During an interview yesterday morning with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Senator McCain was asked if he knew when troops might start coming home from Iraq. Senator McCain began his response this way, “No, but that’s not too important.” Democrats pounced and attacked Senator McCain as insensitive to the concerns of military families and out of touch with the American people. Senator John Kerry was all over the news last night leading the charge and probably got more press than anytime since losing the 2004 election.
My good friend Bill Bennett reacted to this outrageous charge by writing, “Bring it on!” He added, “…do the Democrats really want to try to lecture family McCain on how they should feel about returning home and being in the battlefield? …Do they really want to tell a man who turned down early release and spent five and a half years in a POW camp that he is insensitive to the desires of returning home? … Do they really want to tell a man whose own son has signed up and fought in Iraq about the importance of coming back home?”
But that wasn’t all Senator McCain said in his interview with Matt Lauer. Here’s the rest of his statement, which the Left and Big Media ignored:
“What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are [able to come home].
“But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama’s proposal would have done. I’m proud of them. And they’re doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it’s fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn’t realize that.”
Victory, my friends, is what is most important, and Senator McCain understands that. The liberals who are, as Senator Lieberman said, “emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat,” just don’t get it. It is incomprehensible to me that any potential commander-in-chief should desire America’s humiliation as Barack Obama evidently does. But here’s why it is so important that we win this war and why it is so important that a defeatist like Obama not win this election.
Yesterday, the Washington Times reported that the number of homicide bombings in Iraq is down by more than 50%. The drop in homicide bombings is partly attributed to the success of the surge, which “has made it more difficult for Al Qaeda in Iraq to facilitate the secret movement of foreigners from the Syrian border to safe houses where they are trained and assigned a target.”
An equally encouraging explanation is that many intelligence officials believe that Al Qaeda’s call for mass murder may be losing its appeal among Muslim youths throughout the Middle East, especially as the United States and its allies are seen prevailing in the war. This is a very crucial point, my friends.
After a series of strikes and attacks against American interests during the 1990s, Western weakness convinced Osama bin Laden that America was soft and unwilling to fight. Our humiliation in Somalia rallied radical Islamists to bin Laden’s jihadist cause. Referring to America’s hasty retreat after the barbaric attack in Mogadishu, Osama bin Laden said, “…our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. After a few blows, they ran in defeat…”
Bin Laden would later say in a video gloating about the 9/11 attacks, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” After Somalia, after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, after the bombing of the Khobar Towers, after the attack on the USS Cole and after 9/11, jihadists saw America as the “weak horse,” and bin Laden was convinced that if only he could just “bloody our nose” a bit in Iraq, America would again run like “a paper tiger after a few blows.”
But in spite of the non-stop negative press coverage and the defeatism of Harry “We lost” Reid and Barack “I give up” Obama, America didn’t run. Thanks to John McCain’s leadership in demanding a new course of action, President Bush sent in reinforcements, and America fought back. America’s commitment to be the “strong horse” changed hearts and minds in Iraq. Seeing that America would not run, Sunnis in Al Anbar province turned against Al Qaeda. As America succeeds, jihad appears to be losing its luster.
The lesson here is clear: weakness and appeasement invite aggression. Our resolve to defeat the evil of Islamofascism will make us safer. Sadly, Barack Obama and too many liberals on Capitol Hill just don’t get it. And, in my opinion, that ought to immediately disqualify them from leadership. The defense of this country is the most fundamental obligation of our government. This political action committee will do everything possible to get these defeatists out of Washington, D.C., by electing more conservatives who will defend our country and our values!
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