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High Time for Political Courage E. Ralph Hostetter Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., now an announced candidate for the presidency of the United States, in a speech before the Democrat National Committee on Feb. 2, in Washington, D.C., announced his compulsion to speak out against the Iraq war. He was prompted by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, referring to the Vietnam war, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal." Candidate John Edwards has broken his silence with the words, "This is the time for political courage." As more and more formerly war-committed left liberal Democrats distance themselves from the war in Iraq, their previous moral courage of conviction seems to have vanished. In chameleon-like fashion, as they change direction some 180 degrees, the term political courage has been substituted. Simply put, the moral courage to engage in and win a war is now interpreted as political courage to quit and lose a war. Winning wars is not in the vernacular of the liberal left. This point has been endorsed repeatedly by prominent Democrat politician and former mayor of New York, Ed Koch. He states: "Liberals have no stomach for a fight." The public can expect a barrage of "political courage" statements as spokesmen of the left line up to make their politically courageous statements about quitting the war. John Edwards' remarks about poltical courage were not lost on another presidential candidate at the same meeting, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Story Continues Below
In a move to upstage candidate Edwards, candidate Clinton proclaimed: "You have to have 60 votes [in the U.S. Senate] to cap troops, to limit funding, to do anything. If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will!" Now that's political courage of the first order! No doubt a way to do this will be revealed to "President Clinton" as she walks on water all the way up to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It will most certainly take an act of God for one person to unilaterally end a war. In war there are always at least two adversaries. Stopping the opposing adversary from continuing the war, on your own soil, perhaps, would no doubt require another war. Wars are ended with either side thoroughly defeating the other, as in the case of World War II when the United States soundly defeated Nazi Germany, Italy, and the Empire of Japan, or by a truce which concludes hostilities, as between North Korea and the Republic of South Korean and the United Nations, whose troops were commanded by the United States. Unilaterally leaving the battlefield in the face of the enemy can't be simply explained away as "It's not our war." And most certainly it cannot be described as political courage. Debate is now raging in the U.S. Senate over a vote on a resolution introduced by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., calling for a non-binding resolution that disagrees with President Bush's troop surge policy in Iraq, thus sending the commander in chief an extraordinary rebuke in a time of war. The Warner-Levin resolution has failed to gain 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, to date. While this resolution is non-binding and therefore meaningless, its implications are terribly dangerous at this time. All this far left defeatism is not without its downside including the eventual destruction of confidence at home. And far worse it harms the morale of our troops fighting the real battles overseas. America's enemies must be reveling at the self-destruction of the U.S. image in the eyes of the world and the aid and comfort it is giving to the radical Muslim jihad. The old Vietnam syndrome is being welcomed back. U.S. soldiers are reporting abuse on the streets of San Francisco and in cities in the state of Washington. Military recruiters are being attacked on college campuses across the nation. At least one college has banned recruiting on its grounds. While colleges face loss of federal funding for non-support of recruiting, student attacks may well drive recruiters off the campus. And in so long as colleges do not make non-recruiting official policy they could still receive federal aid. Effectively there would be no recruiting on college campuses. The present anti-war activities and rhetoric of the far left leadership in Congress may well encourage the return of both the city and campus riots of the 1960s. Beginning seriously as a "hippie movement" in San Francisco in the mid-60s with the flower children of Haight-Ashbury and continuing with the Watts riots in Los Angeles, other riots, bombings and burning of American cities spread across the nation. In 1968, the national political conventions of both parties in Chicago were seriously disrupted by riots surrounding the convention headquarters. A group identified as the infamous "Chicago Seven" were responsible. The Woodstock gathering in New York State in 1969 followed and signaled the beginning of the disruptive counter culture movement in America. Campus riots ceased after the killing of four students at Kent State by members of the Ohio National Guard. Many of the dissidents from the 1960s era are now in government. Two made it to the White House and one of those, now U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, wishes to return in 2009. E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist. He welcomes comments by e-mail sent to eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
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