California Conservative

While the media is focused on the non-binding resolution, John Murtha is surreptitiously crafting legislation that will restrict the President’s ability to wage war. The dirty little secret is that it’s an underhanded way for the House Democrats to micromanage the war into a defeat. Expect this strategy to utterly backfire. Here’s how Rush sees it:

This is their strategery. This is their investment in defeat. This is because they, as I have reminded you countless times here, my friends, cannot allow a victory to take place. They don’t have the guts to end the war because of their fear the public would think that they’re not supporting the troops. So now they’re going to go around the backside, do an end run and a slow bleed by eliminating the number of troops available for rotation duty in Iraq, forcing the president to pull everybody out in that manner, and they’re going to have a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to support this, in the midst of a surge which is designed to rout the insurgency out of Baghdad and bring stability to it.

Don’t expect the Senate to debate this legislation. They’ll treat this like it’s more radioactive than Chernobyl’s nuclear facility right after the meltdown. Another contributing factor to this is that Hillary doesn’t want anything to do with any legislation that would force her to make a decision on Iraq policy, especially considering how bad she’d look against Rudy Giuliani’s steadfastness.

Meanwhile, this Guardian article might give Democrats more than a little heartburn:

Senior commanders of the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been spirited away to Iran to avoid being targeted in the new security push in Baghdad, a high-level Iraqi official told the Guardian yesterday. On the day the Iraqi government formally launched its crackdown on insurgents and amid disputed claims about the whereabouts of Mr Sadr, the official said the Mahdi army leadership had withdrawn across the border into Iran to regroup and retrain.
“Over the last three weeks, they [Iran] have taken away from Baghdad the first and second-tier military leaders of the Mahdi army,” he said. The aim of the Iranians was to “prevent the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Shia militias” in the Iraqi capital, one of the chief aims of the US-backed security drive. “The strategy is to lie low until the storm passes, and then let them return and fill the vacuum,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Tehran authorities were “playing a waiting game” until the commanders could return to Baghdad and resume their activities. “All indications are that Moqtada is in Iran, but that is not really the point,” he added.

While Pelosi and Murtha try to secretly undermine the war effort, Iran is showing the world that President Bush’s surge isn’t something that they want to deal with. If they didn’t think that it would be successful, they wouldn’t have spirited al-Sadr and his militia into Tehran. It’s being reported that Democrats are planning a big ad buy on this issue. Here’s what the Politico is reporting:

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

The RNC should wait for this debate to end and the ads to start running before making their own multi-million dollar ad buy. I’d then recommend that the advertisement have the Defeatocrats’ debating their resolution, then showing the headlines of Sadr fleeing Iraq before the big offensive hits.

For instance, I’d open with a caption of Nancy Pelosi’s opening statement, followed by the Guardian’s headline. I’d show Murtha’s statements about undercutting the President next, followed by the headlines showing that sectarian fighting decreased rapidly. I’d definitely include this caption from Tim Walz’s first speech:

How can this Congress stand on the sidelines when the President has been told by his generals, by an independent commission created by the old Republican Congress, by the American people, and by both Democrats and Republicans in the new Congress that this plan will not work?

If Democrats are going to run ads in GOP districts that they think are their best bets at pickups, then we should do the same. I can’t think of many Democrats who are more vulnerable than Tim Walz right now. If the Defeatocrats try pushing this issue, then this is the perfect time to push back. This is a fight that we’re loaded for bear on. This is a fight where the headlines now favor the GOP.

I’d run the GOP ads in Heath Shuler’s district, Nick Lampson’s district and Tim Mahoney’s district. That’s just for starters. I’d follow that ad buy up with ads against Tim Murphy in Pennsylvania and Zach Space in Ohio. They’ll wish they’d never picked this fight. Finally, I’d run ads against Murtha, too. Show them what a walking disaster he’s become.

Technorati Tags: Antiwar Activists, Defeatocrats, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Tim Walz, Election 2008, Hillary, Iraq War, President Bush, Rudy Giuliani

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 1:05 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, Hillary, Iran, Iraq, Military, Pelosi, Terrorism, W. 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.