The Dem push for cut and run ‘officially’ begins
Remember that poll taken shortly after the election where 78% of the American people said they were worried that Democrats would want to pull out of Iraq too soon? Well, their fears were founded. Via the WaPo:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared yesterday that “it is time to bring the war to a close” and warned President Bush that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq would be unacceptable to the Democratic majorities that have just taken over Congress.
Directly challenging Bush’s wartime leadership on their second day in charge on Capitol Hill, Democrats Pelosi (Calif.) and Reid (Nev.) sent Bush a letter suggesting that, instead of starting a short-term escalation, he begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces in the next four to six months. The mission of remaining troops, they said, should be shifted away from combat toward more training, logistics and counterterrorism.
Here’s their BS letter stating “We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future …”. Liars, all.
Prior to the election, Democrats hid from the American people their true position on Iraq by merely stating that it was time for a “change” in Iraq. You didn’t hear prominent Dem after promiment Dem suggesting that we pull out this year. There’s a reason for that. They didn’t want the masses to know. Political junkies like you and me knew, but people who don’t follow politics as closely as we do heard “change in Iraq” and apparently thought “that’s what we need” without giving further thought to exactly what those changes were going to constitute, which fit in perfectly with the left’s tactic of relying on the ignorance of the average voter in order to win. As I noted in that post, it’s easier to perpetrate a fraud on the American people if you hide what you’re really wanting to do once you gain power, and Democrats are masters at it. Now that the elections are over and they officially hold the majority, the Dem pretenses on Iraq have been dropped. Not only have they clearly expressed to the President that they don’t want more troops in Iraq, they want them home. Now. And they’ll cut off funding for the Iraq war if they have to in order to achieve their warped anti-war goals. Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore must be grinning from ear to ear this morning.
Something else this official unified call for a cut and run tells us is that this view is not just a view the fringe far lefties like Sheehan and Moore support. The idea to cut and run from Iraq among Democrats is now mainstream. It’s not a minority view anymore. In fact, looking back, I’m not sure it really ever was. The American people on the whole don’t want us to cut and run, but a majority of Democrats do. If they didn’t, the Democrats as a majority wouldn’t be presenting a unified case for cutting and running.
Congressional Republicans, for all their negatives, have always been committed to winning the war in Iraq. As I’ve written before, they’ve made plenty of mistakes in decision making regarding the war on terror, specifically, Iraq. But putting Democrats in charge of Congress is already proving disastrous on so many levels, particularly as it relates to national security, and this country handing over that power to the left was tantamount to putting the Keystone cops in control.
These Democrats, as I wrote shortly after last year’s elections, are part of the problem, not the solution, for Iraq. They only want to listen to generals when it suits their purpose, and ignore them when it doesn’t. They don’t want to win. Don’t let their phoniness about wanting Iraq to “succeed” fool you.
Memeorandum‘s buzzing with reactions to this story as well as McCain’s call for a “substantial, sustained surge.” You can check out the links here.