"Dems STILL Do Not Get It!" Act I, Scene 58

I have a sinking feeling that I shall be writing this same article every few weeks. Republicans outrageously attack Democrats, and all Democrats do is cry foul, sounding like whining, wheezing, moaning, groaning children asking "Daddy" to give them some respect, demanding they retract implications that they are unpatriotic. Instead, they should be shoving those cowardly attacks right back down Repulbican throats until they choke. And then, they should repeat, repeat, repeat.

Latest case in point. Dick Cheney on international soil claims that following Democrats' prescriptions on Iraq is just what Osama bin Landen ordered. Per the AP: "Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday harshly criticized Democrats' attempts to thwart President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, saying their approach would validate the al-Qaida strategy.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back that Cheney was questioning critics' patriotism." "I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president's remarks," Pelosi said. She said she tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.... Cheney said in Tokyo: "The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people ... try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit".

Democrats are not going to deserve to win the White House until they develop, in their own guts, the convictions that they try to convey in their policy statements. Think of this situation: the Dems are begging the only person in the history of the Air National Guard to relinquish his pilot's license voluntarily, who checked the "No" Box when asked if he would serve overseas and who decided on his own which military regulations he would follow, to muzzle a man who, when called to defend his country, asserted he had "other priorities", from attacking their patriotism! It is hard to know which is more pathetic, the Cheney attack or the Democrats' response.

Bush, Cheney and their lockstep Republicans have done exactly what al-Qaeda wants, directing a mindless, expensive, and pointless military response against someone other than them, miring our troops in the quicksand called Iraq. When Muhammed Ali fought larger opponents, he lay against the ropes until they punched themselves out. He called the strategy the "rope-a-dope".

Instead of reinforcing Cheney's scurrilous remarks by begging their dismissal, Democrats should have attacked his policy in Iraq that emboldens al-Qaeda: weakened our military, recruited more terrorists than we kill (source: Memo from the Greatest Defense Secretary in US--or world, or interplanetary?---History), strengthened Iranian influence in the region, refused to send 600 Army Rangers to kill Osama bin Laden when we had him surrounded in Tora Bora, and allowed al-Qaeda to re-establish itself in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. Every time we add troops in Iraq, we diminish the effort against the real enemy.

Every time al-Qaeda proclaims the centrality of the war in Iraq to the world struggle, they achieve their aim when the US responds by adding more troops, leaving fewer troops to concentrate on al-Qaeda. Cheney gets snookered, and leads the US to the same fate as Muhammed Ali's larger opponents who fell for the rope-a-dope.

Instead of playing the Bush/Cheney game, will Democrats ever have enough conviction to shove their idiotic statements back down their throats?