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.