Just what the title says... random ruminations on life, the universe, and everything by a Christian Conservative Geek (that's me). Could be religion, politics, or the state of the Star Trek franchise.
So much for the Party of the Donkey making everyone love America:
Cyclical slowdowns are one thing. What depresses politicians in both countries is their biggest trading partner's protectionist mood. A Mexican minister who is a strong supporter of NAFTA and who has been dealing with Washington for the past two decades says that on a recent visit to the United States' Congress he found an “almost xenophobic” mood of a kind that he had never before encountered.
That chimes with the frustrations of Colombia's government, which having negotiated a free-trade agreement with the United States has found it blocked by the Democrats in Congress. The message from the Democratic campaign is that “America is an unreliable ally”, says a veteran Latin American diplomat who spent many years working closely with the United States' government.
I don't think much more needs to be added to that (except the colored emphasis which I already added).
Once again, been doing some ruminating, this time on the Ron Paul brand of neo-isolationism. I've decided that it's a fundamentally flawed policy for several reasons:
The central premise itself is fatally flawed. The idea is that if we ignore the world, the world will ignore us. Sorry, folks, but putting our collective hands over our ears, closing our eyes, and singing "lalalalalala" at the top of our lungs won't stop other nations from knocking on our door--or knocking over our skyscrapers either. History shows this clearly; the last time isolationism was seriously tried in this nation was during the 1920s and 1930s. It ended rather suddenly on one Sunday morning in December, 1941.
There is also an idea that if we stop "meddling" in the Middle East, that things will calm down. Again, this is not in line with reality. Like a cop standing on a corner keeps neighborhood kids from causing too much trouble, America's presence in the Mideast has helped keep the violence from getting worse. Just imagine what the turbulent Mideast would look like if those bent on violence weren't afraid of American planes, bombs, tanks, and troops showing up if they went too far.
A corollary to this is that America is primarily responsible for the restraint shown by Israel. If we stopped asking Israel to hold back on their responses to Arab violence, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand what would happen... just look at the Six-Day War, for example, and Israel's bombing of Iraqi nuclear facilities in the 1970s.
There's also, among at least some proponents of neo-isolationism, a concept that the people of the Middle East are not worth shedding American blood to help. This one doesn't need a lot of comment from me, so I will just say that people are people, they all bleed red, and to single out one group as unworthy of our help is distasteful in the extreme.
Bottom line, neo-isolationism quite simply won't work. It will not deliver what it promises, because the entire idea is screwy. Maybe that's why the wackos that follow Ron Paul like the idea.
Attorney General Mukasey has a chance to show that he's the right man for the job.
DHS is seeking to reverse decades of U.S. policy and reinterpret a 1996 U.S. law in order to return Chinese fathers whose wives have fled forced sterilization or abortion by the Chinese government to Communist China, where they will be separated from their families and face certain retaliation for the crime of fathering an unapproved child. DHS has now convinced the Second Circuit Court of its position, creating a split among the circuits. The matter now rests in the hands of the attorney general, who has previously had discretion to grant asylum to those worthy.
Let's hope Mukasey quickly rules that it's not right to split up these families and send Daddy back to face the Red Chinese.
Some more background... it's not pretty, but it should be mentioned:
Under China’s “one-child” policy (which sometimes permits two children), China requires sterilization for new mothers and forced abortions for women exceeding the limit. The State Department reports that in 2005, in just one province, 130,000 women were subjected to forced abortion or sterilization. According to congressional testimony by Chinese refugees and other interviews with Chinese citizens, women who go into hiding to avoid this routinely have their homes destroyed, or members of their family are imprisoned.
China’s population-control program also requires abortions for allunwed mothers. This is even more intrusive than it sounds, because another component of the 1979 population policy bans marriage for men under the age of 22 and women under the age of 20 — and in some provinces, the age requirement for marriage is as high as 25.
