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Wednesday, January 10, 2007
On Iraq, polls be damned
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Look, here’s the story. President Bush will likely reveal in a speech tonight that 20,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq to quell violence in Baghdad. Twenty thousand troops may not be sufficent. A higher number deployed throughout Baghdad may be the needed force. That, though, should be left to the generals.
As could have been anticipated, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the rabid anti-war Left which has opposed this President from Day One, especially on the war on terrorism, are beside themselves. Increasing the number of troops “would be a policy of desperation built on denial and fantasy,” Kennedy said in a speech Tuesday at the National Press Club. “It would compound the original misguided decision to invade Iraq.”
The sentiments of the Kennedy speech will undoubtedly appear today or Thrusday as editorials in liberal newspapers around the country. What it comes down to is this: On Iraq and the war on terrorism, this President should set his course for the next two years, in consultation with Congress of course, but doing what he thinks is in the nation’s best interest in the conducting the war. Let Kennedy and those who gleefully predict defeat in Iraq as the Bush legacy rant. Congress has the power to cut off funds for the war effort. We are there. If Democrats in Congress, and their editorial voices of doom, wish to retreat in defeat, the option exists: cut off funds.
It’s clear now there’ll be little or no middle ground. Too bad. The Left still believes, I am convinced, that their political fortunes will rise from defeat in Iraq and that any effort to achieve victory is futile because Iraq is already lost. Polls be damned — this President is, after all, not Bill Clinton — Bush should supply the troops necessary to stabilize Baghdad. The Left will hate him. Kennedy and his wing of the Democratic Party will spout and spew, comparing Iraq to Vietnam, and in one speech or piece of commentary after another insist that all is lost. But then, what’s new about that?
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