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red states rule
07-31-2007, 08:32 PM
The actions of Dems and their history of appeasement shows why they cannot be trusted with the defense of America



Just Why Democrats Are 'Dangerous' When It Comes To America's Defense

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 10/20/2006

Thomas Sowell, the distinguished Stanford scholar, wrote on this page a week ago that there's a difference between the major parties: "The Republicans are disappointing and the Democrats are dangerous." We'd like to take this opportunity to elaborate on his second point.

We and our allies are in a serious global war against fanatical, determined Islamic terrorists who have declared war on America and the free world. Their stated objective is to kill all the Americans they can, eliminate Israel, control and enslave women, and in time overpower and rule with an iron fist nations from Spain to the Far East. They intensely hate our freedom and successful way of life.

While Democrats in Congress always assert they "support our troops," their political policies and actions have continually undermined our nation's fight to win the war on terror and defend America. Here is their national security record:

1. On missile defense of America — Democrats voted against it.

2. On the Patriot Act — Democrats voted against it.

3. On tapping foreign terrorists' phone calls to the U.S. — Democrats voted against it.

4. On tracing terrorists' money flow between foreign banks — Democrats voted against it.

5. On building a border wall to control illegal immigration and stop dope — dealers, terrorists and criminals — Democrats voted against it.

6. On interrogating captured terrorists — 194 Democrats just voted against it.

7. On telling the world (and our enemy) about a timetable for withdrawing from and deserting Iraq — this is Democrats' retreat and defeat plan.

Think that's bad? Here's the Democrats' national defense record for the last 40 years:

A. Democrat President Johnson misjudges the Gulf of Tonkin incident, pursues the Vietnam War until a liberal CBS TV announcer thinks we're losing and says we should quit. So we quit and lose. The victorious communists then kill 2 million innocent civilians.

B. Democrat President Jimmy Carter during the Cold War withdraws U.S. support for our longtime military ally, the Shah of Iran. Carter doesn't like his human rights treatment of Soviet spies in prison. The shah is overthrown, and Ayatollah Khomeini returns, seizes power and creates an Islamic nation. Opponents are killed, the idea of suicide bombers is introduced to the PLO, and Iran's oil wealth is used to spawn and support Hezbollah, a terrorist militia that killed 241 Marines in a Beirut bombing and that lately attacked Israel. Iranian radicals storm our embassy, taking 52 American hostages for 444 days. Carter fails in an amateurish attempt to rescue them. Eight military personnel and eight aircraft are lost in a desert foul-up.

Democrat Carter, self-assured and well-meaning but dangerously naive, was responsible for bringing into power an Iranian Islamic regime that's now creating nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel and blackmail the U.S. and Europe. Iran has further provided weapons and support to Shiite militia and death squads in Iraq and could provide nukes to al-Qaida, with which it has a working relationship.

After the Soviets meet the inexperienced Carter, they invade Afghanistan. Then the communists capture Ethiopia, South Yemen, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Grenada and Nicaragua. The Afghanistan invasion attracts young Osama bin Laden, who raises money and recruits other Muslims to fight the anti-Soviet jihad. After the Soviets leave, this band becomes al-Qaida.

So Carter's glaring weakness in dealing with the communists and Iran leads directly to both the current terrorist nuclear threat of Iran and the birth of al-Qaida, a group of mass murderers that would never have been possible if the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev had not been emboldened to invade Afghanistan after seeing an inept, appeasing American president, Carter.

Carter's ongoing, worldwide damage to America's future national defense does not end there. In 1994, civilian Carter goes to North Korea and negotiates an agreement that President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright buy into. The North Koreans use our money and help to secretly spend the next six years in researching and building nukes. Deceived again by a worthless piece of paper, Carter becomes America's Neville Chamberlain.

These Democrat policies and actions were not only incompetent and ineffective in defending the U.S. They also proved to be highly dangerous, creating the greatest threats to America's future security — a radical Islamic Iran and a North Korea with nukes, either one of which could hand weapons off to al-Qaida killers. And Carter is still out there giving us advice.

Ronald Reagan inherited from Democrat mismanagement a rapidly expanding communist enemy, 12% inflation (highest in 34 years), 21% interest rates (highest since Abe Lincoln was president), a depleted military and a serious energy crisis. Reagan's motto was "peace through strength," not peace through retreat, weakness and accommodation.

He kicked communists out of Grenada and defeated them in Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. He supported those fighting against communist regimes. He attacked Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, who much later surrendered his nuclear weapons program after America's military captured the tyrant Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground.

For eight years congressional Democrats ridiculed and fought all of Reagan's defense and economic policies. They said he was dumb, stupid, too old and a warmonger who was going to start WWIII with the Soviet Union. Democrats were proved wrong on nearly every vital Reagan policy. His tax cuts set off a huge seven-year economic and technological boom, just as George Bush's broad tax cuts have done, creating millions of new jobs.

In the end, the Reagan-Bush administration defeated the 70-year-old Soviet Union, and communism disintegrated on the ash heap of history under Republican Reagan's relentless pressure and determination to build a missile defense system to make the Soviet nuclear arsenal obsolete.

