© David Burton 2007

     "...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi donned a(n) Arab woman's head scarf and robe ..." (Ref. 1). This was reported as the Democratic Speaker of the House visited Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Syria. "She should not be freelancing" said Peter Brookes, a former Bush defense official. "She is welcome to make her views known as speaker of the House, but at the moment, the executive branch runs U.S. foreign policy ..." [emphasis mine]. Representative Tom Lantos, the House Foreign Relations Committee chairman who is accompanying Pelosi, said Sunday, "We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy." (Ref. 1)

     We now have the spectacle of liberal Democrats meeting with designated sponsors of terror, announcing that they have an alternate foreign policy to the official foreign policy of the United States. They are not the first of the DemoLiberals to embarrass themselves and our country this way. One needs only to remember Ramsey Clark and Jimmy Carter cavorting around the world and making nice to a variety of despots.

     I am not a constitutional scholar, but I seem to remember that, according to the constitution, foreign policy is the responsibility of the Executive Branch of our government and, ultimately, of the head of the Executive Branch, i.e., the President.

     The Democratically controlled House and Senate also seem to have lost sight of a few other issues. The President of the United States is the elected Chief Executive of the United States. As I learned from my MBA training and more than 40 years business experience, this means that when the Chief Executive makes a decision, the rest of us salute and then support him. The time for discussion, arguing and table pounding occurs prior to the Chief Executive's announcing a decision. In the case of the President of the United States, if we don't like the decision, we elect a new president who will have a policy more to our liking. This opportunity will be presented to the people of the United States in November of 2008. For now, the DemoLiberals need to keep their mouths shut and support our President and our troops.

     To take the actions that the Democrats in the House and Senate have taken is wrong. Their actions continue to give aid and comfort to our enemies and do a disservice to our armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It does not take a genius to perceive the glee with which the Islamofacist terrorists watch the backbiting and infighting in Washington. They want nothing better than a U.S. pullout from Iraq and then from Afghanistan and the rest of the Mideast and Asia. Setting a date for our withdrawal (read that as defeat) from Iraq is what they want. Specifying that troops are to be withdrawn according to an arbitrarily generated schedule of Congress ties the hands of the military commanders in the field and gives additional encouragement to our enemies. By my understanding of the term "Commander in Chief" as it applies to the President of the United States, it means that he, not Congress, directs our armed forces.

     The DemoLiberals continue to avoid facing up to today's realities. They are blinded by their hatred of President Bush and they are living 4 years in the past. The situation in Iraq has changed from when we invaded that country. Today, we need to defeat the Islamofacists in Iraq because that is where the war against radical Islamic fundamentalism is being fought. They need to keep telling themselves "We're at war, stupid!" We've been at war with Islamofacism for the past 3 decades and will be for the foreseeable future. We need to take this war to the enemy and not let them bring it to us. We can't let them decide when and where to attack us.

     Instead the DemoLiberals continue to aid the Islamofascists of the world by calling for a "timetable for withdrawal from Iraq." In continuing to make these pronouncements, they reinforce the belief of the Islamofascists that America, or least the DemoLiberals, will capitulate in the war on Islamic terrorism and that these murderers of innocent civilians will then once again be able to enslave, murder and oppress in the name of their version of Islam. They will then be free to choose where, when and how they will attack us.

     “There was a time when people of good will of all parties stood together in the face of a common foreign enemy. There was a time when only a fool or a knave would seek partisan advantage when this nation’s men and women in uniform were in harm’s way. Well these days are gone, with the possible exception of a few decent politicians - like Sen. Joe Lieberman (D -Conn.).” (Ref. 2)

     “It is the most natural of instincts for Americans to crave peace, to want their sons and daughters home. Democrats who cynically play to those instincts for political gain do so at their peril. “There are no easy solutions in Iraq. There is only hard work - for Iraqis and for U. S. forces. And at the end of the day there will be the satisfaction of knowing that as a nation we have done the right thing.” (Ref. 2)

     President Bush has made the case. “If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they [the Islamic fascists] would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people. Against this adversary, there is only one effective response: We will never back down. We will never give in. And we will never accept anything less than complete victory.” [my emphasis] (Ref. 3)

     What the DemoLiberals aren’t admitting is that the United States is under attack and has been at war with fanatical fundamentalist Islam for decades. This president has done what they have failed to do - take the war to the enemy. Instead of lining up with President Bush and pulling with him, they are now doing jut the opposite - giving the terrorists the hope they can wait us out and win. Fanatics like Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and bin Laden can only be defeated by being destroyed. Their followers can be defeated by making them understand that they have no chance of success. “Terrorist in Iraq, indeed the world over, can only be encouraged by the tenor of the debate over the war.” (Ref. 4)