As Mark Twain Once Said, "“Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself”
For the past few years the Democrats in Congress have been attacking the President, describing him as an Emperor Nero type, fiddling around in Iraq as the rest of the middle east burns. Some, like Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Kucinich have even made trips to the region, big staged shows, propaganda meetings with the Terrorist Syrian Government. The sorry Democratic performance last week when General Petraeus testified in front of Congress, Ms. Clinton's "Suspension of disbelief" are just some examples of a Party that is too busy pontificating to worry about gathering facts so they can serve their nation. Look at Congressman Murtha a former military man who called US Soldiers accused of crimes, murderers. Now that most of these people have had the charges dropped the same former military man has not offered his apology for slandering those heroes that protect us every day. Why? Politics comes before patriotism.
The Democratic party's strategy since 9/11 has been to knock down policy. The belies the truth of what is going on in the region. Admittedly Some of it is not pretty. Israel was and is still in great danger, much of it has to do with its impotent Prime Minister as opposed to US foreign policy. Last Summer the US gave Israel full reign to wipe out Hezbollah---but the Kadima-led Government showed that it could do no more than trip over its own boxer shorts.
Along with Israel, Iraq and Syria remain very scary and like most of the problems in the region they trace way before President Bush.The war against terror did not create the Iran we have today....Jimmy Carter did (see Jimmy Carter's Legacy -Islamic Iran.) The remainder of the region shows progress. Even in Saudi Arabia, the world's leading financier of terror, clerics are beginning to speak out against terror:
The news is uneven but things are "a changing" the sky is not falling and its time for the Democratic Party to either lead with its own ideas, follow or GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!!!RIYADH, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A leading Saudi cleric has publicly denounced Osama bin Laden, a rare move among clerics in his native Saudi Arabia who have avoided direct criticism of the al Qaeda leader.
Salman al-Awdah issued his "open letter to Osama bin Laden" on his Web site this week (www.islamtoday.net) and read it out on a show he presents on Saudi-owned pan-Arab channel MBC.
Western and Arab critics of Saudi Arabia's hardline religious establishment have often criticised senior clerics for failing to unequivocally distance themselves from the mastermind of 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people.
"Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al Qaeda?" he said.
"The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, ... cannot make Muslims happy," he said, attacking al Qaeda's policy of revolt across the region.
"Who benefits from turning countries like Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia into places where fear spreads and no one can feel safe?"
Al-Awdah said al Qaeda's actions had led Western governments to rein in Muslim charity work around the world and Arab governments to jail thousands.
Doomsday Debunked
The Middle East is not falling down.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Something quite strange is happening: Despite all the bad news about the Middle East from the European and American media, things actually seem to be improving.
Iraq is getting better, and the opposition to the war is, in the current campaign cycle, is starting to shift away from the “war is lost” to something more like “stabilizing the government over time would not be worth the cumulative cost in American lives and treasure.”
All sober Democrats realize not only that the Moveon.org ad was a political disaster, but more importantly, that the Moveon.org/Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan/Hollywood ticking bombs actually scare off Americans, even as they demand more influence among the candidates.
In the Middle East, Bin Laden’s approval ratings are way down; polls show that the tactic of suicide bombing has suffered a similar fate of declining popularity. Bin Laden’s latest dyed-beard rant was pathetic, and ultimately only hurt him. For all the slurs about ”neocons” and “democratization” there, reform perseveres. The Lebanese government has not fallen, but instead has moved against terrorists. Hamas has isolated itself, and suicide bombing from the West Bank has fallen sharply; the two factions in Palestine are clarifying things in a positive way, and the anti-Hamas Palestinian “Authority” could, in theory, start to resemble mutatis mutandis the realignments taking place in Anbar.
Pakistan seems to be ever so gradually and carefully inching back to constitutional elections. The next generation in Libya wants change. Something happened in Syria as a result of that air strike, which emphasizes that the Syrian-Iranian-North Korea axis is real (in spite of all the visits by Dennis Kucinich and Nancy Pelosi), and makes one wonder not just about Korea and Iran, but perhaps even about the role of Saddam’s exiled technicians and/or their equipment in all this.
While the media talks only about the supposed impending strikes on Iran, the real news is that the theocracy is tottering as never before. The threat of ’constitutional governments nearby, in Afghanistan and Iraq, is intolerable for Iran. Syria and Iran, far from being the “real winners” from our “debacle” in Iraq, are actually more isolated than ever before, and are winning a new host of enemies, most notably in the Arab world.
If this were to continue, and I think there is a good chance it will, then the Democrats need to start once again readjusting, especially on Iraq. They might want to consider a tactic along the following lines: their initial votes for the removal of Iraq were sound and not to be apologized for; then their timely constant haranguing led to the necessary changes that came kicking and screaming; and now thanks to their vigilance there is some hope of resolution—combined with reminders that they always supported principled aid for Middle East reformers.
Geopolitically, the face of European leaders seem almost unrecognizable from its 2003 visage. Sarkozy and the French on Iran sound like the U.S. on Iraq in the late 1990s. Fear of Islamism has made the Swiss, Danish, and Dutch appear almost as 16th-century Europeans fearing the Ottomans. Even anti-American Greece, amid the forest fire outrage, reelected a conservative government.
Russian thuggery has scared its neighbors to the west. China has been terribly tainted by its manufacturing scandals and reminded the world that it is an autocratic state after all. China, India, Europe, and the U.S. are all getting tired of $80 per barrel of oil, and especially of the notion that those who work hard to produce are forced to fork over their profits to those who simply pump and cause mischief.
All in all, the world is in flux as never before, and the tired adjectives “disaster,” “fiasco,” and “blunder” just don’t describe the present state of global affairs, or the U.S. role in them.
In truth, the future dangers — aside, perhaps, from an Iranian bomb—are not so much political or military as fiscal: a protectionist EU that racks up surpluses with a strong Euro but has too high unemployment and entitlements for an aging population; skyrocketing energy prices; and alarming U.S. debt and trade imbalances.
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