"Many Democrats believe an American defeat in Iraq is etched in granite. They would not be the first to lose heart and will in war. Yet it is one thing to give up on a cause; it is quite another to advocate legislation (17 different proposals in all, according to Senator Mitch McConnell) that would guarantee failure even before a new strategy is given time to work."
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
~John Stuart Mill - from On Liberty circa 1859
http://simplesmith.blogspot.com/
for one of our soldiers perspective on the question
Read the blog, it is the truth
From today’s WSJ:[...]Many Democrats believe an American defeat in Iraq is etched in granite. They would not be the first to lose heart and will in war. Yet it is one thing to give up on a cause; it is quite another to advocate legislation (17 different proposals in all, according to Sen. Mitch McConnell) that would guarantee failure even before a new strategy is given time to work. This is especially the case when the preliminary trajectory of events is encouraging.
There will continue to be ebbs and flows in this war, as in all wars. But virtually everyone agrees that a loss in Iraq would be catastrophic for American national interests. We are facing among the most sadistic enemies we have ever encountered. There is much we do not understand about them and their worldview–but one thing is clear: They probe for weakness; they interpret retreat as a supreme sign of weakness; and when they find weakness, they strike.
If we retreat from Iraq, Islamic jihadists will not go gently into the good night.
We are now engaged in a pivotal war, which is itself part of an epic struggle. Gen. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq who was confirmed by the Senate without a single vote in opposition, is one of America’s great military minds and one of America’s great military commanders. Why oh why, then, are so many Democrats spending so much of their time and creative energy in an effort to undermine Gen. Petraeus’s new strategy instead of supporting it? Even granting the partisan politics of this city, the effort by Democrats is a remarkably revealing thing to witness. “Come home, America” and McGovernism are back with a vengeance—and like Round One, in 1972, it will leave a lasting imprint on the minds of Americans, for years to come.
Certain probative questions tend to get lost in all the partisan fingerpointing, so they are worth rehearsing again and again. First, do Democrats believe the nature of the terrorist threat as described? If not, they should be clear about just how serious they gauge the threat from Islamists; if so, how can they possibly justify the legislative action they’ve been taking to hamstring the fighting of the war?
Of course, this set of questions presupposes other pivotal questions—namely, what do the Democrats believe will happen should the US “lose” the war? That is, how married are they to the Vietnam template they’ve been working from for the last several years? Do not congressional Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) owe us a clear and concrete explanation of how they think things will play out should they succeed in their legislative aims?
After all, it is one thing to enlist emotional appeals to gin up support for an “end of violence” and for “bringing our boys and girls home”; but it is another thing entirely to conspicuously ignore the likely effects of such an action—or to at least describe, to the American public, what they believe will happen should they get their way legislatively.
None of which they seem particularly eager to do. And for good reason: the aftermath of Vietnam is one part of the template that the Democrats don’t like to focus on, save domestically, where they recognize that it was responsible for kneejerk legislation that weakened the US military and, in so doing, launched us into the era of ennui and Carter governance. Both of which, it seems to me, are preconditions for the popular embrace of transnational progressivism—something we narrowly avoided thanks to the idealism and muscularity of Reaganism. As a matter of foreign policy, though, Vietnam showed how we could be beaten, if not militarily, than through propaganda and our own bumpersticker moralism.
Vietnam emboldened every enemy we’ve had since. Carter made matter worse—projecting an American face to the world that showed worry lines, riddled by its own supposed historical guilt and wanting nothing more than to be unexceptional.
The return of this ethos—this “new” fear and loathing—is nothing more than the resurfacing of a radical aesthetic seeking to influence culture through the venue of politics.
Such a worldview was dangerous during the Cold War; but now, with an implacable enemy unconstrained by worries over borders, it is downright suicidal.
And so again I ask: what is the liberal Democratic plan? How do they see the world and our place in it?
We deserve answers. Instead, we get bromides and vitriol—and a constant stream of political maneuvers whose sole purpose, it seems at first blush, is to weaken our ability to defend ourselves against enemies both foreign and domestic.
http://proteinwisdom.com/index.php?/22714/
Katie Couric interviews John McCain and Sarah Palin together on CBS news on 9/29/2008. September 29th 2008.
President-elect Obama recorded a message for the Global Climate Summit, promising “a new chapter of American leadership on climate change.” Learn more at Change.gov.
The “O” TEAM 
Archie Bunker on Democrats
June 7, 2008