Ever since John Murtha’s tear-filled press conference announcing his proposal for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Democrats have come out distancing themselves from his statement. The most noteworthy of these Democrats are Hillary, Barack Obama and Slow Joe Biden.

After reading Biden’s Washington Post op-ed; after reading Hillary’s and Obama’s comments, I’ve noticed a pattern: Distance yourself from Murtha’s statement, tell America that we can’t leave in such a hurried way AND then not talk about winning the war in Iraq.

It’s noteworthy that Obama, Biden and Hillary didn’t say a word about winning. They sounded reasonable. No questioning that. But they didn’t say a word about how we win in Iraq. They didn’t say what the next step is in the GWOT. The silence is deafening.

The reason why this is noteworthy is because it speaks volumes about how unseriously the Pacifist Party takes the GWOT. It speaks volumes about how devoid they are of ideas for protecting our homeland.

Remember what was said during the Democrats talked about the need for more first responders? The implication is that they wouldn’t do anything to prevent terrorist attacks but they’d supply all the first responders you’d need to clean up the mess that future terrorists would cause.

Remember John Kerry’s NYTimes Magazine interview last fall? In that interview, he said:

“We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. “As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

This analogy struck me as remarkable, if only because it seemed to throw down a big orange marker between Kerry’s philosophy and the president’s. Kerry, a former prosecutor, was suggesting that the war, if one could call it that, was, if not winnable, then at least controllable. If mobsters could be chased into the back rooms of seedy clubs, then so, too, could terrorists be sent scurrying for their lives into remote caves where they wouldn’t harm us.

“We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. That is the epitome of naivete, silliness and unseriousness. At the time, I said that the terrorist threat was never a nuisance; that it was just treated that way by the Clinton administration.

Based on both recent comments and comments made a year ago, Democrats keep saying the things that allow people to not take them seriously on national security.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

1. Lieberman Praises Progress in Iraq

   Dems won’t take any Republican’s word for it, so maybe they’ll take Senator Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) word for it. From the AP on Fox News: Sen. Joe Lieberman, fresh from a two-day visit to Iraq over the Thanksgiving holiday, said…

   Trackback by Donkey Stomp — November 29, 2005 @ 12:45 pm