Because of the marriage ban, many young Chinese couples secretly get traditional marriages that are not sanctioned by the state. Yet this carries with it a risk — if the wife becomes pregnant, the state will frequently force her, as an “unwed” mother, to abort.
As a consequence of this policy, the Reagan administration began a policy of accepting, with open arms, women who have fled China to avoid forced abortions or sterilization. His policy also accepted the baby’s fathers, upon whom Chinese law confers equal punishment for the crime of unauthorized breeding. This included both “legal” husbands and “traditional” ones, and even committed partners who fathered the children, because like the mothers they faced political persecution.
President Clinton reversed course, adopting an extremely callous policy that no longer considered forced abortion a form of political persecution. His undersecretary of state for global affairs, former Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.), famously and cruelly equated China’s regime of forced abortions with “family planning” when he argued in 1995 for the deportation of 13 Chinese women who had arrived in the United States aboard the Golden Venture: “[W]e could potentially open ourselves up to just about everybody in the world saying ‘I don’t want to plan my family, therefore I deserve political asylum.” (Emphasis added.)
Clinton’s decision to reverse the policy and deport these women was received with bipartisan outrage. In order to force Clinton’s hand, Reps. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) and Henry Hyde (R., Ill.) passed a new policy into law the following year by slipping it into a larger immigration bill that Clinton wanted to sign. Their amendment, known as Section 601, was intended to protect Chinese mothers and their husbands who fled procreative persecution from being deported to China.
The Hyde-Smith law protects “a person who has been forced to abort a pregnancy” or faces persecution “for other resistance to a coercive population control program.” The first phrase, says Smith, does not explicitly refer to couples, but it was clearly intended throughout the congressional debate, sworn testimony in committee, and in the House report language on the measure, to refer to both mothers and fathers. Both, after all, are subject to the same penalties, and both are being forced to terminate a pregnancy they initiated together. At the very least, the second phrase would appear to apply to both.
So DHS is basically going back to the Clinton interpretation.
Speaking of Columbian President Uribe, NRO has a great article (link in the title) about him and his progress in rebuilding the nation after the drug wars of the 90s. Maybe the Iraqis should pay attention.
In what was once the most dangerous neighborhood of this, the world’s most notorious city, a Sunday afternoon is a bustling, joyful affair. The scampering children and people sitting at tiny sidewalk cafes on the narrow streets would be fit subjects for a Colombian Norman Rockwell.
“Look,” says New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, part of a congressional delegation visiting from the United States, “they’re cooking pizzas, they’re eating ice cream, boyfriends and girlfriends are holding hands — this is amazing, this Medellin! We’re supposed to be dodging bullets.”
The late drug lord Pablo Escobar made this city into one of the most violent on Earth. Men like Sergio Fajardo — the outgoing mayor, a mathematician who is a leader in a citizens’ movement that arose in opposition to the violence — made it into a city that belies its reputation. In 1991, 6,500 people were murdered here; in 2006, 700 were. Medellin’s murder rate is now lower than Baltimore’s.
Okay, I know, that's not specifically about Uribe... keep reading.
Medellin is a microcosm of Colombia. President Alvaro Uribe has forged extraordinary security gains by taking the fight to the country’s hellish brew of left-wing guerrillas, their paramilitary opponents and narco-traffickers. The strength of the main guerrilla group, FARC, is down an estimated 40 percent from its peak, and more than 30,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilized. Murders have dropped 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, and kidnappings almost 80 percent from 2000 to 2006.
Notice... violence is decreased by taking the fight to the terrorists. Democrats should listen, and listen good... but they won't. Once again, Democrats are standing in the way of helping those in need, in favor of one of their preferred constituencies.
But security is not enough. Colombia is awash in displaced people, chased from their homes by dueling guerrilla armies, and young men who have to be resocialized after lives of violence. They need jobs. That’s why the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is so important. It is pending in Congress, where Democratic leaders might let it die in the gravest act of strategic short-sightedness since their attempted rebuke of Turkey.
