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Why Congress caved to Bush
By Patrick J. Buchanan
05/25/07 "WorldNetDaily"
-- -- The anti-war Democrats are crying betrayal – and
justifiably so.
For a Democratic Congress is now voting to fully fund the war in
Iraq, as demanded by President Bush, and without any timetable
for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Bush got his $100 billion, then
magnanimously agreed to let Democrats keep the $20 billion in
pork they stuffed into the bill – to soothe the pain of their
sellout of the party base.
Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was
that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the
war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out.
Yet, today, there are more U.S. troops in Iraq than when the
Democrats won. More are on the way. And with the surge and
retention of troops in Iraq beyond normal tours, there should be
a record number of U.S. troops in country by year's end.
Why did the Democrats capitulate?
Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they
fear the consequences if they put their anti-war beliefs into
practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and
force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he
predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for
losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue.
Democrats are an intimidated party. The reasons are historical.
They were shredded by Nixon and Joe McCarthy for FDR's
surrenders to Stalin at Tehran and Yalta, for losing China to
Mao's hordes, for the "no-win war" in Korea, for being "soft on
communism."
The best and the brightest – JFK's New Frontiersmen – were held
responsible for plunging us into Vietnam and proving incapable
of winning the war. A Democratic Congress cut off aid to Saigon
in 1975, ceding Southeast Asia to Hanoi and bringing on the
genocide of Pol Pot.
Democrats know they are distrusted on national security. They
fear that if they defund this war and bring on a Saigon ending
in the Green Zone, it will be a generation before they are
trusted with national power. And power is what the party is all
about.
Yet, not only does the situation in Iraq appear increasingly
grim, with rising U.S. and Iraqi casualties, other shoes are
about to drop that will reverberate throughout the region.
Support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with his war in Lebanon
a debacle and his leadership denounced by a commission he
appointed, is in single digits. Waiting in the wings is Likud
super-hawk "Bibi" Netanyahu, the most popular politician in
Israel, who compares today to Munich 1938 and equates Iran's
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Hitler.
If and when Bibi comes to power, he will use every stratagem to
provoke us into attacking "Hitler."
Also drumming for war on Iran are the floundering neocons and
the Israeli lobby. Under orders from the lobby, Nancy Pelosi
stripped from a House bill a stipulation that Bush must come to
Congress for authorization before launching an attack on Iran.
With Democratic contenders reciting the mantra "All options are
on the table," and Iran defying U.N. sanctions, pursuing nuclear
enrichment and detaining U.S. citizens, Bush has a blank check
to launch a third war.
Lebanon is ablaze. Gaza is ablaze. The Afghan war is not going
well. The Taliban have a privileged sanctuary. The NATO allies
grow weary.
In Pakistan, the most dangerous country on earth – one bullet
away from an Islamic republic with atom bombs – our erstwhile
ally, President Musharraf, is caught in a political crisis over
his ouster of the chief justice.
Presidents Musharraf in Islamabad, Kharzi in Kabul and Siniora
in Beirut, and Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad, sit on shaky
thrones. No one knows what follows their fall. But it is hard to
see how it would not be crippling for America's position.
With such volatility in this crucial region of the world, with
such uncertainty, it is easy to see why Democrats prefer to be
the "dummy" at the bridge table and let Bush play the hand.
The congressional Democrats are cynical, but they are not
stupid. If the surge works and U.S. troops are being withdrawn
by fall 2008, they do not want it said of them that they "cut
and ran" when the going got tough, that they played Chamberlain
to Bush's Churchill.
And if the war is going badly in 2008, they know that the
American people, in repudiating the party of Bush and Cheney,
have no other choice than the party of Hillary and Pelosi and
Harry Reid.
That is why congressional Democrats are surely saying privately
of the angry anti-war left what has often been said by the
Beltway Republican elite of the right: "Don't worry about them.
They have nowhere else to go."
And that is why the anti-war left was thrown under the bus.
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