Last Thursday, Mitt Romney announced that he would suspend his campaign for the Republican nomination for president at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. Romney took a parting jab at the Democratic candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He said, “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” Gov. Romney clearly invoked the right-wing fallacy invented by Karl Rove and championed by President Bush that the Democrats cannot to be trusted with the safe guarding of the Republic and its citizenry. This rhetoric will most likely be ratcheted up as November draws near.
The charge that Democrats will be unable to defend the country or will “surrender to terror” is categorically false. Senator Clinton and Obama have both pledged to institute all recommendations of the 9/11 commission. In January 2007, a Democratic controlled Congress passed bi-partisan legislation that implemented some of the recommendations of the commission. The law mandated among other things the inspection of all cargo entering the U.S. The recommendations were originally made in 2004, during Pres. Bush’s first administration, and in December 2005 the administration and a Republican controlled congress were issued a report card by the 9/11 commissioners which consisted of 5 F’s, 12 D’s, 9 C’s, and 2 incompletes. In 2006, the commissioners reported that the grades had not improved.
It is true that both Democratic candidates wish to begin withdrawing American Forces from Iraq within their first year in office. Obama and Clinton wish to end the failed policy of President Bush and redeploy American military forces to Afghanistan to combat the resurgent Taliban. A withdrawal from Iraq does not constitute “a surrender to terror”. Iraq is embroiled in ethnic strife between warring factions of Sunni, Shitte, and Kurds sects. Recently, the American military admitted that Al Qaeda in Iraq comprised less than ten percent of the resistance. Yet, the Bush administration insists on calling Iraq the main front in the “war on terror.”
As for the broader “war on terror,” Sen. Clinton has pledged to “order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region [Middle East],” and Senator Obama has repeatedly stated that if he possessed actionable intelligence of Osama Bin Laden’s location in the tribal regions of Pakistan and Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, would not act than Obama would, hardly the words of defeatists and appeasers to terrorism.
President Bush’s conduct of the “War on Terror” has produced the following results: suicide bombings have increased in Afghanistan and the Taliban has reemerged as a force in the country as a result of the diversionary war in Iraq. The pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, the man who did attack us on 9/11, was outsourced to the Pakistani government. After seven years, Bin Laden remains at large. According to the National Intelligence Estimate, Al Qaeda has regained much of its strength and is now stronger than it was before 9/11. I feel safer already.
As Election Day approaches, the country needs a substantive debate on national security, but one which does not devolve into fear mongering or petty accusations of appeasement and surrender.
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