[snip]
The congressmen can’t help but be impressed. What holds Democrats back from supporting the trade agreement is union opposition back home. The unions hate the deal even though most Colombia exports to the U.S. already benefit from trade preferences, and the deal would remove duties on U.S. goods going to Colombia. They complain about violence against Colombian union leaders, but attacks against unionists have tracked with general trends of violence — as killings have declined since 2002, so have murders of union leaders.
Rep. Meeks, an advocate for Afro-Colombians, supports the deal. He calls progress in the country “nothing short of a miracle,” and blames the image of the “old Colombia” for limiting the deal’s support. “If you come here,” he says, strolling out into the streets of this revived neighborhood, “it’s a no-brainer.”
Yep, the party that claims to be the champion of the little guy, fighting a bill that would help raise the economic fortunes of people in a very hard-hit country.
Whomever the next President is needs to start re-evaluating our relationship with Saudi Arabia--we know darned good and well that Bush won't in his remaining time in office, even in light of things like this:
But, hey, this is just another day in Saudi Arabia, where religious police trap teenage girls in burning school buildings for shedding the head-to-toe Islamic garments they must wear in the presence of men. Where it's a crime for adult women to drive, vote or hold office. And where polygamy is encouraged, and men in their 60s take 14-year-old brides.
Now this. The 19-year-old rape victim, a Shiite woman, originally received a sentence of 90 lashes from the Islamic court after she was kidnapped, beaten and repeatedly raped. Her crime? Being in the same car with an unrelated male companion.
She only agreed to meet the man after he threatened to tell her father they were having an affair if she didn't join him alone. She subsequently was abducted and raped by seven other men. Then her brother beat her for good measure because the rapes brought shame to the family.
Last week, the Supreme Judicial Council convicted her of unchaperoned car-sitting and hiked the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison.
After the West got wind of the barbarous ruling, the Saudi Ministry of Justice defended it by saying that "charges were proven" against the woman. So what's the problem?
Yep, just Saudi justice at work.
And Dubya, for all his good work in Iraq, is cozying up to these folks.
Looks like the King of Spain doesn't like the way Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez talks about Spain and the Spanish government:
Mr Chavez called Mr Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human."
[Current Spanish Prime Minister] Mr Zapatero said: "[Former Prime Minister] Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people."
Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?"
According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances - or children.
After long complaining that President Bush's "cowboy diplomacy" is alienating and angering our allies overseas, the Democrat-led House of Representatives has passed a resolution that is essentially a slap in the face of one of the few Muslim nations allied with us.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. congressional panel defied President Bush on Wednesday and approved a measure that he said would damage U.S. goals in the Middle East.
The measure that would recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians as a genocide had been strongly opposed by Turkey, a key NATO ally that has supported U.S. efforts in Iraq.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee's 27-21 vote now sends the measure to the House floor — unless the Democratic leadership reverses course and heeds Bush's warnings.
At issue is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, says the toll has been inflated and insists that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.
Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue.
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told daily Milliyet newspaper that a congressional committee's approval of the measure had already harmed ties between the two countries.
"If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet.
"I'm the military chief, I deal with security issues. I'm not a politician," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet. "In this regard, the U.S. shot its own foot."
“The committee’s approval of this resolution was an irresponsible move which, coming at a very sensitive time, will make relations with a friend, ally and strategic partner that have been nurtured over generations, more difficult,” the government said in the statement. “Our government regrets and condemns this decision. It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened,” it stressed.
The truly ironic thing is, the Democrats are showing their own ignorance of history.
The "genocide" which they are "condemning" occurred in 1915.
The Turkey we know today wasn't created until 1923.
So, blaming modern Turkey for this is sort of like condemning modern Italy for the brutalities of the Roman Empire.
Nice going, Speaker Pelosi. You're really demonstrating why you and your party are not ready to be trusted with the reins of power.
But the timing of this resolution simply stinks, and we're made to wonder if this isn't some Democrats' way of making President Bush's Middle East policy even harder to implement.
