Russ Feingold is everything George W. Bush is not. He is facile, articulate, quick on his feet, and deeply foolish. Appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, he said. Our number one moral responsibility is to protect the American people, to focus on those who attacked us on 9/11, to not be distracted into a situation where even the administration did not have Iraq as one of the 45 countries that was connected with al-Qaeda. Our number one responsibility is to protect the American people from being killed by terrorists. Iraq has very little to do with that at this point. Iraq is obviously the place where they’re training people, but the idea of standing up and keeping a military involvement forever in Iraq will actually weaken the American people’s ability to go after terrorists who, frankly, look like they’re taking over Somalia right now.
So Feingold acknowledges that Iraq is a training ground for terrorists — yet he insists that the Iraq operation is a distraction from the main job of fighting terrorists. Clearly it isn’t great that Somalia has been seized by a band of Islamists. But is Feingold suggesting that Somalia is a more pressing security priority for the United States than the outcome in Iraq? This is breathtaking.
Russert reminded Feingold that he himself had declared before the Iraq War that Saddam had weapons capable of “unimaginable destructiveness.” Feingold stands by those assertions (well, he had just said that any presidential candidate would have to be perceived as straightforward and honest by the American people), but explains that though he believed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, he did not think he had the means to deliver them.
Really? How about handing them to terrorists in a suitcase?
Here is where Democrats like Feingold lose all respect points. Even if, for the sake of argument, you believed that going into Iraq was a mistake, is it not plain that a precipitous withdrawal would be a disaster? Even if it were true (and it isn’t) that Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda before we invaded Iraq, they are obviously there now and we are struggling with them over the future of a key Arab country. Democrats are so weak they don’t even recognize when they are cringing. But our enemies do.
