Political Philosophy and Current Events

Iraq

Over the last two years, the way the American public has come to view the war in Iraq has changed markedly. I will discuss why.

The terrorists there have learned a few key pieces of information:

1.The American mainstream media will portray the terrorists in the most favorable light, the American military in the most unfavorable light, will trumpet the most negative news about Iraq on the front page, and will ignore or hide the good news as much as possible.

2.The leaders of the Democratic Party are so pissed off about losing control of Congress and the Presidency, that they will do and say anything in order to attack President Bush. It does not matter if it is good for the country or not, or whether it is true or not. So they have unfailingly attacked the war in Iraq as a way to attack Bush. The Democratic leadership also is anti-military in general.

3.The terrorists will be given a pass for their behavior and not be held to the same standards that the US or the West is held to. They can behead prisoners or brutally kill prisoners and drag them through the streets and the left says nothing. But if some prisoner is embarrassed and treated badly in one of our jails, of my gosh, you’d think the aliens had landed.

So the terrorists feel that if they just keep on killing people and blowing up things in Iraq, then they, aided by the American mainstream media and the Democratic Party, can win the war and get us to cut and run.

Most of the Democratic leadership has been advocating cut and run for the last two years. Senator Joe Leiberman just lost his Democratic primary race to Ned Lamont, who ran on an anti-war, cut and run ticket.

The kook fringe (also called the "Moonbat wing") of the Democratic Party is gaining more and more power. The Ned Lamont win, aided by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and Moveon.org, shows that the kooks will not even tolerate one of their own who will not come out against the war. Let’s not forget that Joe Leiberman is no conservative. He has voted against President Bush on just about every other issue, but insists that the war on terror is real and we have to stick with it. There has already been speculation as to whether Leiberman would have lost if the election were held a few days later, after the Brits busted the terrorist plot to blow up airplanes bound for America.

So what has changed in Iraq over the last two years, to cause a larger and larger percentage of the population to say that we made a mistake going there and we should get out?

The answer is nothing has changed. At least not in Iraq. The only thing that has changed is that the press and the Democrats have been beating the drum non-stop since the last Presidential election, claiming Bush lied, and attacking the war, saying we shouldn’t have gone in, we should get out now, etc. They ceaselessly try to compare the war in Iraq to Vietnam, despite 2,000 casualties in Iraq compared to 58,000 in Vietnam.

I believe the Democrats just fail to understand that we are fighting against an enemy, radical Islamics, that is insane. They won’t negotiate or see reason. They just want to kill us. They don’t want to kill us because we went into Iraq (they attacked us before that if you will recall), and they won’t stop wanting to kill us if we leave with our tail between our legs. That would just strengthen their position and power. This enemy is being compared to Nazi Germany, and I believe the comparison is apt. Appeasement didn’t stop Hitler (Neville Chamberlain learned that the hard way). It won’t stop the Islamofascists either.

If we stop taking the battle to them (as in Iraq), they will bring it over here again, like they were planning to do with the British plane plan.

WMDs

Recently Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a press conference and released data on the finding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That was on June 21, 2006. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed the data at a White House press conference a day or two later. If you don’t follow the alternative, conservative media, you probably didn’t even know that, because the mainstream media ignored the story completely. Here’s a quote from his press release:

"Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public."

The weapons found included mustard and sarin gas.

I’m personally mystified as to why the White House didn’t trumpet the news to kingdom come. But that’s a symptom of the fact that the White House and President Bush are poor at playing the political PR game.