Americans might not realize it, but Turkey is strategically indispensable. About 70% of our flights into Iraq come from our Turkish base at Incirlik. About 30% of our fuel comes from there.
[...]
No wonder Turkey is furious — talking even of shutting down Incirlik, which would cost the U.S. war effort in Iraq dearly and could even delay what appears to be a likely victory there.
An American friend who lives in Turkey says--and I must agree with her--that this is designed to make victory in Iraq even harder, thus helping the MoveOn-ocrats.
Defeat at any cost must be their rally cry.
Update and Bump: More and more commentators are coming to the conclusion that this is designed to screw up our success in Iraq, as seen here, here, and here.
Can the Democrats really be so stupid as to mess up our relations with an ally just because of their hatred of George W. Bush? I wish I could say the idea is laughable, but the past antics of the MoveOnocrats have shown that it is frighteningly plausible.
Update 3 and Bump 2: Looks like Pelosi is starting to lose support, according to the liberal bible, a/k/a the New York Times:
Before Tuesday, the measure appeared on a path to House passage, with strong support from Speaker Pelosi. But by Tuesday evening, a group of senior House Democrats had made it known that they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure.
One wonders if these same senior House Democrats would have done so if the light hadn't been cast on their apparent plans to make success in Iraq more difficult by prodding Turkey to cut off access to Incirlik Air Base, through which a lot of supplies for Iraq pass.
A gentleman by the name of Bartle Bull, editor of the Middle East Monitor, has penned (typed?) an article for OpinionJournal, giving his own ideas about why we're seeing success in Iraq. He concludes:
The biggest unifier of all currently might be the most predictable one. Help from foreigners is welcome in Iraq. The country's elected prime minister, possessing after Iraq's heroic elections more popular legitimacy than almost any leader in the world, often points out that the Coalition is there as invited guests. When the U.S. Senate passed its disingenuous "plan" for extreme federalism in Iraq last week, the uproar in the country crossed the sectarian divide. Iraq already has a constitution. It was written by freely elected Iraqis and ratified overwhelmingly by the public in a brave vote two years ago.
Thousands of Americans and their allies have died helping to give Iraqis this opportunity. We have shown enormous skill and bravery in helping them fight their enemies, and immeasurable goodwill in sending our young men to protect Iraqi schools, mosques and polling booths. The reason we and Iraqis are winning this war together is that its purpose is to give Iraqis what they want.
Indeed. And they don't want people in Washington, many of whom have never set foot in Iraq, telling them how to set up their own government.
This is just the sort of thing I was hoping for from new French President Nicolas Sarkozy:
Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the U.N. provided the substance. On the largest possible stage — the U.N. General Assembly — President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran’s nuclear ambitions “an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world.”
His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices — successful diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.
“Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace,” he warned. “They lead to war.” This warning about appeasement was intended particularly for Germany, which for commercial reasons has been resisting U.S. pressure to support effective sanctions.
Some of us have learned from the French attempt at appeasement of Hitler's Germany in the 1930s; it appears that Germany itself may not have learned anything, or forgotten what they learned. It also seems that our native lefties haven't quite comprehended the lessons of French appeasement either.
Dennis Kucinich went abroad to strengthen his foreign policy credentials in pursuit of his presidential ambitions. First stop, Syria, where Gazoo praised the chinless opthamologist, Bashar Assad, and got his digs in at President Bush and United States foreign policy.
US Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, on a Mideast visit that included a stop in Syria, said the country lambasted by the Bush administration deserves credit for taking in more than a million Iraqi refugees.
Kucinich, a strong anti-war opponent who trails far in the US presidential polls, also said he won't visit Iraq on his trip to the region because he considers the US military deployment there illegal.
"I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," he said in an interview in Lebanon, after visiting Syria. "I will not do it."
I wish Gazoo wouldn't bless the United States with his presence in the House of Representatives.
Kucinich, who accused the Bush administration of policies that have destabilized the Mideast, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad during his visit to Damascus. He said Assad was receptive to his ideas of "strength through peace."
