COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

That was the message a Marine commander in the field asked Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) to pass on to Rep. Murtha, who put forward a resolution demanding that the Iraq deployment be immediately terminated, and the troops withdrawn as soon as practicable.

Jean Schmidt was immediately booed by the Democrats. But they weren't really booing her. They were booing, by proxy, a committed Marine commander in the field, who has made the only remark appropriate to suggestions that we give up the fight now:



As the New York Times relates:

Democrats booed in protest and shouted Ms. Schmidt down in her attack on Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam combat veteran and one of the House's most respected members on military matters. They caused the House to come to an abrupt standstill, and moments later, Representative Harold Ford, Democrat of Tennessee, charged across the chamber's center aisle to the Republican side screaming that Ms. Schmidt's attack had been unwarranted.

"You guys are pathetic!" yelled Representative Martin Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts. "Pathetic."

No. Calls for surrender are pathetic. The Marine commander in the field gets it exactly right. Rep. Ford and Rep. Meehan are simply blaming the messenger. What Representative Schmidt said was merely this Marine commander expressing the sense of the troops in the field, who have already had their vote, are reenlisting in droves, and carrying the fight to the enemy on their second and third rotations in Iraq.


Napoleon said that the "moral is to the physical as three is to one." By "moral," Napoleon meant courage - the will to keep up the fight. No one in Britain was screaming "quagmire" in 1940. Because Britain in 1940 was led by a lion, not a sheep.

Turns out even the "most well respected Democrats on military matters" turn out to be sheep, too, when the going gets tough.

I cannot express how dismayed I was to hear Representative Murtha's defeatist talk just now, with American and Iraqi forces actually ON THE OFFENSIVE!!! Can you imagine? That's like a Congressman calling for a cessation of hostilities just as Omar Bradley was closing the Fulda Gap! That's like the Russians retreating before Army Group B in the last days of Stalingrad. That's like Lincoln losing his nerve and pulling Grant out as he laid seige to Petersburg in 1865.

American and Iraqi forces have the strategic and tactical offensive now. And as this flash presentation by Bill Roggio shows, it's an operation which holds a great deal of promise. It's the mujies who are holed up in bunkers and crawling among sheep to escape the offensive. It's the mujies who are losing maneuver space to a rapidly developing Iraqi army, which grows stronger and smarter every day. It's the mujies who are having their ability to disrupt elections rolled up and reduced to a few scattered acts of sabatoge. It's the mujies who are losing support in Iraq and throughout the broader Arab world. It's the mujies who are reduced to battling one another in the streets of Ramadi. It's the mujies who are seeing their own elements approach U.S. forces seeking a separate piece.

Representative Murtha's call for surrender now is pathetic, and a breath of fresh air, offering hope to our enemies. And defeated commanders like Zarqawi will seek hope from wherever they can get it.

Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee made a whole war strategy of simply trying to outlast the Yankee electorate, and make it to the 1864 presidential elections. What the Democrats have done - on the record, and officially now, rather than on the cover of "The Nation," where it doesn't count - is give Bin Ladin and Zarqawi a realistic strategic option: Avoid decisive engagement, and continue to bleed the U.S. in Iraq until Democrats in Congress award them an unambiguous victory, and force the American military - victorious on the battlefield - to turn tail and slink away as if we were a bunch of Spaniards or something.

Murtha gave hope and succor to the enemy in a very real sense.

It's one thing to call for withdrawal if your troops are outnumbered and outgunned, and they simply do not have the combat power to provide even for their own point blank defense. But to call for withdrawal even as your soldiers and Marines are committed - COMMITTED - in offensive operations is shameful. And as far as I'm concerned, Murtha undid everything he ever accomplished in a 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Yes, Marines drive me up the wall sometimes. But I love them like brothers, and I've never heard of one who's been mentally and morally beaten. Until now.

Murtha's turned into the kind of Marine who would have surrendered at Chosin. Except Murtha's surrendering from an air-conditioned office in Washington, if you can believe that If Chesty Puller - a real warrior - were alive today, he'd slap his ass silly, throw him back on the line, and then deployed steadier troops behind him with orders to shoot his sorry ass if he breaks and runs again.

Representative Schmidt finally apologized for her remarks, and asked for unanimous consent that her remarks be withdrawn. But they were not her remarks to apologize for. She represents a constituency, and if this Marine commander were part of her constituency, she should not be apologetic about honestly and faithfully representing his views on the floor of the House. She should have stuck to her guns. Let the Marine's remarks be a part of the official record:

"Cowards cut and run. Marines never do."

Splash, out

Jason