Op-Ed: Democratic Politicians Still Want To Surrender

Democratic leaders are loath to acknowledge they’ve backed off, but lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, as well as congressional aides, say Democrats are trying to find a way to provide continued troop funding while searching for some compromises

The far, far left base, not to be mistaken with the moderate left, are definitely not going to be happy with the Democratic politicians, but the fear of the ramifications of not funding our troops and the amount of civilians layoffs this will cause, and in the face of the overwhelming success being seen in Iraq for the last few months, the political leadership has had to rethink their own strategies of retreat in defeat, cut and run, surrender, whatever you want to call their "strategy".

Each day lately, Democrats inch closer to giving President Bush more money for the war in Iraq without any serious mandates for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Democratic leaders are loath to acknowledge they’ve backed off, but lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, as well as congressional aides, say Democrats are trying to find a way to provide continued troop funding while searching for some compromises that show they’re still intent on challenging the president on the war.

Instead of arbitrary withdrawal dates, they will add things like anti-torture rules and benchmarks for Iraq political reconciliation, which their own politicians, [Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA)] have already stated clearly is a hypocritical notion since our own congress cannot even manage political reconciliation. Politico goes on to report that one senior Democratic lawmaker, there’s a growing discomfort among pro-defense Democrats about linking a $50 billion Iraq measure to troop withdrawal. The Democratic leadership is loathe to publicly admit the change in strategy because it breaks yet more of the promises that they have been making consistently, and breaking just as consistently, to the anti-war base of their party, but they are not left with much choice. Had the surge and the counterinsurgency tactics implemented by General Petraeus not worked as surprisingly well as they have, the Democrats doubling down and betting everything on Americas failure would have been a winning strategy for them, but things didn't work out the way they were hoping and although they have denied all progress and success for the most part, portions of their own party politicians have recently returned from Iraq declaring amazing progress and successes, which put the leadership on the wrong side of victory. I have said before, betting against America is never a winning strategy and now the Democratic leadership is caught between a rock and hard place but they have put themselves in that position, so I find I have little sympathy for them. As a side note: Don Surber, who writes a column for the Charleston Daily Mail, points out that as of the latest public opinion polls, the war is twice as popular than Congress is. To keep up with the news that the MSM avoids at all cost regarding the reconstruction of Iraq, you can go to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website and see for yourself the work being done. Congress still wants to surrender, only now it is their own strategy they want to surrender and not Americas National Security. That is an improvement.