The present terrorist threat to our security did not begin on 9/11, but in the early 1990s, after Democrat Clinton was elected in November 1992. In February 1993, terrorists bombed New York's World Trade Center. In October 1993 two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in Somalia. Eighteen Americans were killed and 73 wounded. In response, Clinton withdrew our forces.

In January 1995, Philippines police uncovered a plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the ocean. In June 1996, Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia, was blown up, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi and wounding 372 others.

In February 1998, bin Laden declared "war on America," saying the murder of any American anywhere on the earth was the "individual duty" of every Muslim. In August 1998, al-Qaida blew up U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 200 and injuring 5,000. In October 2000, 17 U.S. sailors were killed when al-Qaida attacked the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.

According to Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran and head of the agency's bin Laden unit, the 9/11 Commission report confirms that the Clinton administration had at least 10 chances to get the al-Qaida leader, but Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke or Clinton simply could not make the decision to act. The CIA knew where bin Laden was and the military had plans, but they were almost always called off at the last minute.

So when presented with 10 specific opportunities, Clinton's Democrat administration never took any action that was effective or produced any positive result. From Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s to the policies and actions they push today, Democrats haven't been just weak and ineffective in defending against America's enemies.

This year, two other forces are feverishly working to undermine this election and our war on terror. One force is made up of elite national media based mainly on the East Coast. On several occasions they have given our enemy vital defense secrets. They also disgracefully report and relentlessly repeat only bad news. Such dishonest journalism confuses and deliberately misleads the American public. The TV networks have lost 50% of their audience and still refuse to change their one-sided news coverage.

The other force is represented by terrorists who are desperately attacking as many people as possible in Iraq in the weeks leading up to our election. They believe they can intimidate us like they intimidated Spanish voters in the wake of the Madrid bombings and affect our congressional election in a way that will result in our quick withdrawal from Iraq. But quitters never win.

As difficult and complex as the war has been, America has a very strong economy — with over 95% of our population employed and 70% owning homes — plus freedom, opportunity and a standard of living that other countries can only envy.

We've also been protected against further terrorist attacks by a strong, competent and determined president.


http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=246237121883661

red states rule
07-31-2007, 09:01 PM
Not all Dems are pushing for surrender and appeasement

There are some who see the threat


Centrist Democrats take on left over Iraq

By: David Paul Kuhn
Jul 31, 2007 10:07 AM EST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- At a moment when many Democratic activists are urging their leaders to be bolder and more confrontational with Republicans, the party's most influential centrists met Monday to call for more pragmatism and bridge-building.

Presidential candidates were nowhere to be seen at the annual gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council, a moderate group that was closely linked to Bill Clinton but has long been viewed suspiciously by liberal activists.

The DLC's popularity among many Democrats -- especially the Netroots -- has plunged in recent years in large measure because most of the group's leaders backed President Bush on the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003 and continue to warn about a too-rapid withdrawal.

Yet even as the DLC is radioactive in presidential politics, the Nashville conclave highlighted how many of the party's most impressive gains in recent elections -- including winning numerous governorships in states that typically vote Republican in presidential contests -- have come from politicians in the classic DLC mold. They played down partisanship, played up traditional values and offered agendas that emphasized problem-solving over ideology.

Many of these politicians warned Monday that Democrats risk blowing their chance to regain the presidency in 2008, and failing to win a long-term majority, if they present a face to the public that is too angry in tone. They also warned that, despite the broad unpopularity of the Iraq war, there is a risk that candidates will position the party as insufficiently committed to protecting national security if they push for too precipitous an end to the war.

"We have an abundance of talent [among Democratic candidates]," said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. "Issue by issue, we are in step with the American people. But never underestimate our ability to screw it up."

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, in a keynote speech, invoked the metaphor of rural "barn-raisings" -- in which neighbors join together to build a barn -- to describe his brand of bipartisan pragmatism.

He said that has allowed him to be successful as a Democrat in a state that Republicans have won in the past two presidential elections, as well as to make progress on progressive-minded health care and education reforms.

"Americans have always loved contact sports, and elections are certainly that," Bredesen said, adding that voters "also expect us to tone that down when elections are over, get together and build some barns."

He said he knows some Democrats believe that is "naive" and that they "have to crush the enemy." But he argued that the problem with some combat-minded partisans is that "if your only tool is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail."

The rhetoric at the conference -- even as the DLC's leaders responded defensively to the absence of presidential candidates -- highlights a broader dilemma the party will have to navigate in 2008. Believing that too much accommodation by Democrats is responsible for the Iraq war and other Bush policies, activists and many candidates are in the mood to draw sharp lines.

At the same time, many candidates -- including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama -- have also argued that one way to end the Bush era is by turning away from the highly partisan, highly confrontational politics that they believe are Bush's signature.

Many other elected officials joined Schweitzer and Bredesen in urging pragmatism over ideological conflict, including Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Some politicians were blunt in acknowledging that they do not fully trust their own party's political instincts -- particularly when it comes to national security.

"Democrats are capable of grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. We've done that a few times," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.).


for the complete article

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5171.html