I wrote the following comment over at Liberal Avenger (in response to a post by Ape Man) regarding the unseriousness of the democrats on national security. As of this moment, my comment is awaiting moderation, so I will post it here in its entirety.
How do we know that democrats are not serious about the defense of this country and are more interested in playing politics?
During the Clinton years, the official policy of this country in regard to Iraq was regime change. Numerous democrat leaders stood up with President Clinton and declared that Saddam was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and that he would absolutely use them one day. Not a word of dissent from the official party position could be heard. Interestingly, Republicans also agreed.
After a humiliating presidential defeat in 2000, the democrats became obsessed with undermining the Bush administration. However, with the tragic events of September 11th, it became clear to the vast majority of Americans that we were fortunate to have George Bush as President rather than Albert Gore.
Democrats stood reluctantly with President Bush in the early days after September 11th, bemoaning their misfortune that this tragedy occurred during Bush’s tenure rather than Mr. Clinton’s. By all rights, this historic opportunity should have belonged to Mr. Clinton who was after all the greatest president of all time.
As Saddam continued to defy the feckless UN, President Bush announced his now famous Bush Doctrine in which he made it clear that we would not tolerate rogue regimes who sponsored terrorism and that we would not wait until a threat was imminent to take action.
After 11 years of UN resolutions and months of Congressional debate, Bush secured both UN and Congressional approval to take action if Saddam did not cooperate. While voting to give Bush the authority to take action, democrats constantly attacked the President with fantastic accusations that he was unilaterally rushing to war, that he was a war monger, and that the war was blood for oil.
As the ultimate display of the fact that there were no limits to the perverse depths to which the democrat party would go, they nominated an “electable” candidate for president in 2004 whose claim to fame was a brief three month tour in Vietnam after which he returned home to falsely accuse his fellow soldiers of committing war atrocities. This so-called war hero was supposed to give the democrats credibility on national security, after all he was a war hero wasn’t he? Unfortunately the war hero candidate quickly displayed how completely unserious he was about defending this great nation when he declared (in connection with a bill to provide our troops with the resources necessary to effectively fight the war that the war hero had supported) “I actually voted for it before I voted against it.” The war hero “reported for duty” at the Democrat convention with Michael Moore by his side.
The majority of Americans understood at this point that to Democrats, politics was more important than the defense of the country. George Bush was re-elected in 2004 receiving a majority of the popular vote - a feat not accomplish since his father did so in 1988.
But democrats were not finished. They continued to talk down the troops and the war effort for the next two years accusing the troops of acting like terrorists and engaging in torture. The democrat Senate minority leader bragged about the “killing” of the Patriot Act and Democrats celebrated the NY Times leaks of the classified NSA surveillance program and the Swift financial tracking program. Democrats made clear that their policy for Iraq was “cut and run” notwithstanding that virtually every Middle East expert indicated that this would be the worst possible thing we could do. Representative Murtha even ridiculously suggested that our troops should be redeployed to the Phillipines.
As a final gesture of partisanship, the rabid anti-war left gave the middle finger to Joe Leiberman, their former vice presidential candidate, by successfully leading a campaign to defeat the one voice of reason left in the democrat party in the Connecticut Senate democrat primary.
The Democrats have a five year history of placing partisan politics ahead of our national security. It is way past time for Republicans to take off the gloves. President Bush was right on the money this week when he declared that the party of Truman had become the party of cut and run.
