Immediate Withdrawal = Suicide
If you do not believe my title, Immediate Withdrawal = Suicide, then I do not think you truly understand the terrorist threat. I applaud the GOP in last week’s attempt to force Rep. Murtha and his cronies to put their money where their mouth is. It is about time that they take a stand. All of the hubbub this raised forced a speech by VP Dick Cheney to clarify the administration’s position on Iraq policy.
If you have not read the full transcript of Cheney’s speech, you need to. This is the critial message about the war in Iraq, and the global war on terror. It is unfortunate, although not suprising, that the message gets lost in the media. For whatever reason, the realities of this conflict have been lost and the public is growing weary.
But the public needs to get a second wind… And fast! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen if we pull out of Iraq now, without finishing the work at hand.
The terrorist believe we are weak. They believe that we do not have the resolve to stay the course. Are they right? They have been right in the past: Beirut, Mogadishu, Khobar Towers, Riyadh, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen. They have struck and have not paid a price.
If we follow the advice of Murtha and withdraw now, we only strengthen the resolve of the terrorists. They will KNOW that they can do whatever they want and we will cater to their wishes. No westerner will be safe - either at home or abroad. The world will become a more dangerous place.
What have we learned from the terrorists? That a policy of cut and run works? That when we cower from the terrorist threat and change our foreign policy to suit them that they go away and become peaceful? NO! We have learned that time after time after time, when we have appeased these people, they continue to come at us stronger and more bold until they finally struck on our own soil and killed thousands.
Appeasement now would lead to an increase in global terrorism since they will have learned that they are able to achieve their goals through tenacity. Cheney summed this up in his speech yesterday [which I highly recommend reading here]:
It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.
In fact, such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail.
I am tired of the DNC trying to paint themselves as something they are not - “The Anti-regime change in Iraq Party.” The public needs to remember that they are merely “The anti-the current administration policy because we are sore losers since we can’t seem to win an election Party.” The DNC through this entire conflict, both abroad and at home, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are the party of the moment. Is that strong policy? Can anyone respect such wishy-washiness? I know I can’t.
Don’t belive me? Cheney reminded us all yesterday that regime change in Iraq was not something that the Bush administration just pulled out of thin air because they needed something to do. It was also the policy of the previous Democratic administration. It was also the policy of many other nations as well. But now one was willing to stand up to the threat Saddam posed to the world until 9/11. Whether you believe Saddam had a connection to 9/11 or not does not matter. What does matter is that 9/11 forced us to change how we think about potential terrorist threats. And Saddam was a terrorist. He terrorized his own people and his neighbors. 9/11 forced us to take potential terrorist threats seriously, and to deal with them quickly.
We cannot return to a cut and run mentality. To do so will only embolden the terrorists. We all like to say that we learned our lesson from Vietnam. But did we? We seem to have quickly forgotten that when we pulled out, we also denied funding to South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. NLF General Vo Nguyen Giap knew that while the U.S. was in Vietnam he could not win on the ground. But he knew that he could erode public support, and that following a physical pullout, the U.S. would grow weary and walk away completely. He only had to bide his time to invade the South and win, which he did when the NLF arrived in Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Zarquawi understands this. Dick Cheney understands this. George Bush understands this. Why doesn’t Murtha?
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