California Conservative

Minutes ago, the House defeated H. Res 571 by a vote of 403-3. Six Democrats voted present. No matter. A page has been turned today. A tide was stemmed yesterday.

I’ll bet that Jack Murtha didn’t know that he’d unite and invigorate the GOP with his calls for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq but that’s exactly what he accomplished.

This weekend’s headlines will be dominated by tonight’s vote in the House that says that we aren’t in the business of cutting and running from our responsibilities to Iraq and in Iraq. This weekend’s buzz will be all about Jack Murtha’s attempt to pull us away from our responsibilities in Iraq and how soundly his attempted retreat failed.

A byproduct of Murtha’s attempted retreat is the effective silencing of the anti-war argument, even though I’m certain that the anti-war crowd won’t stay silent long.

Another byproduct of this vote and debate is that the debate isn’t about whether to push for the quick return of troops but rather on accomplishing the mission in Iraq. That alone makes this an important and notable turning point in the Global War on Terror.

Jack Murtha’s reading all the letters from parents and loved ones of soldiers injured, blinded or badly disfigured sounded an awful lot like his rationale for abandoning the mission in Iraq. Jack Murtha said that “It’s easy to sit in this hall and send other people’s kids off to war.” That’s nonsense. I’ve watched the House and Senate debate the use of force several times, starting with the Gulf War debate. Those senators and congressmen didn’t look like it was an easy thing to do. Far from it. It looked like the Senate or House floor was the last place they wanted to be. It looked like the debating on whether to send young men and women into harm’s way was the last thing they wanted to be debating.

It also sounded like an awful policy. How will the world’s other nations trust us if and when military force is required again? How will another nation ruled by another tyrant trust us when we say that we want to liberate them from their oppression?

In the end, Rep. Murtha’s appeal to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq only agitated the troops and reunited the GOP while temporarily emboldening the terrorists. Thankfully, that emboldening period is now over.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Iraq, Middle East, Patriotism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.