The Redhunter

It's hard to know sometimes if Ted Kennedy is simply wrong or just plain nuts. Maybe he's in competition with Al Gore to see who can give the most bombastic, firebreathing, loudmouth speech. Given that Mr Gore has, thankfully, faded from the scene, we have to give the award to the hero of Chappaquiddick. Here's his latest;

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy yesterday said U.S. troops, instead of defeating the insurgency in Iraq, are spawning it, and he called for immediate withdrawal of 12,000 troops after this weekend's election and a complete pullout by early next year.

This sort of thinking is so wrongheaded it's hard to know where to begin. The folly of publishing a timetable so the insurgents would know all they had to do was lay low for awhile, the unfortunate fact that the legitimate Iraqi government cannot adequately defend itself yet, that the insurgents have utterly failed in their objectives while we are succeeding, seem to escape his notice.

Thankfully most other Democrats have retained their sanity and distanced themselves from him. Senator Biden has even called for more U.S. troops in Iraq.

Yes, I know, there is a half-way legitimate argument that the presence of our troops fuels the insurgency. But even this misses the point. What the terrorist insurgents are really fighting against is the establishment of a democracy, and a somewhat secular one at that, in the Middle East. They'd be fighing even if we were to leave tomorrow.

And one may say that the Iraqis need to be put on notice that they need to defend themselves. But this, too, misses the point. The Iraqis will be more motivated to defend themselves from the terrorists when they have something to defend, and that something will be a government that they themselves have elected.

Last week I asked if Brent Scowcroft and Zbignew Brzezinski would be available to pick up Iraqi boat people if we abandoned their cause. It's time to ask Ted Kennedy the same question.
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