Identifying the Real Terrorists
Commentary by Greg Lewis / NewMediaJournal.US
December 12, 2007
Attacks on our troops in Iraq are
down by more than three quarters in just the past three months. I'm speaking
of attacks by Democrats, of course. Indeed, so good is the news out of
Iraq regarding the success of General Petraeus's troop surge that the
terrorists are beginning to turn tail and run. Again, I'm speaking of
the Democrats.
Many knowledgeable commentators are reporting that the
news is so good that the terrorist strategy has all but been negated.
Our troops have succeeded against overwhelming Democrat terrorist tactics
that had apparently produced a stalemate similar to the one Dems engineered
35 years ago in Vietnam.
The Democrat strategy to insure that the United States
would once again capitulate in a military engagement against a ruthless
and brutally dictatorial Middle Eastern terrorist enemy not dissimilar
to the one we engaged in Vietnam really began in the 1990s. Then-President
Bill Clinton failed to acknowledge Osama bin Laden's declaration of war
on the United States, but his failure to take the threat that Islamist
terrorists represented seriously went much further than simply ignoring
bin Laden's words.
The stealth terrorist campaign by Democrats against the
U.S. military arguably began when Bill Clinton took the presidential oath
of office. From that day forward, Clinton proceeded to gut the U.S. military
capability, virtually insuring that if our country engaged an enemy militarily
its troop and equipment stock would be found wanting. Here's what happened.
During the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, a steady military
buildup occurred. By the time Reagan left office, for instance, America
had 18 active military divisions ready for combat. By 2000, when Clinton
left office, that number was down to 10.
Reagan, in order to make up for the military writedown
that occurred after we left Vietnam, began a military procurement project
that would help to ready America for war. Under Reagan, the military purchased
an average of 78 military helicopters per year. Under Clinton, that number
fell to seven per year. Reagan saw to the procurement of some 1650 fighter
jets during his two terms, the Clinton administration bought only about
240, less than 25% of what Reagan's military advisors deemed necessary.
And the number of combat-ready ships in our Navy fell from more than 550
during the Reagan and Bush I presidencies to less than half that number
by the time Clinton was finished cleaning military house.
It's no wonder Clinton didn't feel like engaging bin Laden
after the latter's declaration of war against us. First, he was hell-bent
on emasculating our military, and second, he wasn't sure whose side he
was on in the first place. Despite a classic liberal self-loathing that
extended to the country over which he presided, Clinton couldn't quite
bring himself to surrender outright to bin Laden, so he simply chose to
ignore him...and to pass up more than one chance to kill bin Laden outright,
as the made-for-TV movie "The Path to 9/11," now suppressed
for the remainder of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, showed.
The gutting of the U.S. military capability by President
Clinton was nothing less than stealth terrorism against America. Like
other leftists, Clinton was unable to see beyond his own ideology and
understand what was going on in the world around him. If Clinton's gutting
of the military did nothing else, it certainly paved the way for fellow
stealth terrorists Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to whine that "our
military is stretched too thin." Indeed, this is one of the complaints
that lies at the foundation of the Democrat political strategy of withdrawal
from Iraq: Dems insist that we don't have enough money to fund the troops,
even though the number of troops we need to fund is only about half of
what it should be, thanks, again, to President Clinton, a veritable poster-boy
for military ineptitude and misunderstanding, to put the best face on
it.
This tactic didn't begin and end with Clinton's military
budget slashing, however. Always looking for a way to undercut the interests
of the United States, Dems constantly engineer an outcome, then go on
the attack. The latest waterboarding brouhaha is a perfect example. In
2002, key members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, were briefed very
specifically on the tactics that were planned for use in questioning enemy
combatants. In fact, there were more than 30 such briefings before the
tactic was approved and put into practice.
The fact that Dems applauded the use of waterboarding
five years ago during briefings didn't, however, prevent Count Teddy,
blood dripping from his fangs, from going on the offensive and declaring
the CIA criminal for destroying tapes that recorded harsh interrogations.
One guesses La Pelosi must have been aware that one of the leaders of
the Democrat Undead was going to launch such an attack. Like her Democrat
forbears, though, Pelosi kept her mouth shut, hoping that, as had been
done before, her and her party's complicity in bringing about the very
situation being criticized, would be swept under the rug by willing and
complicit media.
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