What happens when an American political party adopts the goals of America's enemies? FSM Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft says there is only one word for it…
When Congress Commits Treason
By Raymond S. Kraft
What do Osama bin Laden, Muqtada al Sadr, Hezbollah and Iran have in common with America's Democrats? They all want an American retreat, defeat, and surrender in Iraq. When an American political party aligns itself with the goals, hopes, and ambitions of America's enemies in a time of war, in my view there is only one word for it - Treason.
Today, most of the "leading Democrats" in Congress are falling all over themselves to give aid, comfort, and hope to the Jihad, the Islamic Resistance Movement, the Islamist movement for the decline and fall of Western Civilization and the ascendance of Jihadist Islam in Iraq and around the world. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and many of the rest give their assurance that with Democrats in power, America will retreat, embrace defeat, and surrender, selling their souls and their country down the river for primary votes and trucks of money from the Pacifist Left. Here, the ignominious spectacle of Democrats selling out the future freedom of the Iraqi people for votes and dollars. Osama bin Laden once called America "a paper tiger." America's Democrats seem determined to prove him right. Treason for votes. Treason for dollars. Treason as a political calculation. Treason, for revenge on George Bush.
Treason, to put a Democrat in the White House.
Thirty-two years ago, in 1975, after America and the Republic of Vietnam had fought and won a ten-year war to save South Vietnam from the predations of the communist north, a Democrat Congress voted to terminate life support for South Vietnam in the face of another North Vietnamese invasion, backed by the USSR. A Democrat Congress voted to "pull the plug," and condemned millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotions to death, torture, imprisonment, and re-education camps, and condemned others to flee their homes and countries as refugees. That, in my view, was the blackest day in American history, and the blood of those people is on the hands of the Democrats who voted to abandon them.
Now, another Democrat Congress is poised to repeat that act of infamy, and abandon the people of Iraq to the conflagration that will almost certainly follow if the United States withdraws its forces prematurely. Another Democrat Congress declares to the world that America is a fair weather friend, that America cannot be relied upon, that America cannot be trusted to stand by its promises when the going gets tough, that America no longer has the will to lead the world toward a future of freedom. Another Democrat Congress declares that America, having liberated the Iraqi people from the bloody tyranny of Saddam Hussein, has grown tired of the messy business of liberation and will now wash its hands of the whole affair, and abandon the Iraqi people to the bloody tyranny of the Jihad.
After the 2000 election, the Democrat Party backed itself into a corner that threatens to destroy the Democrat Party, if Republicans and other responsible Americans recognize the Democrats' strategic blunder for what it is, and call them out on it.
Even before he took office, Democrats committed themselves to the ideology that George W. Bush was (a) an "illegitimate president" who had "stolen the election," and (b) that he was stupid, dumb, incompetent, and unworthy of the office. They maintained these positions until 9/11, when, with America obviously under attack, they came to their senses long enough to pass (with only one dissenting vote) the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq (2002) which references the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 signed by President Bill Clinton on October 31, 1998, which committed the United States to the goal of regime change in Iraq -- the two acts of Congress from which Senator Hillary Clinton is now feverishly trying to distance herself.
By primary time before the 2004 elections, they had reverted to the stance that George W. Bush was an illegitimate president, dumb, stupid, incompetent, and unworthy of the office, and a liar, and that the Iraq war was badly bungled. Today, they have retreated even further, with Hillary Clinton declaring, "if we had known then what we know now, there would have been no vote," no war in Iraq, that America's Democrats would have left Saddam Hussein in power to pursue the weapons of mass destruction he either had, or wanted, and to continue dumping the bodies of Shias and Kurds into mass graves, in the killing fields of Iraq.
During the 2004 election season, Democrats and their candidate, Senator John F. Kerry, held out military experience in general, and combat experience in particular, as the sina qua non for qualification to be president (the Kerry Axiom). The Democrats and Kerry were adamant that since Kerry had combat experience in Vietnam, however brief, and Bush did not, that Kerry was indisputably qualified to be president, and Bush was indisputably not. In the debates Kerry declaimed that he could fight the War on Terror "better and smarter," whatever that means, for he has never told anyone exactly what, if anything, that means. When pressed at the time, he replied that he would have to be elected and see what sort of mess Bush had left him before he could know what "better and smarter" means. Now, John Kerry wants to fight the War on Terror "better and smarter" by capitulating to Iran, even as Iran threatens to destroy Israel, England, and America.
