Saddam is
on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed
scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture
chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they
belong.
The Iraqi
people have voted in two free, democratic elections this year.
In a rash and unconsidered move, they even gave women the right
to vote.
Iraqis have
ratified a constitution and will vote for a National Assembly
next month. The long-suffering Kurds are free and no longer require
24/7 protection by U.S. fighter jets.
Libya's Moammar
Gadhafi has voluntarily dismantled his weapons of mass destruction,
Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon, and the Palestinians are holding
elections.
(Last but
certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs' wetlands ecosystem in central
Iraq that Saddam drained is being restored, so even the Democrats'
war goals in Iraq are being met.)
The American
military has accomplished all this with just over 2,000 deaths.
These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest
Americans. Still, look at what the military has done and compare
the cost to 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in
World War II and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam (before Walter Cronkite
finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam).
What is known
as a "hawk" in today's Democratic Party looks at what
our military has accomplished and -- during the war, while our
troops are in harm's way -- demands that we withdraw our troops.
In an upbeat
speech now being aired repeatedly on al-Jazeera, last week Rep.
John Murtha said U.S. troops "cannot accomplish anything
further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."
Claiming the war is "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion,"
Murtha said the "American public is way ahead of us."
Fed up with
being endlessly told "the American people" have turned
against the war in Iraq, Republicans asked the Democrats to show
what they had in their hand and vote on a resolution to withdraw
the troops.
By a vote
of 403-3, the House of Representatives wasn't willing to bet that
"the American people" want to pull out of Iraq. (This
vote also marked the first time in recent history that the Democrats
did not respond to getting their butts kicked by demanding a recount.)
The vote
is all the more shocking because of what it says about the Democrats'
motives in attacking the war -- as well as alerting us to three
members of Congress we really need to keep an eye on.
It is simply
a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents
when they say the war is going badly and it's time to bring the
troops home. Whether or not there is any merit to the idea, calling
for a troop withdrawal -- or "redeployment," as liberals
pointlessly distinguish -- will delay our inevitable victory and
cost more American lives.
Anti-war
protests in the U.S. during the Vietnam War were a major source
of moral support to the enemy. We know that not only from plain
common sense, but from the statements of former North Vietnamese
military leaders who evidently didn't get the memo telling them
not to say so. In an Aug. 3, 1995, interview in The Wall Street
Journal, Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese
army, called the American peace movement "essential"
to the North Vietnamese victory.
"Every
day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at
9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American anti-war movement,"
he said. "Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence
that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
What are
we to make of the fact that -- as we now know -- the Democrats
don't even want to withdraw troops from Iraq? By their own account,
there is no merit to their demands. Before the vote, Democrats
could at least defend themselves from sedition by pleading stupidity.
Now we know they don't believe what they are saying about the
war. (Thanks to that vote, the Islamo-fascists know it, too.)
The Democrats
are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than
giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation
for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S.
troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle.
They fill
the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing
troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are
not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.
