An Act Of Perfidy?

Listening to snippets of the Senate debate/filibuster merely confirmed to me that the Democrats really don't get it when it comes to Iraq, Al Qaeda, Iran, and Islamofascism.

When Senate Majority leader Harry Reid says that the war is lost, you know that Democrats don't realize that this is a war we dare not walk away from. Iraq is a linchpin in the war on terror, regardless of what they may believe. The place to fight Al Qaeda and other Islamofascist groups is over there, not here.

A premature withdrawal from Iraq will do nothing more than give Al Qaeda and Iran the signal that we don't have the stomach for a long fight, that our leaders are weak and foolish. It will embolden them, give them “street cred”, making it easier for them to recruit. Not long after such a withdrawal, I have no doubt that attacks will begin here. The pace of attacks will increase, the size of the attacks will increase, as will the deadliness of the attacks. And folks like Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats will see it as a law enforcement issue or something that can be negotiated to an end. The only thing Al Qaeda will negotiate is the manner of our destruction.

I find it difficult to believe the Democratic leadership really believes that all will be well if we abandon the Iraqis to the same fates suffered by others we abandoned in the past – the South Vietnamese and the Cambodians. Millions died when we committed those prior acts of perfidy. I believe that many millions more than that will die if we abandon Iraq now.

Somehow the Democrats have gotten it in their minds that war should have some kind of timetable that dictates when the war will be over. It may look nice in theory. It may look convincing on paper. But the reality of war is that it isn't over until the enemy surrenders or is dead. It doesn't end just because they declare victory and bring the troops home.

Should we not finish what we started in Iraq, pull out, and leave the Iraqi people to fates worse than that visited upon them by Saddam, we will, at some future time, have to return. But this time the price will be higher, the death toll greater. The third round of the war will not be the nice, fast, 'clean' actions of Operations Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom. Instead it will require total war.

By total war I mean the destruction of Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, and maybe Saudi cities and towns. All of the infrastructure that supports the Islamofascists will have to be destroyed. Roads will be destroyed. Oil fields, pipelines, power stations, schools, hospitals, any building that may give the enemy a place to hide or to plan or resupply will be wiped from the earth. Civilian deaths will measure in the many millions. The Middle East will resemble the cities and towns of Europe and Japan at the close of World War II. Or worse, they may come to resemble Hiroshima and Nagasaki should the Islamofascists find the means to strike us with smuggled nuclear weapons. That is what it may come to if we don't take the opportunity to finish it now.

Am I overstating the case? It could be. On the other hand if a mushroom cloud appears over New York or Washington or some other American city, will Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats take responsibility for not stopping it when they had the chance? If recent history is of any measure, the answer is no.

The question that comes to mind is do the Democrats really believe what they're trying to sell to the American public or are they merely doing what they see as politically expedient in order to ensure their tenure in office? Unfortunately the American public loses whether it's the former or the latter.