It's Every Coward For Him/Herself

From Investors Business Daily:

When in history have we seen the major media and a major party attack our war efforts with such veracity? Oh yeah, Vietnam; and the end result was the death of several hundred thousand innocent people and an extension of the cold war by at least 10 years. If the USSR had not been so emboldened by our cowardice, they would never have invaded Afghanistan. While this ultimately led to their undoing, it was a back door victory with huge costs in human capital and the birth of Bin Laden. It is time to start sending these people home and replace them with people who will put the interest of their constituents first.

Click the word LINK to see the actual voting results:

Posted 11/16/2005
War On Terror: Here we are in the middle of a great conflict that may well decide the course of our country and civilization. But you'd never know it by watching the United States Senate.
The Senate's vote to force the administration to report quarterly on its "progress" toward pulling out of Iraq will go down as one of the most ignominious examples of bipartisan cowardice in congressional history.

It was bad enough watching the GOP embrace the Democrats' plan to weaken the U.S. war effort in Iraq. What made it truly painful was realizing most Republicans did so only because they feared for their poll numbers and were worried about the 2006 elections .

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Majority Leader Bill Frist may have given them a vote to cover their political posteriors. In doing so, he also gave the anti-war caucus a major victory in its effort to surrender Iraq to the terrorists.

Some leadership. It would be hard to calculate a better way to demoralize our troops while giving aid, comfort and support to our terrorist enemy than by setting a "timetable" for withdrawal, or by making those fighting the war report every three months on "progress" toward that goal.

As a matter of truth in advertising, maybe the Senate's resolution should instead have been called the "Support for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Act of 2005." It was that bad.

That Democrats would vote for such a thing is no surprise. As a party, they have a history of hypocrisy and incompetence in foreign policy. Just look at the votes of Sens. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in the tally above. Both were early and ardent supporters of the Iraq war when polls showed broad public support. Now, with polls looking a bit dicey, they've changed their minds.

Such behavior is the source, by the way, of the now-infamous phrase, "We support the troops, but . . ." Has anything more vacuous emerged from Congress and the far left in the past two years?

No one voting "aye" on either of the resolutions that came before the Senate Tuesday, Republican or Democrat, can say he or she supports the troops. Quite the contrary.

By showing a lack of resolve, weakness, and by letting the terrorists know they can sit back and wait for us to leave, they put American soldiers' lives in even greater danger. And all for what, so a handful of quaking congressmen don't lose their precious Senate seats next year? We hope they're proud.

The only ones who can be proud are the 15 who voted "no" on both proposals. They include 13 Republicans and two Democrats. You can find them above. We hope they're all rewarded for their courage and principle when election time comes around.

That Republicans in control of Congress could hand such a major victory to the minority speaks volumes for their leadership. That they also seem ready to cut and run from Iraq says even more about their lack of character and backbone.

What's truly sad is that Iraq is now on the verge of major success. From one of the most brutal dictatorships on Earth just three years ago, it now has a constitution, elections, a burgeoning civil society and, most important, a future.

A month from now, Iraqis will go back to the polls to hold a national election. But can they do so in confidence, knowing the U.S. might walk away just as their democracy begins to blossom?
We've lost 2,080 American heroes, men and women who voluntarily went to fight a war they believed in, one that they felt would make their country and the world safer from terrorism. They did it for the most uncynical of reasons, for patriotism, for America.

Those who remain in Iraq deserve our unwavering support, something that was sadly lacking this week in the U.S. Senate.