Troop Surge Working

The troop surge in Iraq is working, and the increasing willingness of tribal leaders and the Iraqi people to work with coalition forces is the proof.

It should also be pointed out that this little stunt by Iran, kidnapping British sailors, suggests a kind of desperation, a dangerous gambit designed to derail the surge by panicking the feint-hearted. It didn`t work.

Yet the Democrats refuse to give this surge a chance, and are demanding a timetable for withdrawal, one the President rightly threatens to veto. Their reasons are purely to benefit themselves politically, and the Antenoran Party, and those who were elected by voters as ``conservative alternatives`` to Republicans, have set themselves on a course where they must not only hope for America`s defeat but must demand it. Their entire agenda is based on a Bush/Republican defeat in Iraq, and they are casually willing to lose American lives to accomplish this.

I am not saying that everyone who opposes the War in Iraq and the general War on Terror is a bad egg. Naive, maybe, but they can be principled. Most Libertarians, for instance, follow a principled policy of Pacifism, a belief that we have no right conducting a foreign war. While I disagree with this, they have been consistent to their beliefs in opposing Iraq, and they do this out of love for country, so they are patriots. Ditto some of the liberal Democrats, and even some of the far left, who are doing what they believe is best for the United States. But the current Democrat Party does not fall, by and large, into this category; this is about nothing more than the success of their party and, in many cases, a reliving of a misspent youth. These are the types populating Dante`s Antenora; traitors to kin and country. Whether this is out of a desire for personal gain or some long-range strategy is immaterial, since in both cases they have to betray the security of their neighbors for something which benefits them.

Every ``symbolic vote``, every time they badmouth the Commander in Chief, every time they say the war is unwinnable, they embolden the enemy and chip another piece out from under our troops. It does not matter if they think they are somehow ``supporting our troops`` by trying to bring them home; they are in the middle of shooting war, and war is as much psychological as it is physical. The Democrats are conducted the most effective psy-ops ever seen on our own troops for the enemy, and that, in my view, borders on treason. At the very least they show themselves so irresponsible that they shouldn`t be running a school board or the local sanitation department, yet here they are-Pelosi is second in line for the Presidency, and in control of both houses of Congress. It is truly frightening that such sophomores could rise to the top of the machinery of power.

We are reaching a critical juncture in history, and the dangers to America are rising on a linear curve. More than ever, we need statesmen, mature people with the humility to subsume their personal ambitions to the common good. Unfortunately, we have a collection of adolescents instead.

Fortunately, George W. Bush is no adolescent.