Party of defeat would lose if surge succeeds

Robert J. Caldwell:

Democrats have struggled for a generation to escape the crippling public perception that they are soft on national security. Majority Democrats in the House of Representatives have now revived their party's electoral curse.

The House vote Friday for a Democratic leadership resolution opposing President Bush's plan to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq was lopsidedly partisan. Nearly all Democrats voted for it. All but a relative handful of Republicans voted against it.

Yes, it is a nonbinding resolution, meaning it has no force in law. Bush is free to ignore it, as he already has said he will. And, yes, it contained political cover language expressing support for American troops in Iraq. Thus, as virtually all Democrats proclaimed during the House's four days of debate on the resolution, Democrats can claim that they “support the troops.”

But House Democrats are now on record as formally opposing the troops' mission – a potentially decisive effort to stop the violence in Baghdad and defeat the Sunni insurgency in Anbar province.

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The Democrats' passage of a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop reinforcements that Bush and his Iraq commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus, say are essential to American success is damaging enough. If Democrats now use their power over appropriations to defeat the troop surge before it can be fully implemented, the political risk to Democrats will be greatly compounded.

Starkly put, Democrats risk making “Bush's war” their war, and then losing it.

If you think Democrats wouldn't be that foolish or reckless, think again.

Rep. John Murtha, the blustery Pennsylvania pol and anti-war ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is already pledging to use his power as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's appropriations subcommittee on defense to stop the surge by restricting the deployment and funding of U.S. forces.

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Does Pelosi, smarter and smoother than Murtha, agree?

“I fully support that,” Pelosi said of Murtha's remarks.

What's building, then, is not only a political crisis for the Democratic Party but a constitutional clash over the president's, any president's, express powers as commander in chief of America's armed forces.

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Have the Democrats learned nothing from history?

In 1973, a heavily Democratic Congress voted to prohibit U.S. air support for Cambodia's pro-American army, then desperately fending off the communist Khmer Rouge insurgents. In early 1975, Congress cut off all U.S. military aid for Cambodia.

Predictably, Cambodian government forces were soon defeated by the Khmer Rouge, then backed by Communist China and North Vietnam.

What followed was one of the great horrors of the 20th century – the genocidal slaughter by the Khmer Rouge of 2 million Cambodians, roughly 40 percent of Cambodia's population.

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When our troops were dealing with the problems of sand storms and Iraqi troops at the beginning of the war they came up with the expression "embrace the suck." The Democrats are eager to "embrace defeat" and enact legislation to ensure it. While they perceive political momentum on this issue, they will not be able to squelch the debate in the country on this most unwise policy.

They come to this conclusion because the right question about the war has never been polled. That question is "Do you want to lose the war in Iraq?" For a majority of Americans the answer to that question is "No" despite their "dissatisfaction" with the current course of the war.

This poll demonstrates that most Americans want to win.