Since Bush's re-election, America's Democrats have persistently raised the ante against Bush, holding hands ever tighter with the Pacifist Left, from whence flow many millions of dollars in campaign contributions and many millions of primary votes.
In a remarkable about face from the Kerry Axiom that only a combat veteran is qualified to be president, the three leading candidates for the Democrats' presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barak Obama, and former Senator John Edwards, haven't one day of military experience among them (which means, of course, by the Kerry criterion, that George W. Bush, although he has no combat experience and served only as a fighter pilot in the National Guard, is better qualified to be president than any or all of the three). But the Kerry Axiom no longer matters, of course.
Democrats are making the President's alleged bungling of the war they authorized by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq (200) the focal point of the 2008 election - and are now poised to pass a non-binding resolution of Congress demanding a quick "redeployment" of American armed forces from Iraq, and debating whether to "defund" the war in six months, while Senator Clinton demands that America must be "out of Iraq by 2009."
This has backed the Democrats into a corner, a conundrum for which there is only one solution, and which is laden with many opportunities for the Democrat Party and all of its Congressional leaders and presidential contenders to plunge into the abyss of political disaster by November, 2008.
In order to sustain the Democrats' dogma that:
(a) George W. Bush is an "illegitimate president" who "stole" the election;
(b) George W. Bush is dumb, stupid, incompetent;
(c) George W. Bush led us into an "illegal war" by false pretenses and lies ("Bush lied, people died," even if all but one of the Democrats in Congress voted for it) and;
(d) The Iraq War has become a "quagmire" like Vietnam (which, of course, was a "quagmire" of the Democrats' own making, only because of Democrats' refusal to do the obvious things necessary to win the war quickly and decisively) - a war that America and the Iraqi government cannot possibly win against a small cadre of insurgents with Iranian support -
- THE IRAQ WAR MUST BE LOST BEFORE THE 2008 ELECTION.
If the Iraq War has not been either won, or lost, before the 2008 election, then whoever is elected president - Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John Edwards - will become a Wartime President in January, 2009, a position which (per the Kerry Axiom) none of them has the slightest qualification to hold.
Worse, this catastrophe would force a Democrat president to either win, or lose, the Iraq War. If she, or he, presided over the loss of the Iraq War, the Democrat Party would, for years or decades, be tainted, smudged, smeared and besmirched, with the loss of the Iraq war, and the loss of America's leadership and geopolitical credibility. She, or he, would fulfill Osama bin Laden's prophecy that "America is a paper tiger." But, if she, or he, saddled up and proceeded to preside over the winning of the Iraq War, the party would be devastated by the loss of ideological cohesiveness and financial support, and votes from its base on the Pacifist Left. Thus, the Democrat Party cannot afford to have a Democrat either lose, or win, the Iraq War.
The conundrum for the leading Democrat candidates for the next presidency is that all of them, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are now on record as opposed to the war and demanding that America retreat, embrace defeat, and surrender. If Bush hasn't the good grace to lose the war before any of them becomes president, then, regardless of their lack of qualifications, whichever of them is elected will have to either (a) reverse their policy and decide the war is worth winning, to the vengeful opprobrium of the Pacifist Left that has staked its hopes and dollars on electing an anti-war president dedicated to defeat, or (b) fulfill their campaign promises by losing the war as expeditiously as possible, which will tag the Democrat Party as the Party that Lost the War for all the foreseeable future, the party that lost Iraq, the party that lost America's leadership and geo-political credibility in the world, the party of retreat, defeat, and surrender. The party that ushered in the end of the American Era.
The party is hobbled, or trapped, by its resolute determination that America must not win a war that would vindicate the illegitimate presidency of George W. Bush, and by its thrall to the moneybags and votes from the Pacifist Wing of the Democratic Party.
Therefore, for the Democrats to succeed, the Iraq War must be lost by George W. Bush, so they can "blame Bush," so they won't have to dirty their hands with it, nor accept any responsibility, nor any blame.
However, even worse than having to grapple with a war they haven't a clue what to do with, is the possibility that the Iraq War might be won, or at least be making distinct progress toward a good resolution and a free, prosperous Iraq, under the George W. Bush presidency before the next election. This would vindicate the George W. Bush presidency, and George W. Bush the man, and shatter the Democrats' ideology of Bush's incompetence and illegitimacy.