I bet Assad was receptive. He and several other countries in the world, Iran chief among them, would love to know there was a United States President who would eschew all military force in the pursuit of "peace" - at any cost.
He also praised Syria for taking in Iraqi refugees.
Well, that's the least Assad could do after allowing terrorists to muster in Syria and slip into Iraq, contributing to the chaos and mayhem that compels Iraqis to flee.
Like too many liberal whacko politicians, Kucinich bolsters his foreign policy credentials by running to a country that is a terrorist sponsor, a proxy of Iran, an enemy of Israel and kisses Assad's butt and bashes the United States.
The only thing Gazoo has going for him:
Elizabeth Kucinich. She's three decades younger than Kucinich. Have you read anywhere of her being a trophy wife? Didn't think so.
Coming right on the heels of my blog post earlier today on Bill's offensive to make Hillary into a hawk, MSNBCcontinued the offensive.
Wednesday night's Hardball with Chrissy Spittle Boy Matthews had Jon Soltz and Buzz Patterson to answer the question of whether Hillary is a hawk or a dove. Fireworks ensued. Soltz is the anti-Iraq War activist, founder of Vote Vets and recently gained notoriety at the Yearly KosKonvention. Buzz Patterson is Vice Chairman of Move America Forward and author of Dereliction of Duty.
Notable in this exchange, watch who started interrupting first. Also, Soltz seems to feel that because he is an Iraq war vet, he has some higher moral authority than Buzz.
Soltz makes his case that Hillary is the best choice for Commander in Chief, based on his private conversations with her and her understanding and grasp of the military and it's organization. He feels that she has the most sensible foreign policy and would draw down forces in Iraq to fight our real enemy, alQaeda.
Soltz had first shot, answering this question from Matthews: "John, is Hillary the kind of candidate who we can trust to get us out of Iraq and not go to war with Iran?"
Who is Matthews speaking for? Himself, the Congressional democrats, Vote Vet, MoveOn, Code Pink, alQaeda, Iran? Anyway, Soltz answered
I think Hillary is someone who has all of the strengths of a strong commander-in-chief. She understands how we fight. I mean, when you talk to her privately, she can tell you the difference between an old brigade combat team and a new unit of action and how we have, you know, combined our mechanized infantry and armor. It is absolutely fascinating to speak with her behind the scenes.
Her last eight years in the Armed Services Committee she has learned from. And she understands why we fight. You know, I was at a large event with her several months ago and she pulled me aside and she asked me about staying in the Army or not staying in the Army. And I said, well, ma‘am, I do not know.
You know, I love the Army, and my greatest hour was ever—I ever had in my life was leading soldiers into war. And she says to me, you know, you are right, Jon. There is no greater honor than being in charge of our troops in a combat zone. And for her to understand that, like I said, she understands how we fight and why we fight. And she is somebody that.
First, Hillary has been in the Senate for six and a half years, not eight. Second, all that Soltz related means she's paying attention while she's in committee and is well briefed. Which is good, but that doesn't mean she should be Commander in Chief. And if Stolz actually thinks Hillary cares one fart about him having lead troops in combat, then he's a sucker. Hillary doesn't care.
Here, Matthews goes to Patterson and asks: "How do you see Hillary, hawk or dove?"
Hey, Chris. She is a dove in hawk‘s clothing. I mean, I know her personally, worked for her for two years, with her husband from 1996 to 1998, and she is anything but a hawk. I mean, she wants to pull us out of a Iraq. She voted for the war before she voted against the war, to coin a phrase from a previous candidate.
She will say anything she has to say, Chris, to get elected president. See, she is a pathological liar. She does not understand the military. I can speak first and foremost personally, knowing her intimately. She is not a hawk. She is anything but. She is a Wellesley College, socialist, anti-military, anti-American.
And there is where Soltz starts interrupting, after Patterson had sat there and let Soltz have his say. Guess when you're the absolute moral authority you get to interrupt. After that, it was on.
