Retreat of the Antiwar Democrats

[Habermill]

I always wondered why the Democrats turned their backs on Cindy Sheehan? It's all about votes and nothing else!

Retreat of the Antiwar Democrats
by Patrick J. Buchanan


In November 2006, Republicans were voted out of power in the Congress and Democrats installed to bring an end to U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq.

The war had been going on as long as America's war on Nazi Germany. No end was in sight. U.S. casualties and costs were rising. Bush's approval rating had sunk to record lows.

The day after the GOP rout, Bush cashiered his war minister, Donald Rumsfeld. In December, the Iraq Study Group, chaired by Bush I Secretary of State James Baker, released its report.

"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. ... A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian disaster. ... The situation in Baghdad and several provinces is dire. ... Pessimism is pervasive. ... Violence is increasing in scope, complexity and lethality."

His policy collapsing, Bush made a last throw of the dice. Gen. David Petraeus was named to command U.S. forces, and his request for a "surge" of 21,500 additional U.S. troops accepted. Petraeus also demanded and got 10,000 more support troops.

Still, by April, as the "surge" brigades began to arrive, Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, was declaring, "This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything." Democrats, the party base goading them on, tried to impose upon Bush, as a condition of further funding for the war, deadlines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Bush vetoed the bill. He was sustained. Then, he rubbed the Democrats' noses in their defeat by demanding and getting $100 billion more to finance the surge and the war. There are today 30,000 more troops in Iraq than when the Democratic Congress was elected.

As Petraeus testifies, the antiwar movement appears broken. Reid has said his party will not try to de-fund the war or impose new deadlines. It will follow GOP Sen. John Warner, who has suggested it might be helpful if the president withdrew a brigade by Christmas, to signal the Iraqi government to get its house in order. Petraeus has agreed to that.

Next April is the date when the Iraq Study Group said all U.S. combat brigades should be out of Iraq. By then, Bush and Petraeus will have tens of thousands more troops in Iraq than when the Democrats were elected and the ISG reported. The lame duck is not all that lame.

What happened to the party of Speaker Pelosi and Reid, which was going to end U.S. involvement in the war and not permit Bush to pursue victory the way Richard Nixon pursued it in Vietnam for four years?

Answer: Terrified of the possible consequences of the policies they recommend, Democrats lack the courage to impose those policies.

When it comes to issues of war, Democrats are an intimidated lot. Sens. Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd and Reid were all stampeded by Bush into voting him a blank check for war in October 2002. Why? Because they feared Bush would declare them weak or unpatriotic if they denied him the authority to go to war, at a time of his choosing, until he had made a more compelling case for war.

Now they regret what they did. But, in a showdown, they will do it again. For Democrats have been psychologically damaged by 60 years of GOP attacks on them as the party of retreat and surrender.

Their hero, FDR, was posthumously ripped apart for Yalta, the appeasement of "Uncle Joe," and the abandonment to communism of Poland and Eastern Europe. Truman fired Gen. MacArthur, fought a no-win war in Korea and was savaged, along with Gen. Marshall and Dean Acheson, by Joe McCarthy. By 1952, Truman was at 23 percent and finished. In January 1954, the Tailgunner was riding high at 50 percent.

Came then Vietnam and the credible charge that the Liberal Establishment, The Best and the Brightest, had marched us in, then cut and run, abandoning our Vietnamese and Cambodian allies to a holocaust, and bringing on the worst strategic defeat in U.S. history.
When Ronald Reagan, in the closing days of the 1980 campaign, declared Vietnam a "noble cause," the liberal media leapt on it as a gaffe. It wasn't. Reagan was wired in to Middle America.

John Kerry understood this. Thus, he ran in 2004 as a decorated Vietnam vet, not the onetime icon of the antiwar movement.

