Thursday, August 10, 2006

Not so fast

Democrats seem to think that making the coming election about the war will be a big win for them.

Maybe not :

While 59 percent of Americans told an Associated Press poll this month that they disapproved of President Bush's handling of Iraq, 64 percent disapproved of the Democrats' handling of it. While 62 percent of Americans told a Washington Post/ABC News poll last month that they disapproved of Bush's handling of the war, an even higher percentage of respondents, 71 percent, said the Democrats do not offer clear alternatives."

I think that a mistake people on the Left commonly make is that they believe that most Americans like the idea of running away. Not true, Americans just hate to lose and when they hear of ongoing violence in Iraq they feel like they are losing. Ofcourse to the left all those who think that a withdrawal from Iraq would be dangerous for America and disastrous for Iraq are just war mongers. They feel that there is no problem in the world that can not be solved just by the United States surrendering.

I am old enough to remember John Kerry saying all those years ago that if the US just pulled out of Viet Nam all would be well. The fighting in southeast Asia would end right away. Like Murtha says of Iraq today, Kerry said then that the US was the target, the problem...and he was wrong. What followed our flight from Southeast Asia was reeducation camps, genocide and hundreds of thousands of boat people trying desperately to escape on the open sea.

Believe it or not, running away does not solve problems, it creates them and this time the bad guys will follow us home. And if the Left persists in comparing this war to the war in Vietnam perhaps they should stop and remember the Killing Fields in Cambodia or the sight of those helicopters taking to the air while the people on the ground reached after them...begging to not be left behind. If we ran away from Iraq now... would anyone ever trust us again?

8 comments:

ex-democrat said...

great post, terrye. i, for one, am not 100% pleased with th administration's handling of Iraq and the WOT generally. But trust me, it's not because it has been too aggressive.
and i wouldn't trust the dems to secure my kids school. because they didn't.

ex-democrat said...

btw, here are the current BBC web poage headlines:
UK planes 'terror plot disrupted'
and
'Airlines terror plot' disrupted

my question is: why the scare quotes? what does the inclusion of those scare quotes signify about the BBC reporters' attitude towards the nation's police force and government?

incredible.

Anonymous said...

Terrye:

If we ran away from Iraq now... would anyone ever trust us again?

No. And we wouldn't trust ourselves again, either.

Richard Lawrence Cohen said...

Anotgher thing the left believes is that most people think like them. In a post-election interview yesterday, Kos gloated that at all his book signings, people rushed up to say they agreed with him. Well, duh, they were the people who chose to attend your book signing! Not exactly a sample from which to extrapolate the attitudes of the mass of Americans.

Pastorius said...

Alright, I have to expose my ignorance here. Terrye, or anyone, could you tell me how our pulling out of Viet Nam led to the killing fields in Cambodia?

I really don't know the history. Sorry.

I trust you guys to be honest with me.

Rick Ballard said...

Pastorius,

The short version is that when the Democrats betrayed South Vietnam in '75 a power vacuum developed in Cambodia, the leader there, Prince Sihanouk, allowed (or was unable to prevent) a communist group led by Pol Pot to take effective control. His group was called the Khmer Rouge and they had a different 'brand' of communism than did the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese finally wrapped up their reunification plan and turned on the Khmer Rouge but not until the Khner Rouge had pretty much killed everybody who could read in Cambodia.

If you google a bit it's easy to fill in the blanks.

Unknown said...

It is also true that when they cut off support for South Vietnam, they cut off support for Cambodia and the government fell.

It is also true that lefties like Chomsky loved the Khmer Rouge and openly supported them.

Pastorius said...

See, I knew about the Khmer Rouge, and about Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, and even about Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, but I was never clear on what we had to do with any of it.

Thanks to all of you.