The Democrats invitation to evil

Ralph Peters:

SEIZED illegally, 15 British sailors and Royal Marines are hostages in Iran. Thanks, Speaker Pelosi.

It’s amazing that Big Mediahasn’t made the obvious connection between the congressional Democrats long- promised move to hand over the keys to Iraq to al Qaeda and the decision by Iranian hardliners to bolster their position within Iran by grabbing those Brits.

The Iranians didn’t even wait for the final vote count. The rhetoric in the wake of the turnover in Congress was sufficient to convince them that Washington is ready to bail out of Iraq. The extremists in Tehran want to push us out of the Persian Gulf, as well.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his faction have been losing ground internally, but they hope a confrontation with the West will unite the people of Iran behind them. The Revolutionary Guards weren’t ready to take on U.S. forces directly, but they felt confident they could get away with grabbing Brits - and so far, they’ve been proven right.

Iran’s hardliners watch our actions closely. Sometimes they read the smoke signals correctly, sometimes they don’t. They calculated that Prime Minister Tony Blair is now so weak that he wouldn’t dare retaliate. Furthermore, they figured that the Bush administration has been pushed onto the defensive by Congress and wouldn’t move to aid our main ally.

What the coming days will hold depends upon the political algebra in Tehran and London, Washington and Baghdad, Brussels and even Moscow.

But the one thing that cannot be disputed is that, without the congressional moves to impose a withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Iraq, the Iranian regime would never have grown so bold. In Middle Eastern warfare, a classic tactic has been to retreat in the face of strength, but to attack when your enemy withdraws or shows signs of weakness. That is exactly what the Iranians are doing.

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The Dems on Capitol Hill pretend that setting a deadline for a troop withdrawal won’t even have serious consequences in Iraq. Yet the reverberations are already ringing through the entire region. Not only do Iran’s worst fanatics feel emboldened, but the Saudis whom President Bush has been trying to hug anew treat us like beggars.

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Back in Iraq, the Dems’ “Contract With al Qaeda” undercuts the progress our troops have been making since the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus (the Dems tossed him the keys to the car, but won’t give him money for gas). For all too many politicians, our 2008 elections are more important than the fate of our soldiers or the Iraqi people.

They’re doing all they can to guarantee failure. After a year of tragic setbacks, our new tactics in Iraq have brought real signs of progress. Ultimately, of course, that progress may come to nothing. Sunni assassins may succeed in reinvigorating the religious war with the Shia - who’ve behaved with restraint for the past few months.

Success is never guaranteed in any war.

But that’s no reason to guarantee failure. Threatening to cut off funding for our troops is simply despicable.

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Now the Democrats appear determined to do even graver damage. And they utterly refuse to consider the consequences of their actions.

The Pelosi-Murtha Democrats won’t even confront the likely results within Iraq if we quit prematurely. As for considering the effect their duplicitous bills and votes have on the calculations of bad actors elsewhere in the Middle East, the Dems just shut their eyes and cover their ears.

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The Democrats do not care about the consequences. Every bad thing that happens will be blamed on Bush as usual. They also see political gain in our defeat and the worse the consequences the bigger political gain they perceive. I think they have miscalculated at home and in Iraq and the consequences will eventually catch up with them but in the meantime their mischief will spread ruin to millions everywhere. Their stab in the back of the commanders and troops will live with them for decades to come. They will become the party that care forgot, because they do not care about the consequences of their bad decisions on this war.