Murtha claims support for Iraq pullout plan

Rep. John P. Murtha claimed on Meet the Press that 2/3 of Democrats support his plan to leave Iraq now. He may very well be right. Sen. Dianne Feinstein thinks the mission has taken too long and she is supposed to be the Democrat's leader on national security. Just one ore example of how totally clueless they are.

His justification for the pullout plan are the latest examples of a cut and run approach, Beirut and Somalia. These are poor examples because both efforts were doomed from the start by unreasonable restrictions placed on American forces. Beirut was a disaster because suicide bombers successfully crashed the gate to the troop's barracks because the guards were not allowed to have their weapons loaded. Somalia was a UN food delivery mission that had its mission modified on the fly. Iraq is a full scale invasion to replace a hostile dictatorship with a democracy. The better comparison would be with Vietnam. Since the Left is so fond of that comparison they should look real close at the parallels.

South Vietnam was suffering from a domestic insurgency supported by a foreign nation. Our plan was to make the South Vietnam's government stable and it's military strong enough that we could leave them to take over their own security. The enemy relied on terror to try to destabilize the government. The insurgency was defeated by an unwise offensive led by North Vietnam that resulted in most of the insurgents being killed. Then a national security effort pacified the countryside so people could conduct their daily business in relative peace.

While our efforts at accomplishing this were successful, before they could bare fruit the Left used Watergate to wound the President politically while the press painted the defeats of the enemy on the battlefield as victories highlighting the death of our troops rather than the accomplishments their sacrifices made possible. Political weakness caused the acceleration of the program to train the Vietnamese forces to fight independently. The eventual result was an earlier than appropriate withdrawal fro the country. Sadly the final blow came not from the enemy who had already been defeated, but from Congress and the President who failed to honor the commitments to support the government of South Vietnam after we pulled our troops out.

It is not difficult to see the Democrats moving down this same path with the war in Iraq. Every proposal I hear from them resembles one of the above mentioned betrayals of our ally. The phased redeployment Murtha and others are calling for is the same as the phased withdrawal from South Vietnam and just as we did there they will want to accelerate the phases. Look at this statement from Meet the Press and judge for yourself the likelihood of him calling for a quicker withdrawal after he gets a commitment to start the withdrawal.

MR. RUSSERT: But in 2004, you had a view that was much different than you had now, and this is what you wrote in your book: "A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America's foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America's judgment but also its perseverance." Aren't you now advocating that?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's what I said then. And I think in the early stages, you have to judge that. But there comes a time when you got to change direction. There comes a time when you have to say to yourself, "OK, we've done everything we could do, we can't win this militarily."

You can bet that once the troops are out of country they will never return just as when we left South Vietnam with a promise of air and naval support which never materialized. Then bet the farm that the Democrats will want to balance the budget by cutting our financial support for the Iraqi government leaving the in the lurch just as they did to our ally in the war on Communism.

I some what dismissed the Left in their betrayal of the Vietnamese because they were sympathetic to communism. But I see no natural alliance between the Left and the Islamists other that they both hate America. Sure the Lefties say they are patriotic and all, but the fact remains that they consistently support the enemies of our nation. I think they are loyal to a vision of America that never existed except in their dreams. Their dreams are our nightmare.

For a more detailed analisys of the Meet the Press interview with Rep. Murtha see the http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/007239.php

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