While, I'm willing to give our friends at the Ohio GOP a break from my wrath, the same courtesy will not be afforded to the Crying Man, our Senator RINOvich. I really don't find his latest position on the war (also known as Cut and Run when Democrats were proposing this sort of thing) is acceptable and am beginning to wonder if maybe the senator just isn't thinking clearly. Fear not, the New York Daily News is there to spell it out:More and more members of Congress - including several Republicans heretofore regarded by the White House as key loyalists - are forgetting that, back when they confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as ground commander in Iraq, they gave him until September to report back on the military effort.Voinovich isn't up for re-election just yet, unfortunately, but he is going to have to start thinking about the consequences of his actions.
That deadline is two months down the road, but the wise heads of Capitol Hill - many of them concerned more about election prospects than about a war the West must win - have decided we might as well hand Baghdad to the bombers.
As usual, senators like Voinovich think they are the smartest people in the world and that they know better than the guys on the ground do about what military strategies to employ and how to tell if they are working or not. This rush to judgement has nothing to do with experience or expertise but rather politics. It is about headlines and favorable coverage. It is about being invited to the right parties with the right people. It is a disgrace.
The bottom line is this:
Whatever Petraeus will say in September is of little interest to many in Congress. The bad guys know this. The pull-out-now crowd argues that the bad guys have, essentially, won. And, with even Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of the Foreign Relations Committee saying the troop surge can't accomplish anything because of "the short period framed by our own domestic political debate," it's hard to blame the bad guys for feeling encouraged.Without considering what surrendering would mean for Iraq let alone our country, these politicians are willing to play their games. When these guys start spouting off, they ought to admit what defeat really means: giving our enemies aid and comfort in the form of a whole country with which to use as a massive base of operations to conduct terrorist acts throughout the world. Surrendering makes us and the rest of the world less safe.
