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Jewish World Review Oct. 25, 2004 /10 Mar-Cheshvan 5765

David Horowitz

David Horowitz
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Counsels of cowardice and defeat

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | A political ad was placed in the New York Times by the radical organization MoveOn.org, a group that has provided a platform for attacks on the Bush Administration by Howard Dean, Al Gore and members of the Kerry-Edwards campaign. The ad was an open letter purportedly from college students and began: "President Bush Will You Call On Us To Die?"


This was not really criticism of the President's policy choices or of America's war to liberate Iraq, but rather a frontal attack on both. In addition to its blunt and unwarranted assertion that service to one's country was equivalent to a death sentence, it falsely insinuated that the President was planning a military draft, which would make the service as involuntary as …well …a death sentence would be. Finally, it demanded that the President provide "a plan to end the war," and did so without expressing the slightest concern about the war's outcome. In other words, in the midst of America's armed conflict with a terrifying enemy the MoveOn.org ad was an incitement to self-interest, cowardice and defeat. The ad ended with a parsing of John Kerry's famous question about Vietnam - a war he first abandoned and then turned against: "Most importantly, when will we know that the last of our friends has died?"


What has happened to the moral fiber of this country that a group as close to the center of American political life as MoveOn.org would counsel cowardice, selfishness and defeat in the midst of a war with an enemy as ruthless and determined as the terrorists in Iraq? The war in Iraq was authorized in congressional resolution by both political parties. It is a war to enforce a unanimous Security Council ultimatum, and sixteen ignored Security Council ultimatums before that. It is a war to depose one of the worst tyrants of the modern world, whose removal is a policy requested by two successive American presidents, again representing both political parties. It is a war in which every enemy of the United States is ranged on the other side. What has happened to the moral fiber of this country that an organization like MoveOn.org - along with many leaders of the Democratic Party -- should actively seek to sabotage this war by turning America's youth against it, and demanding a retreat from the field of battle without condition?

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The retreat from Vietnam and Cambodia that Mr. Kerry did so much to encourage thirty years ago had an unhappy ending that critics of this war seem eager to forget. That retreat resulted in the deaths of two-and-half million Indo-Chinese peasants whom the Communists slaughtered when they came to power. This is infamous bloodbath whose prospect John Kerry dismissed as a possibility when he debated Swift Boat vet John O'Neill on the Dick Cavett show. John Kerry proved wrong then. What if the proponents of retreat from Iraq prove wrong this time?


If the United States were to lose the battle for Iraq (and a retreat without condition would ensure that), there would be a similar bloodbath. Every Iraqi who has fought for their freedom, every ally of America in Iraq will be put to the sword by Zarqawi and his terrorist cohorts - many quite literally. The terrorist government of Iran, whose jihadists are now engaged in fighting our troops alongside the agents of Saddam Hussein will emerge from our retreat as the dominant force in a radicalized Middle East. Revenge against the crusaders will be high on its agenda.


It is time for us to take the counsels of doom in our midst seriously. The threat we face is not only external. American troops can army in the field of battle. What America cannot do is win the war on terror if the forces of selfishness and cowardice and defeatism divide us at home.

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JWR contributor David Horowitz is editor of Front Page Magazine and the author of several books, including, most recently, "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left" (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) To comment, please click here.


