Memorial Day Thanks

The War is Won

Last week, the “war is lost” crowd in Congress suffered a major setback. According to the Washington Times, the Senate “overwhelmingly rejected a bid to pull out troops from Iraq and cut off funds for combat,” in a 67-29 vote with 19 Democrats rejecting the Party Line. “We don’t want to send the message to the troops that they lost the backing of Congress," declared Democrat Senator Carl Levin, long a vociferous opponent of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

The Left reluctantly praised Bush’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East as well. Senator James Webb of Virginia, one of the Blue Dog Democrats elected in 2006 stated "Recent initiatives from Secretary of State Rice, Ambassador Crocker and Admiral Fallon, the new commander of the Central Command, hold out the hope, if not the promise, that we might actually start toturn this thing around." Such an optimistic testament is all the more surprising considering it was Webb who publicly rebuffed the President soon after the elections, when Bush inquired of the Senator’s son who was serving in Iraq.

After months of pandering to their nut-roots, the “lose at any cost” movement in the Left-wing blogosphere, reasonable heads are prevailing among the Democrats. Following the debacle of the Vietnam War, an embarrassing and shameful retreat which looms over the Left to this day, none wants to be labeled the Party of Defeat. Like Bush, they are ignoring polls and pundits to do the right thing for the troops and the nation.

Another recent success for the Bush Administration is the appointment of Lt. General Douglas Lute to manage the war effort. Lampooned as a “War Czar” by the MSM, and given little chance for success by media pundits on the Right, Lute seems the perfect choice for the job. In a 2006 interview on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show, when he was director of operations for Central Command, the general was eerily prescient over what his new mission would entail:

“The other thing I would point to, Charlie, is the importance of taking this on, not simply as a military fight, but as a multi-agency fight where different arms of the government, the intelligence arm, the military arm for sure, the State Department, diplomatic arm, economic arm, those who bring law and order systems into a post-conflict scenario, that all these arms cometogether in an integrated networked way.”

Lute will now get the opportunity to put action to his theories. One of the prewar complaints was the inability for the FBI, CIA, and local law enforcement to work together, as well as a failure to communicate, faults which did little to prevent 9/11 from occurring. Thanks to the Patriot Act, many of these impediments have been dissolved, hence the lack of successful attacks on our country since that initial disaster. Hopefully, the general will do the same for the rest of the Washington bureaucracy, for the sake of our continued peace and freedom.

As for Democrats, by refusing to vote for a pullout they are showing their true colors, that they lack the “courage” to admit defeat in Iraq, or become its harbinger. Perhaps they are finally recalling they were for the War in Iraq before they were against it, and can in no way distant themselves from the outcome there.