What is victory in Iraq?

To the progressives, victory is “stopping the violence”. Thus, each new car bombing only confirms at we are “failing” in Iraq, and that it is a “quagmire”. I saw a woman on CSPAN desperately crying “We must end it! We must end it!” It was clear she just couldn’t bear it! This Progressive secularist attitude is understandable. If you a moral relativist and don’t believe in a “hereafter”, and if your only vision for the future is just to live a comfortable life, a couple of things follow:

1- There is no such thing as good or evil. (And this is why President Bush talking about the “axis of evil” sticks in the progressive craw!)

2- Absolutely NOTHING is worth dying for! Therefore the only worthy strategy in dealing with any threat is appeasement: to try to buy time so any dire predictions “won’t happen in my lifetime!” Thus going after terrorists is disturbing and upsetting the “peace”!

Another feature of the progressive point of view is the preface that “we are the most powerful country in the world”. As far as America’s position is concerned, the progressives are locked in a 1945 time warp. They have forgotten the maxims that “Freedom is only a generation from being lost” and that “Each generation has the obligation to secure freedom and pass it to the next generation”. They prefer to ride on the coattails of “The Greatest Generation” 60 years ago and turn away from today’s difficult responsibilities! Defending freedom would interfere with living the good life: the Lexus, the season tickets to the plays, vacations in Europe. They prefer to sort wine bottles for recycling and go to Global Warming symposia.

To the patriots who wish to defend democracy and Western civilization, victory is simply preventing medieval radical Islam from taking over Iraq. The violence may last 50 years! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think through the disaster were we to lose our will and hand victory to Al Qaeda and their sponsors. But the Progressives refuse to see the danger in Radical Islam as did the British elite in the late 1930’s who refused to see the danger in Hitler.

The German invasion of Poland in 1939 thoroughly discredited the British elite and brought Churchill to power. But the attack on 9-11, which should have had a similar effect here, hasn’t. The strong denial and the unwillingness to face reality have transformed 9-11 into some one time natural disaster like hurricane Katrina in the minds of most Progressives. The “evil” as far as the Progressives are concerned is President Bush “persecuting innocent Muslims!” Quite an Alice in Wonderland view! One can only speculate how the Progressives will persist in explaining away the continuing Islamist violence which only grows in ferocity, frequency and ever closer.

Hear Bishop of Pakistan from 7/8 radio

Bishop Anthony Lobo, Catholic prelate for the diocese of Islamabad, Pakistan, and Rawalpindi, India, talked with me and Captain David Petteys during his visit to Denver early this month. To listen to the interview from our July 8 edition of Backbone Radio, click here. For press coverage of Lobo's visit, click here. Earlier background on the situation in his diocese is here.

No enemy, no problem, congressmen imply

"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.

Freedom and peace, inverted, become weapons against us

Commentators say "The war has divided our nation." This is not really true. The Marxist Progressives and the Islamics have striven to divide our nation on purpose with years of concerted propaganda and pressure on elected officials to render "politically incorrect" the defense of our nation and the interests of its people. The Marxist Progressives and the Islamics seek to exploit our tradition of free speech for potentially ending this 231-year experiment in freedom and prosperity! If they are successful, we could be the first nation on earth to vote itself into slavery! In thinking of Free Speech: when the American Intifada begins, and thousands are killed each year, publicity will be essential for the recruitment of suicide bombers. Like Al Jazeera, will CBS, ABC and NBC and the NY Times cooperate fully with the American Intifada by dutifully broadcasting the suicide killer’s video last will and testaments? Will they publish daily the dozens of portraits in their newspapers? This will be vital in giving these nobodies their 5 minutes of fame. Will our society have enough sense to stop such broadcasts? Will we finally shut down the most virulent Jihad websites -- some of the worst of which are said to be located stateside on servers in Dallas, Texas? Or will the ACLU’s free speech arguments prevail over common sense?

There is precedent: sporting event cameramen are instructed NOT to follow streakers who might leap onto a playing field or a basketball court. They do this to discourage copy cats. How much rather suicide killers when the lives of innocent men, women and children are at stake?

I ran across a very simple and elegant prayer today: "Graciously protect our nation from evil that it may prosper in your Shalom. Help us overcome evil today through the power of good."

Notice the "Shalom" instead of "Peace." The Marxist Progressives and Islamics have hijacked the word Peace so thoroughly that it now means "abandoning our responsibilities, to suffer defeat, humiliation, death and destruction at the hands of our enemies!" It means literally the peace of the graveyard. Shalom is much deeper and wider! It means living securely, free of conflict, internally and externally! Without a doubt, to achieve Shalom, to overcome evil and to even survive... this nation will have to reassess and redefine its absolutist definition of "free speech" before we are left defenseless!

Progressive nightmare, Part 3

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) If there were a catastrophic attack on the United States tomorrow, many patriots would hope this would finally unite the country in the face of a radical Islamist enemy who have publicly announced their intention to destroy us. Unfortunately, I no longer believe this to be the case.

Headlines in the Progressive media would proclaim "Bush fails to defend America!” Nothing would be said as to who perpetrated the attack (as little was said of the identities of recently apprehended plotters targeting Fort Dix and JFK Airport), lest we “offend Muslims”.

The Democratic Congress would call for investigations and resignations of the officials “responsible”, with minimal concern, again, about who actually perpetrated the attack (this too was foreshadowed by Obama's limp-wristed reply to such a question at a debate this spring). No mention would be allowed in the hearings of the Congressional tying of the hands of Intelligence operatives, of the restrictions on the Patriot Act and its monitoring and other defensive measures that could only increase the odds of an attack being successful.

If anything, such an attack might even lead Congress to demand that the President apologize to the Islamics and that Islam be granted a “special status” in the United States.