I Can't Respect Them, Because....

It's really rather funny, but the laugh is on us. It must be true that politicians think we're stupid, and they are making it pretty clear. The Congressional candidates who stood for surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan did not get elected. Ned Lamont, the Democratic Senatorial candidate from Connecticutt, ran on the platform that the US should withdraw its troops immediately. He was defeated by Senator Joseph Leiberman, who believes that the US should not leave until the Iraqi government is capable of providing security for its own country.
Patricia Mckinney, the Georgia Congresswoman who ran not only on the platform of surrender, but on impeachment of the President, didn't even make it past the primaries. Congressman Murtha, who has made his pro-surrender stance clear, ran for House Majority Leader, and was voted down by his Congressional peers in favor of Congressman Hoyer, who is against immediate withdrawal.
Now Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House elect, along with New York Congressman Charles Rangel, seem to be in denial that Abu Ayyou al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq has recently claimed to have 16,000 armed troops in that country. They keep speaking of insurgents, without mentioning that there is a sworn enemy of the non-Muslim world with an active fighting force in Iraq. Pelosi, Rangel and others must be hoping that either we didn't hear or that we forgot about al-Masri's statements. They think we're stupid.
Nobody is saying "stay the course," in the sense that we keep doing what we have been doing. We all know that a change in tactics is necessary in Iraq in order for us to be able to withdraw from that country without surrendering to al Qaeda. Most Americans, over seventy percent in some national polls, know what a disaster it would be to leave an unstable Iraq behind. We know that another country in which al Qaeda could gain strength and develop weapons would lead to an even more dangerous war upon our own shores. We know that a failed government in Iraq would leave that country as a deadly battlefield for other countries in the Middle East. We know that anything we do that looks like surrender to the enemy will only strengthen the propaganda value and the incentive of that enemy. The leadership-elect of the new Congressional majority sees the last election as a mandate to withdraw immediately from Iraq--they are either ignoring the information that most of us know, or they think we're stupid.
General Abezaid, the commander of US forces in Iraq has called for more troops, but not to try to fight the insurgents and terrorist forces in that country, but to step up the training of the Iraqi forces. This is a good idea, if we provide the Iraqi security forces with more equipment and better weapons as well, and would hasten our departure from Iraq, without surrender. But there doesn't seem to be any dialogue along these lines among those who will constitute the new leadership in Congress. Their elitist attitude leads them to believe that they know more about military operations than the officers who are conducting the operations do. They think we're stupid.