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Audacity of Truth
Joe Lieberman’s Feb. 5th speech on the Senate floor
Re: The type of message the Senate is sending to our troops – and to the enemy – with their various attempts at ‘non-binding’ resolutions stating opposition to the President’s surge plan and urging withdrawal. Excerpts:
We heard from General Petraeus during his confirmation hearing that war is a battle of wills. Our enemies believe that they are winning in Iraq today. They believe that they can outlast us; that, sooner or later, we will tire of this grinding conflict and go home. That is the lesson that Osama bin Laden took from our retreats from Lebanon and Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a belief at the core of the insurgency in Iraq, and at the core of radical Islam worldwide. And this resolution—by codifying our disunity, by disavowing the mission our troops are about to undertake—confirms our enemies’ belief in American weakness.
This resolution also sends a terrible message to our allies. I agree that we must hold the Iraqi government to account. That is exactly what the resolution Senator McCain and I have offered would do. But I ask you: Imagine for a moment that you are a Sunni or Shia politician in Baghdad who wants the violence to end—and ask yourself how the Warner-Levin resolution will affect your thinking, your calculations of risk, your willingness to stand against the forces of extremism. Every day, you are threatened by enemies who want nothing but to inflict the most brutal imaginable horrors on you and your loved ones. Will this resolution empower you, or will it undermine you? Will it make you feel safer, or will it make you feel you should hedge your bets, or go over to the extremists, or leave the country?
And finally, what is the message this resolution sends to our soldiers? I know that everyone here supports our troops—but actions have consequences, often unintended. When we send a message of irresolution, it does not support our troops. When we renounce their mission, it does not support our troops.
We heard recently in the Senate Armed Services Committee from General Jack Keane, who said of this resolution. “It’s just not helpful… What the enemy sees is an erosion of the political and moral will of the American people… Our soldiers are Americans first. They clearly understand there’s a political process in this country that they clearly support… But at the end of the day, they are going to go out and do a tough mission, and I certainly would like to see them supported in that mission as opposed to declaring non-support….”
Please read it all. No wonder the anti-war left can’t stand him – because he stands for something they don’t: victory!
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5 Responses to “Joe Lieberman’s Feb. 5th speech on the Senate floor”
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I can remember reading Frontinus’s “Stratagems” a few years ago. It’s a collection of military strategies and stories about what worked and what didn’t written by the man who eventually became head of all aqueducts in Rome. Fascinating book, there is one story that particularly hits home in relation to this current situation.
The Roman army once laid siege to a particularly well defended walled city. The Romans demanded surrender, and the city leaders basically told them to pound sand, they had supplies to last 10 years and they weren’t afraid of a siege. The Roman general calmly replied “Well, then we’ll just take the city in the 11th year.” The city surrendered the next day, they knew that if the Roman’s said they would still be there laying siege to the city 11 years from now, they would really still be there, and that their mood would not have been improved by the wait.
This is a critical lesson that is completely lost on the Democrats. The US doesn’t have that kind of reputation, we have the reputation of being whiners and quitters with no stamina or stomach for anything difficult. This is just made worse and worse by Democratic politicians consistently whining and shrieking and undercutting the war effort and desperately trying to find a reason to lose rather than do what’s needed. The Islamists know that all they have to do is keep bloodying our noses and we’ll tank, and have the MSM and Democrats own statements as proof, so they have no reason to get down about the war and decide to take their ball and go elsewhere. By being weak, by looking for reasons to leave, by undercutting the President and the military and the war, they insure that we will never have a stern enough reputation to cause the enemy to despair and withdraw or quit, guarantying a longer conflict and more casualties.
The message the Senate is sending to the troops is that they have no idea what they’re doing. Debate and dissent are essential to a democracy, but these clowns in Washington won’t even discuss the Iraq mess.
Perhaps it’s an exercize in futility to hope that there is a General waiting in the wings that knows how to fight and that the President will put him in the midst of this and let him do just that. When we let al-Sadr go his merry way several years ago, I worried that we might find ourselves in the situation we now face…a hotbed for nostalgic leftists who hunger for the good old days of Vietnam and a Republican Party that worries more about the polls than doing what is necessary – even if it means marching to thwe White House and demanding we win in Iraq-and telling the MSN Sunday show hosts to pound salt.
We are lacking many things in governement presently…courage is the foremost of them. The enemy is not as hard to find as the medial wants us to think (or the adminisration for that matter). They are the people shooting at and bombing our soldiers and civilians. Go after them and kill them.
Severian “gets it”. I said in a post on another topic that what is lacking in our government is “courage”. We were “courageous” enought to take on the Taliban and Sadaam, yet we haven’t the courage to do what it takes to win. There may seem to be a multitude of reasons for this lack of courage yet, in reality, there are few…and they all revolve around “worrying”…the politicians worry what “the world” thinks of us; they worry about thier next re-election cycle; they worry about what the media will say and show on television…they worry about the U.N.
Discard those “worries” and we could win…and, IMHO, very quickly.
I totally agree with Sev. Our reputation, that is, our reputation as the baddest on the block, has eroded to a dangerous perception by the Islamic scumbags and it’ll take some serious actions on our part to restore that rep. It needs to read, “Don’t f*** with us.” How we act when others aren’t “f***ing with us” is constantly demonstrated and perhaps needs better marketing. It’s like knowing the toughest dude and saying to those who fear him, “Yeah, he’s tough allright, but he’s really a great guy. He just doesn’t stand for any crap from scumbags.”