, as many of stated all along; the Democrats have no plans and ran on a promise of “trust me.” Well, the country trusted them and now, they must produce. And the reaction? “I don’t know where they are going to come from.”

Perhaps he should speak with Congressman Charles Rangel (D. NY) and see about the proposal to reinstate the Military Draft. But, after all the negativism spread about, better seal the border with Canada first.

Incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes (D. Tx), in a surprising turnaround, announced today that he Wants More Troops in Iraq. He wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.”

Mirroring the failed policies of the Viet Nam War that allowed it to drag on and come to eventual disgrace and failure, due to public support waning under the onslaught of negative reporting then also, he is trying to place himself in a position of managing the war instead of relying on his Military generals and supporting President Bush.

As stated above, the constitutional duty of running wars is vested in the Commander in Chief, the President, whoever it may be at the time, not the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. His job should be to ensure that both the President and our generals receive adequate, accurate and timely intelligence, not telling the generals how to do their jobs.

As expected, now that they have the power awaiting their takeover in January, Democrats are al over the place. Sadly, I expect to see much fighting over the war between the far leftists who believe they now own the Democrat Party and incoming leaders who are now faced with the responsibilities of leading and seeing it isn’t easy to be the leader instead of the instigator in the ‘peanut gallery.’

In the meantime, President Bush and the rest of us keep on keeping on. We know that “stay the course” is actually a matter of “advancing on to victory” in whatever it takes. The beat goes on towards that victory and if the Democrats wake up and see that victory can be ours and the rest of the free worlds, we can all share in that victory together.

Lew