It’s all about Vietnam, except when it’s about Vietnam

Democrats can’t let go of the 60s. They think they actually won something when the US began pulling combat troops out of Vietnam in 1972. They forget the bloodbath that happened when Saigon fell in 1975, they forget the Vietnamese incursions into Laos during the Carter Administration (that were halted by the Chinese), they forget Pol Pot’s killing fields. All they care about is regaining their former bloodstained glory on the front pages of “their” media”. 

In light of the reports coming out of Iraq by alternate means, like Michael Yon Online, since we can’t trust the media to tell us what’s happening over there, Jon Ward of the Washington Times reports that the President pleaded with Americans from Cleveland yesterday;

“I believe that its in this nations interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at a downtown hotel to a local business group.

Mr. Bush did not reveal any changes to his strategy or thinking on Iraq and did not talk about his hopes for withdrawing troops, despite reports that conversations on the topic are intensifying inside his administration.

Instead, Mr. Bush said, “Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us assessment of the strategy that he’s putting in place before they make any decisions.”

It sounds reasonable, but fairly unrealistic given the political backbiting that’s happening eve in the President’s own party. But, the Democrats, the party of Insanity (doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results each time), plan on running through the same bill they ran through a scant few weeks ago, hoping for different results. From Sean Lengell, Washington Times;

Senate Democrats yesterday called for withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq by April 30 — less than two months after a similar measure was soundly defeated — as the White House dispatched its top war advisers to Capitol Hill to embolden Republican allies.

Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said setting a troop withdrawal timetable will force Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility for their own country.

“The legislation that we are proposing … would give commanders the flexibility to the pace of reductions and the units to be reduced, and I think it’s the appropriate way to go,” said Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, who co-sponsored the measure with Mr. Levin.

Republicans leaders called the maneuver premature, saying that President Bush’s surge strategy is starting to pay dividends and that any major changes shouldn’t occur before Gen. David H. Petraeus provides his September report on the state of the war.

Well, we just can’t let the troops win too many battles, can we? So it’s time for the Democrats to do the sabateur work that al Qaeda can’t seem to do these days. With Cindy Sheehan breathing down her botoxed and stretched neckflaps, Nancy Pelosi is planning an entire month of intellectually bankrupt votes to undermine the troops’ victories in Iraq;

House Democrats are planning a series of votes this month on Iraq that they hope will ratchet up pressure on the White House and congressional Republicans to change course on the unpopular war or suffer political consequences.

Sensing that additional GOP members might follow the more skeptical path taken recently by Sens. Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Pete Domenici (N.M.) and Rep. John Doolittle (Calif.), Democratic leaders have decided to ignore White House requests that lawmakers wait until September to see how President Bush’s surge works.

“I think you’re seeing signs that the dam’s about to bust,” said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), tapped as leadership’s coordinator for Iraq strategy. “Someone on the Republican side has to be like Fulbright during the Vietnam War.”

Just like Vietnam, huh Larson – the anti-US Left wants to relive their golden days. It doesn’t matter that history has proven them wrong then, or that history will prove them wrong on this one, too. just so long as they get to see their name in the paper.

The Washington Post still claims there’s a large defection of Republicans from the President’s war plans – but they can only name a few, oddly;

Facing crumbling support for the war among their own members, Senate Republican leaders yesterday sought to block bipartisan efforts to force a change in the American military mission in Iraq.

But the GOP leadership’s use of a parliamentary tactic requiring at least 60 votes to pass any war legislation only encouraged the growing number of Republican dissenters to rally and seek new ways to force President Bush’s hand. They are weighing a series of proposals that would change the troops’ mission from combat to counterterrorism, border protection and the training of Iraqi security forces.
 
“I think we should continue to ratchet up the pressure — in addition to our words — to let the White House know we are very sincere,” said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who broke with the president last month.

Voinovich and Snowe are the only two defectors in the article. Add in Domenici and Spector, that’s four. It’s hardly a defection, it’s barely newsworthy – cetainly not enough to write a whole column. But there’s the Post spending bandwidth on a stupid subject while they could write stories about the troops’ several victories this week, or the horror that al Qaeda has inflicted on Iraqis.  The Post could actually report on the war rather than those idiot conversations they have with useless politicians.

In the meantime, Cindy Sheehan is zeroing in on the old SanFran Hag;

 Cindy Sheehan bid farewell to her former “peace camp” near President Bush’s ranch and began a nearly two-week trek Tuesday toward Washington, D.C., with her sights set on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Sheehan, a Californian, officially announced that she intends to run as an independent against Pelosi in 2008 if the San Francisco congresswoman doesn’t move to impeach Bush by July 23, the day she expects to reach Washington.

“I know what Californians care about,” Sheehan said. “They don’t care about the ruling power elite.”

Yeah, Cindy, you probably know about as much about what Americans care about as Nancy – but I wouldn’t embarrass myself by saying it aloud in public if I were you. I guess we can’t count on you to keep your promises, either. Promises like leaving the stage and letting the adults run the country. If ever there was someone less worthy of my attention, I don’t know who that would be.

So I guess we peg our foreign policy to the whims of gutless coward and crazed dingbats.

From yesterday’s Day By Day;

 

 

Category: Antiwar crowd, Foreign Policy, Historical, Media, Politics, Terror War