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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-09-12

If It Walks Like A Duck and Quacks Like A Duck . . .

It might just be a Democrat.

The Democrats are all having a nutty today over the President's speech on Monday night. A sample of the reaction:

Harry Reid: “By focusing on Iraq in the manner he did, the President engaged in an all too familiar Administration tactic: conflate and blur the war in Iraq with the response to 9/11.

“Despite definitive and repeated findings that there were no ties between Iraq and al Qaeda ­ a finding most recently echoed by the Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee ­ the President continued to deliberately lump and blur al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Iraq and 9/11 together.

“This was a political move, designed to tap the overwhelming public sentiment to destroy al Qaeda as a way to bolster sagging public support for the war in Iraq.

Nancy Pelosi: "Rather than try to defend their own failed record, Republicans have resorted to the desperation politics of fear. It is long past time for Republicans to be honest with American people and stop questioning the patriotism of those who recognize that the president's Iraq policy has not worked, is making us less safe and must be changed."

Hillary Clinton: strangely, no apparent statement on the issue.

I, for one, was also a little surprised at the full-thoated defense of the Iraq War that the President posed on Monday night. But, upon reflection, I think it was exactly correct.

If, as the President believes, and I also believe, (and, by the way, Osama bin Laden also believes) that the War in Iraq is the central current battle of the War on Terror, than to not talk about it in relation to 9/11 would have been inadequate and foolish. To not talk about it would have been admit doubt about the policy, and that is just not the truth. Follow the logic:

9/11 changed the way we view the world (or it should have). Pre-9/11, containment was a reasonable approach to a person who had waged continual war in his neighbors and who had committed several acts of war against the United States. Pre-9/11, containment was a reasonable approach to a regime which had used chemical weapons before, which believed it had weapons of mass destruction, and which refused to show eveidence that it had destroyed its WMD stockpiles and capabilities. Pre-9/11, containment was a reasonable approach to a regime which thumbed its nose at the United Nations, which ignored 17--SEVENTEEN--resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, and which was assessed by every intelligence service in the world as a threat.

Pre-9/11, we were deluded into believing that we could afford to sit and watch as threats gathered and grew.

THAT is what changed on 9/11.

The real question of the Democrats is not "why do you not support the war?"; the real question is "why do you insist on looking at the world as though 9/11 did not happen?"

Why do you insist on tying the hands of the government with regards to gathering intelligence against known terrorists?

Why do you insist on revealing to the world methods and sources of American intelligence gathering on terrorist threats?

Why do you insist on affording known terrorists all the same rights and protections as our own citizens with respect to criminal prosecution?

Why do you insist on ceasing the prosecution of war against some of the most evil, vile actors on the world scene, who have conveniently decided to all gather in the same country?

If you don't want to be called an appeaser, stop appeasing; if you wish to not be accused of being weak, don't be weak.

I agree that the President should not have given a political speech on Monday night, and he didn't. What makes every utterance a political one in the current climate is HOW WRONG THE Democrats are on every issue. It's impossible not to be political when the contrasts are so stark between the two parties.
Posted by: Michael / 9/12/2006 11:49:00 PM

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