If by the fall of 2008 the Iraq War is still seen as a stalemate, a quagmire with no hope for success, it is most likely that a Democrat will be elected president. Then she or he will then have to either lose the war, or win it, and either will be a political fate worse than political death. Either will doom the Democrat Party. If the Iraq war is still underway, and neither victory nor defeat is certain, the Democrat president elected in 2008 will be damned if she (or he) wins it, and damned if she (or he) doesn't.
But if by the fall of 2008 the Iraq War is won, or is making clear and conspicuous progress toward a good outcome, the Democrats' dogmas will have been gutted, disemboweled, flayed, and decapitated, by success and events, and a credible Republican candidate will be elected the next President. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing loses like a failed prediction of failure.
Worst of all, success in Iraq will be vindication for George W. Bush, as stupid, evil, mendacious and illegitimate as he is.
The only acceptable solution, then, for a Democrat candidate, is to have the Iraq War decisively lost, or surrendered, by George W. Bush, or during the George W. Bush presidency, so that George W. Bush can take the fall, and Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John Edwards, and all the rest of the gaggle who get in the ring can wash their hands of it and blame it all on Bush.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on whether you prefer an American victory or an American defeat, and to the Democrats' obvious dismay, President Bush is refusing to cooperate. This presents the Democrats with a truly nasty dilemma. If George W. Bush, illegitimate and dumb, refuses to lose the Iraq War when we ask him to, what shall we do about it?
The solution du jour is to pass a "nonbinding resolution" condemning the war and calling on America to surrender to its enemies.
.What do you do when you want what America's enemies want? When you take the side, adopt the goals, of America's enemies? You give political and psychological aid and comfort to America's enemies, in a time of war. You extend to America's enemies the promise that they will win, and America will surrender. You turn on your own country, your own history, tradition, principles, Constitution, your own citizens and constituents, your own government, your own soldiers in combat. You commit treason.
The essential values and ideals of Liberal Democracy are the freedoms enshrined in our own Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The first among these, from which all others follow, are the rights of intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. These are the liberties that Liberals and Democrats allege they believe in - but they do not. They propose to abandon the vast majority of the Iraqi people who are not participating in the "civil war," who are only bystanders, who are only the victims of the bombs and bullets of the tiny minority (less than 1%) that makes up the Shia and Sunni militias and the Iranian-sponsored insurgency sent to foment chaos and savagery, sent to prevent the freedoms of civilization from taking root and blossoming in Iraq.
The leading Democrats in Congress propose to abandon the Iraqi people to a radical Islamic Jihad that is the antithesis of Democratic values, the antithesis of Liberal values, a religious totalitarianism for which the only freedom is the freedom to be not just Muslim, but Muslim enough, and in which all intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, freedom of speech and press, contrary to radical Islam, is prohibited. A religious totalitarianism for which "multiculturalism and diversity" are anathema. Just as another Democrat Congress abandoned the peoples of South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, to communist totalitarianism thirty-two years ago. Then, Democrats voted for retreat and defeat, and surrendered South Vietnam to its enemies, and millions of people died. Once again, Democrats and their presidential candidates invoke the Democrats' core values of retreat, defeat, and surrender, and if they succeed, millions more will die.
America's Congressional Democrats en masse are betraying, rejecting, and repudiating their own ostensible dedication to the Liberal values of freedom and liberty, multiculturalism, diversity, democracy, for money, for votes. Their half-spoken mantra is, "No war for oil, no victory for freedom."
We see America's Congressional Democrats becoming the American Judas, betraying America, and Iraq, for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver. We are watching the astonishing, appalling, and unprecedented spectacle of a Democrat Party so hungry, so greedy, so blindly avaricious for political dominance that it is committing itself to the retreat, defeat, and surrender of America, of Iraq, of the Middle East, perhaps Africa, perhaps Europe after that - where, if anywhere, will the Democrats' firm resolve to retreat and surrender end?
This is treason.
After promising on the campaign trail to "support our troops," Democrats tried to cut off funding for our military while our soldiers and Marines are under fire from the enemy. For 19 Senate Democrats, this was simply a bridge too far, so they voted against their own leadership's proposal. Democrats also tried to stuff an emergency war-spending bill with billions of dollars of pork for individual members. Now the party's leaders are stalling an emergency supplemental bill with funding for body armor, bullets and mine-resistant vehicles. 
