"No enemy to the left" used to be the motto of socialists and progressives in political struggles at home and abroad. For evidence of how deeply the Left mentality has now permeated American politics, look at the implication of "No enemy, period" in Iraq War statements this week from Colorado's delegation in Congress. As quoted in a Rocky Mountain News two-page spread on July 11 (linked here, scroll to bottom of main Salazar story), seven of our nine Congressmen and Senators had not of a word of acknowledgment that the United States faces a determined Islamofascist enemy in Iraq. To read their statements, one would think we're in the fifth year of armed conflict just in pursuit of some illusion, like a fighter shadow-boxing with himself.
Neither Sen. Ken Salazar (D) nor Sen. Wayne Allard (R) refers at all to the forces seeking to drive us out of the region and avowing to eventually destroy us as a nation. Not only House Democrats Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, and John Salazar, but also House Republicans Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave, are similarly silent about the existence of any imaginable enemy in their statements about what war policy to pursue and why.
Only Rep. Doug Lamborn (R) and Rep. Mark Udall (D) make any reference to those eager to defeat, humiliate, and gravely weaken our country in this conflict -- and Udall alone (perhaps with an eye on centrist positioning as he runs for Senate next year) mentions Al Qaeda by name. Lamborn merely mentions the encouragement "terrorists around the world" would gain from a US defeat, which is correct but far too oblique. Both of them also omitted, as did the others, a word about America's arch-enemy Iran.
President Bush has for years failed in his leadership responsibility to name our jihadist enemy accurately -- even in this week's commendably strong statements he confined himself to unspecified warnings about their "ideology." But most of Colorado's DC delegation (with the two honorable exceptions I named) has now done far worse by leading constituents to believe there's no one in particular trying to hurt us at all.
In fairness to the Silent Seven who are criticized here, it's possible the apparent omissions were a matter of editorial judgment at the Rocky, not an actual failure on the members' part to address this critical point. I doubt it, though. Rather it looks to me as if John Edwardsism in the Democratic Party and Ron Paulism in the Republican Party are taking their toll, which can only make Dr. Zawahiri, Sheik bin Laden, and President Ahmadinejad smile.