How do we win?

Exactly how do Democrats think that playing politics with funding for the war will end well for this country? S.A.Miller and Jon Curl of the Washington Times write today;

The House last night ignored a veto threat and passed a bill to ration war funds, hours after President Bush for the first time offered to negotiate Iraq benchmarks with the Democrat-led Congress.
    The bill, which would fund the war in two-month installments and sets up a possible troop withdrawal in August, passed in a 221-205 vote, with Democrats backing the bill by 219-10 and Republicans opposed by 195-2.

With incremental funding, how do the Iraqis know they can depend on us to protect them while they build a fledgling government? How can Democrats think this helps?
Elsewhere in the Times, Sharon Behn writes that the troops are working hard to convince Iraqis that giving US forces information on terrorists is a safe practice;

 “We’ve seen a small increase of individuals willing to talk to us on what they perceive as terrorists. That has led to a couple of people being captured or put into Camp Cropper,” he said, referring to a detention center located on one of the U.S. bases. “The tips we’ve been getting seem better.”
    In one instance, during a several-hour-long patrol in a largely Shi’ite community, U.S. soldiers were called back to a house down a side alley to speak to a man who said he had been beaten by members of the Mahdi Army militia. Deep purple bruises covered his legs, and he said they had tortured him with electricity on his feet.
    After a lot of reassurance, the man gave the soldiers the location of a Mahdi militia member, although it was clear he was terrified.

How long can the Iraqis trust our troops to stay when they’ve watched us pull out before? We left the Iraqi Shi’ites to Saddam’s henchment in 1991, the Somalis in 1993, the Haitians in 1996 and on-and-on. Why should the iraqis trust to stay and help them when the Left is so bound and determined to surrender to Code Pink and the jihadists? Why would an Iraqi stick his mortal neck out to provide the troops with vital information when we might not be around in a few months and the guys he rats out come back for revenge? Why should they trust us to stay when we’ve given the world no reason to believe we’ll see a war through?

The Washington Post reports today that Democrats are still under the mispreception that they’re doing the work of the American people;

“The president has brought us to this point by vetoing the first Iraq Accountability Act and refusing to pay for this war responsibly,” declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “He has grown accustomed to the free hand on Iraq he had before January 4. Those days are over.”

The final tally came just an hour after antiwar Democrats mustered 171 votes for far tougher legislation that would all but end U.S. military involvement in Iraq within nine months. The 255 to 171 vote against that measure meant that nowhere close to a majority backed it, but the fact that 169 Democrats and two Republicans voted for it surprised opponents and proponents alike.

“I didn’t think I was going to get anywhere near 171 votes,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the withdrawal bill’s chief author. “This is proof that the United States Congress is getting closer to where the American people already are.”

If the American people were ready to surrender, the President couldn’t veto – there’d be throngs of everyday guys like me outside the White House. We ain’t out there, Jimbo, so you’re delusioned into believing that all of America thinks like your idiot constituents. If that were true, if we thought like your idiot constituents, we’d be talking about President Kerry right now. 

I understand the old saw that the “squeaky wheel gets the oil”, but in this case the squeaky wheel is a bunch of morons in pink feather boas – shouldn’t we take that into account when our legislature tries to formulate half-baked foreign policy?

Category: Foreign Policy, Politics, Terror War