Investor's Business Daily, May 10th, 2007
Iraq: A delegation of wobbly Republicans visited the White House, reportedly to deliver tough talk to President Bush about Iraq. Too bad they're not tough enough to tell their constituents about what's at stake.
The big "revelation" out of Tuesday's meeting with 11 GOP congressmen -- a factoid that was supposed to stun first the president, then the public -- was Rep. Tom Davis' assertion that in a part of his suburban Washington congressional district the president's approval rating was a mere 5%.
"What's Plan B?" is what Davis of Virginia told reporters the congressmen asked the president and his aides. "We let them know that the status quo is not acceptable."
But in February, Davis voted against changing the status quo. He was one of only 17 Republicans who voted for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's resolution opposing the surge of more than 20,000 new troops in Iraq. The only other "Plan B" we can think of that Davis and his colleagues might be referring to is: retreat and defeat.
The media are portraying these bad news bearers as daring profiles in courage, a sort of political version of "Ocean's Eleven." But how much guts does it take to nag a president suffering low approval ratings, then grandstand afterward? Self-promotion is the real motivation, as they try to shield their political skins at the expense of national security.
If parts of Davis' district really are that overwhelmingly pro-surrender, it's something to be ashamed of. Maybe it's time he held a town hall meeting and fulfilled his unpleasant duty of explaining that the U.S. has nothing to gain from losing a war. It's not his own party's president he should be confronting, but the skeptics in his district. They need to know that an Iraq pullout would equal victory for al-Qaida and embolden it and other terrorist groups to bring jihad back to our shores.
Another member of the group, Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois, conveyed to the press how he bravely notified the president that "things have got to change, that we're going to hang with him until September, but we need an honest assessment in September and that people's patience is running very, very, very thin."
The same day the politics-first Republicans visited the White House, Capitol Hill was visited by someone warning that a September deadline would be catastrophic. Iraq National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie described his country as having reached "the last mile of a walk toward success," but added that if Congress forces a U.S. pullout, "I feel that we are going to lose everything."
Visiting both war supporters and war opponents alike, al-Rubaie promised passage of an oil distribution law by September, and provincial elections next year. Congress could help, he said, by pressuring various parliamentary factions.
The words of the British-educated neurologist and former spokesman for a Shiite political party seemed wasted as Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin set in stone that a pullout should begin in September. After Rubaie had pleaded with him to be patient, Levin told the New York Times that "I told him that is too long."
Clearly Democrats can taste the political fruits of a failed war blamed on a GOP president. But now Republicans are starting to join the feeding frenzy, placing politics before patriotism.
