Giving hope to our enemy

Rep. Steve King:

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... I looked back through some of the history. In 1783, we made peace with Great Britain. The Revolutionary War, for combat purposes, was over. 1784, American merchant marines were being attacked in the Mediterranean by Barbary pirates.

In 1786, two diplomats, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, went over there to meet with them, and their idea was, we will be able to talk them into peace. Well, they talked to them all right, and the representative of the Barbary pirates, Mr. Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, responded to them, and this is in the Congressional Record from Thomas Jefferson's report.

He asked him, why do you fight us, why do you attack us, why do you kill us? We have done nothing hostile towards you. His answer was, It is founded on the laws of our Prophet. It was written in the Koran. All nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could not take as prisoners, and that every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

I take you back to today. We call our marines leathernecks. The reason for that is they wore a heavy leather collar to diminish the odds that they would be beheaded by this enemy who has, to this day, at least fairly recently, is still beheading marines. That is how this started.

Now, we are in a war. Von Clauswitz wrote that the object of war is to destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war. That means take away their munitions, take care of their armies, destroy them if you can. But in the end, whatever you might do doesn't break their will. You have to destroy their will. There is nothing going on on this side of the aisle that is diminishing the will of our enemy.

I will tell you, they will interpret it as encouraging the will of the enemy. I would point out this quote from Moqtada al Sadr. I heard this over al Jazeera TV when I was in the Middle East, actually in Kuwait City, waiting to go into Iraq the following morning, June 11, 2004. He said, "If we keep attacking Americans, they will leave Iraq the same way they left Vietnam, the same way they left Lebanon, the same way they left Mogadishu."

June 11. Where does he get this from? Well, he gets part of it from General Giap's book in Vietnam, the successful general there....

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He goes on to make a strong case against Congress micromanaging a war. It is a Democrat disease. They did it in Vietnam leading to a defeat and they are desperate to lead us to defeat in Iraq. Success in Iraq would be the greatest embarrassment to the Democrat party that it has seen since it Copperhead days during the civil war. Their attempts to lead us to defeat in this war should be rejected.