The only thing Buzz might be wrong about is saying she does not understand the military. His interaction with her was almost ten years ago. She might not have known much then but she's had her years in the Senate to pick up a few things. If he means she doesn't understand what being in the military is all about, that I'll believe, despite Soltz's position to the contrary.
Soltz goes on defending Hillary as being a credible Commander in Chief. Patterson defends his position against Hillary based on his first hand experience with the Clintons.
SOLTZ: He is wrong. He‘s making the argument for us.
PATTERSON: John, I was there, pal. You were not.
SOLTZ: I was there.
PATTERSON: You weren‘t in the White House. By the way, let me tell you—
SOLTZ: Let me tell you something, you weren‘t in Kosovo when I was in Kosovo under Bill Clinton.
PATTERSON: I was in Bosnia.
Soltz continues, criticizing Bush and missile defense, which he claims has alienated our allies, and talking about how when he was in Kosovo he had up armored Humvees, but not when he went to Iraq.
They have dedication of super duper missile defense systems in the sky that have alienated our allies. And the Democrats have a position where we can take the fight to alQaeda in Afghanistan. I was in Kosovo when we had—
Why did we have armor equipment under Bill Clinton in Kosovo, but when I was in Iraq, we didn‘t have it?
Bill Clinton was a better commander-in-chief than George W. Bush.
Oh no; lions and tigers and bears. How many troops did we have in Kosovo? A few thousand, peak maybe 8500. That's a far cry from having 150,000 in Iraq. I'd suspect it was much easier to scrape together enough up armored Humvees for a few thousand troops than it is to equip an invasion force of 150,000 troops.
In March 2003, we were operating on the second budget of the Bush administration. If there were not enough up armored Humvees when we went into Iraq, then that was a material short fall from the Clinton administration. Unless, of course, one can convince oneself that all the short comings of the Clinton military could be fixed in the first budget. Or that we should not have done anything until we had everything our military needed - even if it would take several years to get to that point.
Note also that Soltz seems to be against missile defense systems, which puts him right smack dab in the same camp as most Congressional democrats.
It went on from there. You can read the whole transcript here.
As I said, this seems to be an offensive to sell Hillary as a pro-military, foreign policy hawk. I suspect we'll hear more on this in the coming weeks.
US Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton has rejected suggestions of a unilateral US strike in Pakistan's tribal region, American troops should accompany Pakistan troops.
But she did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998.
"If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured," she said.
My favorite former Democrat is at it again, watching the Middle East like the hawk that he is and observing danger signs the Dhimmicrats would rather ignore:
According to Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, the Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members.
Gen. Bergner also revealed that the Quds Force--a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps whose mission is to finance, arm and equip foreign Islamist terrorist movements--has taken groups of up to 60 Iraqi insurgents at a time and brought them to three camps near Tehran, where they have received instruction in the use of mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices and other deadly tools of guerrilla warfare that they use against our troops. Iran has also funded its Iraqi proxies generously, to the tune of $3 million a month.
This is the sort of thing that needs to be dealt with quickly and firmly. Mr. Lieberman explains how he would go about it:
America now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior, including the immediate cessation of its training and equipping extremists who are killing our troops.
Most of this work must be done by our diplomats, military and intelligence operatives in the field. But Iran's increasingly brazen behavior also presents a test of our political leadership here at home. When Congress reconvenes next week, all of us who are privileged to serve there should set aside whatever partisan or ideological differences divide us to send a clear, strong and unified message to Tehran that it must stop everything it is doing to bring about the death of American service members in Iraq.
The problem is, members of the Party of the Donkey, which, you will remember, found Lieberman not lefty enough for them, aren't interested in stopping the deaths of American war fighters. They believe that the more body bags that pile up, the easier it will be for them to force us out of Iraq, pleasing their rabid anti-war supporters.
In short, we cannot depend on Democrats to support stopping Iran. And thus, there's a very good possibility that we could be in real trouble sometime in the not-too-distant future.
