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

2007-01-10

I Guess My Pessimism Was Justified

Let me start about tonight's speech by addresing the Democratic response from Dick Durbin. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a link to the full text, so I'll start with a paraphrase of what stuck out the most to me.

Trying to quote from memory:

"Americans have already paid a huge price for Iraq. We have paid an enormous price in the blood of our young men and women. We have paid a huge price in treasure and materiel . . . ."

or something like that.

One thought leapt to mind as I was listening to this claptrap: not exactly Kennedy-esque. No, not the bloated drunkard, the other one. You know, "pay any price, bear any burden . . ."

And, while that was disturbing and mind-numbing, it was also COMPLETELY PREDICTABLE. And here is here my title for this post comes in: if this sort of response was completely predictable, WHY does the President refuse to take this sort of thing head-on?

Seriously, he could shut the Democrats up in five minutes by reminding them that, once upon a time, they had a President who guaranteed the American people that America would pay any price, bear any burden to ensure success of liberty. WHY DOESN'T HE?

So, here's where my fears came to bear out: if the President is not, at this critical juncture, willing to engage his political opponents on this, why should we have any reason to think that he will actually allow our troops to engage the enemy? Especially when those same political opponents are the ones who will scream the loudest when we kill the enemy.

On style, the President was, maybe, I think, worse than usual. Stiff, grim, tired, and rhetorically . . . well, himself.

And Durbin . . . .WHOA! what a treasure trove for a terrorist. If I were the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would be using Durbin's speech as a recruiting video, and I would escalate my attacks over the next two months to GUARANTEE that the Democrats refuse to fund the troop surge. Durbin's speech is everything the terrorists believe we are: weak-willed, feckless, and impotent.

Not a great night for America.
Posted by: Michael / 1/10/2007 11:33:00 PM

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