...From The Jaws of Victory

On more than one occasion John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have all demonstrated they have no idea what’s going on in Iraq, the war on terror, and why they do not need to be in charge of our national security.

Their perilous concepts remind me of the two old boys from the movie “Jaws” who go out in a row boat and try to catch the shark off the end of a wooden dock. Didn’t they realize the danger of what they were doing long before they started out in the row boat?

The course they choose is fraught with harrow; it is not navigable. They incorrectly surmise that we can retreat back to the U.S. and be safe. They incorrectly plan to just focus all of our resources on catching Usama bin Laden, believing if we do, the war will be over and we will be safe. They have no plan to work with our allies in the war on terror, nor do they have any plans for gaining allies. They see none of the guaranteed repercussions in cutting and running from Iraq. They actually think we can get an evil terrorist like Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the negotiation table. What’s more appalling is that they would want to.

The Democratic plan for “real security” and John Kerry’s plan for retreating in Iraq show either a complete ignorance of the current situation or a choice to ignore the realities of terrorism because there is personal political power to be had. The latter may be true, as Michael Novak says of the postmodern left, “This deconstruction issues in nihilism, whose lightly disguised implication is that only the will to power matters.”

For all of us observing the throes of their struggle to regain power, they have nearly put the exclamation point on the list of hazards they and their liberal friends would bring if they regain political power and control over the military and national security. The risk to our nation if that happens is quite predictable.

Putting those in charge of security who have no idea how to provide security, nor the desire to rely upon those in the military who are actively fighting to provide it has proven time and again to be fatal. It is easy to see, through their words and actions, that they have not learned even the basic lessons of warfare and security. One can reasonably expect them to repeat the mistakes made during the last 60 years and ruinously steer us into the wreckage of some of history’s greatest failures.

Adolf Hitler often ignored the strategic and tactical advice given him by his field commanders. Decisions were his, not his generals’ to make. Thankfully for us, it was catastrophic to his defense of Normandy. But, like him, the liberals in Washington believe they know how to better fight a war than the general’s on the ground, in Iraq and Afghanistan, whom the President relies on.

Their posturing and feeble plans to control a war that in reality they know very little about remind me of President Johnson’s attempts to run the Vietnam War from Washington D.C.; even to the point of personally selecting and approving target lists. It didn’t work then and if John Kerry were allowed to have his try at it, it wouldn’t work for him, or anyone else, either. You would think that someone who fought in Vietnam would have remembered the painful lessons of how not to fight a war, as well as the consequences of a steady drumbeat of defeatism at home.

Saddam Hussein himself was such a tyrant, that all military decisions became his, regardless of advice from his military commanders. His poor plan for the defense of Iraq was met with applause, as everyone around him acquiesced to his desires regardless of the plan’s obvious flaws. We know how that turned out for him. It would turn out the same for us if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi had their way, choosing their own paths, ignoring the advice of those actually doing the fighting.

Or, we would simply have to settle for fighting the enemy here at home after implementing their concept for our defense.

If we can see the risk of their incompetence now, how could we ever consider letting them become the majority, or retake the White House where the damage to our country could come to fruition?

Even my two elementary age children with whom I watched the made for TV version of “Jaws” can sense this kind of danger long before it happens. When the two old men baited the hook and threw it out in the water, my young daughter asked, “Why are they still on the dock?” When the shark took the bait, the chain started peeling off the dock, and the one old man just sat there and watched it, my little boy wisely exclaimed “Not Good!”

And so it should go for us. We should see the danger from liberal political feeding frenzies every time they smell blood in the water.