Proletariat Blog

The American people want to finish the job in Iraq, but please don’t tell Democrats or the left.

Finishing the job is not merely a slogan, or wishful thinking, or even delusional disregard for reality, it is possible. And it is morally the right thing to do, both for our own security and for the welfare and security of the human beings who live in Iraq, in the middle east, and the world.

A recent poll tells us that the American people understand this. We are a nation that, on the whole, seeks the good for ourselves and the good for others.

9. I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.

Totally Agree 57%
Totally Disagree 41%
Strongly Agree 34%
Somewhat Agree 23%
Somewhat Disagree 13%
Strongly Disagree 28%
Don’t know 1%
Refuse to answer 1%

10. The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.

Totally Agree 57%
Totally Disagree 41%
Strongly Agree 31%
Somewhat Agree 26%
Somewhat Disagree 15%
Strongly Disagree 26%
Don’t know 1%
Refuse to answer * ~POS Lundy Iraq Survey

And Democrat’s position?

5. And, which one of the following would do most to hurt America’s reputation as a world power…

59% To pull our troops out of Iraq immediately …or…
35% To leave our troops in Iraq for as long as it takes to restore order
05% DON’T KNOW
02% REFUSED ~POS Lundy Iraq Survey

“Can’t install Democracy at the point of a gun?”

There’s a precedent, too, for the current Democrat position of surrender and defeat, or ‘peace’ if you prefer. GatewayPundit has a blog entry about Democrats during the Civil War, when Gen. George McClellan was nominated as their candidate for President on a platform of making ‘peace’ with the south at the price of the human rights and dignity of millions of people considered property.

But then who cares about slaves? If they wanted freedom they should have freed themselves, right? Just as the Iraqi’s could have freed themselves from Saddam. The U.S. doesn’t have, “the right to install democracy at the point of a gun,” as so many on the left have reiterated again and again.

From the 1864 Democratic Party Platform:

Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States. ~sewanee.edu

The price for the Confederacy to end hostilities would have been the enshrinement of slavery in the south as a legal institution in perpetuity. This is the price Democrats were willing to pay then. Today it is the Iraqi people who are the price which Democrats are apparently willing to pay for our surrender.

Now I know that those who support the Democratic position don’t think of it this way, but in reality Democrats give moral support to insurgents and Al Qaeda by characterizing Bush and the war as illigitimate, illegal, and impossible to win. This is true whether or not one believes it. Morale is a major component of war. When Democrats declare defeat and actively seek to give victory to the enemy that tends to give a hopeless cause hope.

With the conclusion of the war in 1865 the Peace Democrats were thoroughly discredited. Most Northerners believed, not without reason, that Peace Democrats had prolonged war by encouraging the South to continue fighting in the hope that the North would abandon the struggle.  ~civilwarhome.com

History does indeed repeat itself.