Bush is winning today because he has jettisoned the jabber about global democracy and argues that a U.S. withdrawal risks a strategic disaster, national humiliation, massacre of our friends and triumph for al-Qaida. Democrats, fearing he may be right, are in paralysis.
Scourged for 20 years over "Who Lost China?" they don't want to spend the next 20 years answering "Who Lost the Middle East?"

Thus the rout of the peace Democrats. But the movement will be back. For, Petraeus' good news notwithstanding, there is no light yet visible at the end of this tunnel.

[Habermill]

This just in, they are retreating even more!

Senate Blocks Anti-War Bill, Condemns Ad

Sep 20, 4:30 PM (ET)

By ANNE FLAHERTY
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate blocked legislation Thursday that would have cut off money for combat in Iraq by June. It was a predictable defeat for Democrats struggling to pass less divisive anti-war measures.

The 28-70 vote was 32 short of the 60 needed to cut off a GOP filibuster. The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold, was indicative of the Democratic leadership's new hardline strategy.

Unable to attract enough Republican support on milder proposals, Reid has sought votes on strong anti-war measures intended to force a withdrawal of troops.

The outcome was not a surprise. In May, the Senate rejected a similar proposal by Reid and Feingold by a 29-67 vote, with most Democrats saying they did not support using money to force an end to the war because that approach could hurt the troops.

Voting for the measure were Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. A fourth candidate, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., did not vote.
Eighteen Democrats joined 51 Republicans and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, in voting to block the bill.

Democrats now have united behind a proposal that would order an end to combat within nine months. But that measure, by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., also was expected to fail because Republicans said they opposed setting a timetable.

"They want this war more than they want to protect our soldiers," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters. "When I say they want the war, they want to protect their president more than they want to protect our troops."

Earlier, the Senate voted 72-25 to condemn an advertisement by the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org that accused the top U.S. military commander in Iraq of betrayal.This is a real leftist organization that caters to left wing wacos such as Wrona

A full-page ad appeared last week in The New York Times as Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress about his assessment of the situation in Iraq. The ad's headline was: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House."

With several Republicans opposed to President Bush's war strategy, GOP lawmakers could put aside their differences and rally around their disapproval of the ad.

Sen. Gordon Smith, one of the few Republican senators who supports legislation ordering troop withdrawals, said he thought Petraeus' testimony and the ad were the two biggest factors in keeping Republicans from breaking ranks with the president.

He said Petraeus' testimony was persuasive and the ad went too far by attacking a popular uniformed officer.
"It was stupid on their part and disgraceful," said Smith, R-Ore.
The resolution, sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, drew opposition from Clinton and Dodd.

Obama did not vote on that measure. But minutes earlier, he did support an alternative, by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that condemned the ad as well as previous attack ads that questioned the patriotism of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., both Vietnam veterans.

Bush said the MoveOn.org ad was "disgusting" and he criticized Democrats for not immediately condemning it. What do you expect from a left wing pro communist inspired organization such as MoveOn.org!

"And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org, or more afraid of irritating them, then they are of irritating the United States military," Bush said at a news conference.

Eli Pariser, executive director of the liberal group, responded: "What's disgusting is that the president has more interest in political attacks than developing an exit strategy to get our troops out of Iraq and end this awful war."

On Wednesday, majority Democrats failed to pass legislation that would have required active-duty troops to spend as much time at home as they do in combat. That measure was seen as Democrats' best shot at challenging Bush this year because of its pro-military premise.

Its failure essentially means that Democrats will not be able to get the support for tougher bills ordering troops home by next summer.
The Senate plans a vote in the coming days on Levin's proposal. He said it would allow some troops to remain behind to conduct such missions as counterterrorism and training the Iraqis. He estimated the legislation, if enacted, would cut troop levels in Iraq by more than half.

The firm deadlines reflect a shift in strategy for Democrats, who had pursued a bipartisan compromise on war legislation. But after last week's testimony by Petraeus, Democrats calculated not enough Republicans were willing to break party ranks and support more tempered legislation calling for combat to end next summer.