Up

06/28/03: Justifications: Where have all the Dems gone?
06/18/03: The Big Lie Campaign
12/26/03: Present From Progressives: Starvation
09/08/03: How to look at the war on terror
08/11/03: Total California Recall
08/05/03: Challenging the racist Dems in California
07/21/03: The Party of Sabotage
07/09/03: The Trouble with ‘Treason’
05/05/03: Taking On The Neo-Coms, Part II
05/01/03: Taking On The Neo-Coms
04/29/03: Everything the Left Said About the War Is Wrong (Including the Claim that It Was Right)
04/16/03: The Doctrine Pre-Emption, a Strategy Under Attack
04/14/03: The next screwing
04/08/03: As a former 'radical,' I see the threat of militant Islam on American campuses
04/03/03: The war refutes the opposition
03/31/03: Moment of Truth (for the anti-American Left)
03/24/03: The Second Front
03/17/03: The Fifth Column Left Declares War
02/18/03: The march to save Saddam
02/10/03: Secessionists against the war
01/21/03: They want to place America under siege
01/15/03: Another political lynching
12/31/02: As we look towards a future filled with the clouds of war
12/17/02: Trent Lott must go
09/04/02: The problem with America's colleges --- and the solution
08/26/02: Ted Koppel's Spin Zone: How Nightline Controls What You See
08/19/02: Reparations buffoons on the Washington Mall
07/30/02: The Destructive Romance of the Intellectuals
07/24/02: Port Huron and the War On Terror
07/08/02: Disturbing holiday thoughts
06/24/02: Know The Enemy (And What He Believes)
06/18/02: Missing diversity
06/06/02: Free the FBI: A plea from a former 'radical'
04/10/02: A Middle East history primer
03/12/02: Appreciating the Commander-in-Chief
02/14/02: Bill Clinton's State of the World
01/17/02: Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East
10/01/01: I know a thing or two about college protest --- and this time the students are dead wrong
09/06/01: Pardoned, but unforgiving
08/07/01: Social Security Reactionaries and Reformers
07/24/01: White, Blind, and Proud
07/11/01: Progressive Crime Wave
06/26/01: Issues that dare not speak their name
06/12/01: The 20th Anniversary of an American Killing Fields
05/23/01: The Triumph of 'Multicultural' Thugs
05/08/01: How Leftists Play the Race Card Against Conservatives – And Increase the Flow of Drugs to the Inner City At the Same Time
03/13/01: Provocative, and proud of it
03/06/01: Dubya's Tax Plan: Don't Feed the Beast
02/21/01: Lazy daze
02/13/01: V-day
02/05/01: You gotta have faith
01/23/01: The Democrat inquisition
01/09/01: Perfect mirror-images of what libs profess to fear
12/12/00: Party without a conscience
12/05/00: Al Gore has poisoned the body politic --- for generations to come
11/14/00: Al Gore is not fit
10/31/00: Party of fear, politics of hate
10/16/00: Dems are lucky to have Gore
09/19/00: A Miracle the Press Will Not Report
09/14/00: It’s the Character, Stupid!: Further Thoughts On “Why Gore Will Lose”
09/06/00: The Death of the Civil Rights Movement
08/22/00: Back to the Future
08/09/00: Bush will win
07/25/00: Conason Unleashed
07/12/00: Our nation's heritage is under attack in our classrooms, so why doesn't anybody care'
07/03/00: Hillary and "The Third Way": How America's First Lady of the Left Has Bamboozled Liberals and Conservatives Alike
06/27/00: AlGore's Missile-Defense Dodge
06/20/00: In the Enemy Camp
06/12/00: Feminism's Dirty Secret
05/18/00: Look who's leading the Virtue Squad in its crusade to purge the House of campaign finance excess
05/08/00: The Mind of the Left From an Amazon Perspective
05/01/00: America's Totalitarian Shame
04/19/00: Political child molesting
04/04/00: What Hillary won't 'fess up to --- and why
03/29/00: No reason To Glorify the Left's Legacy of Violence
03/27/00: Smoke and Mirrors
03/20/00: Deafening Silence
03/15/00: The Lead Investigator Strikes Back
03/08/00: Racial Killings & Gun Control
02/28/00: Primary Lessons
02/22/00: Racial Shakedowns
01/25/00: Intellectual Class War
01/03/00: A faith that ruined whole continents and destroyed a world of human lives
12/28/99: Brain Dead Till the End
12/14/99: Letter to the past
12/07/99: Why Republicans Lose
11/23/99: MLK is no doubt spinning in his grave
11/10/99: Finding the American Center
11/02/99: Reflections on The Road Taken and Not

© 2000, David Horowitz