A Party Adrift On National Security from
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Leadership: Wonder what national security will be like under a Democrat-controlled Congress? Wonder no more. Minority leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats are telling you right now, and it isn't comforting.
Apparently preparing for her accession to speaker of the House after November's election, Pelosi gave an interview Wednesday explaining her views on the war on terror.
If you believe, as we do, that America is engaged in such a global war, and you think it should be prosecuted to the fullest, be afraid — very afraid. For Pelosi made clear she doesn't think the war in Iraq is even part of the war on terror. It's more like a distraction.
"The war in Iraq is the wrong war," she said. "No matter how many times the president wants to say it, the war in Iraq is not the war on terror. The war in Afghanistan was."
That, in a nutshell, is the wisdom of today's Democratic Party, congealed into a semiofficial policy stance. And if Democrats win in November, House leader Pelosi will make it all official.
For the record, the jihadists now sending suicide bombers to create chaos in Iraq don't see it that way. They — and this includes Osama bin Laden — see Iraq as absolutely central to their war aims.
In October, the Director of National Intelligence released a letter from al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri to the now-deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In it, DNI said, he affirmed the "centrality of the war in Iraq for the global jihad."
"The jihad movement is growing and rising," wrote al-Zawahri. "It reached its peak with the two blessed raids on New York and Washington. Now it is waging a great historic battle in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and even within the Crusaders' own homes."
He also outlined a four-step plan to restore the lost Muslim caliphate and establish radical Islam's domination across the world.
And what was step one? "Expel the Americans from Iraq."
Yet, somehow, Pelosi and her pals seem to think we can buy peace simply by leaving Iraq or focusing on Afghanistan or coming home. And Democrats think the unpopularity of the war in Iraq will be their winning hole card this November.
Iraq War foe Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., complained Wednesday of the war's "crushing burden" on the Army. Well, just think how crushing it will be if jihadists take over Iraq, and someday get a nuke.
Then there's John Kerry, eyeing another presidential run. On Thursday, he accused President Bush of "cut and run" in Afghanistan — laughable, of course, coming from someone who voted for the war in 2002, then flip-flopped all over the place on supporting it, but who now backs a pullout.
All this serves to undermine the war effort, and for what? One election. This shouldn't be about politics, but many Democrats don't seem to recognize this is World War III. And if they don't agree, they don't have to take our word for it.
"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War," bin Laden said in a special message to Iraq back in December 2004. "It is raging in the land of the two rivers (Iraq). The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate." (Emphasis is ours.)
Those who don't understand this and refuse to fight basically would hand the war on terror to our enemies. This is as inexcusable today as it would have been in World War II.
Would Americans of the Greatest Generation ask their politicians on D-Day, "What does this have to do with Pearl Harbor?" Of course not. Yet, today, that's precisely what the Democrats seem to be doing.
Having seen exactly the same intelligence as the Bush administration, Democrats in October 2002 voted to go to war against Saddam Hussein. It was the right decision then, and remains so today. But when the going got tough, and the far left of their party started screaming, the qualms got the better of them.
We don't know if the next Congress will be Democrat or Republican. But we do know that all other issues pale in comparison to the war on terror .
If the Democrats win in November— which we doubt — they'd better stop posturing and get serious about a war in which our very civilization is at stake. If they don't, they risk disaster — something for which American voters may never forgive them.
Food for thought.
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