The treason of the left

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 — One day after President Bush implored Congress to give his Iraq strategy a chance to succeed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution on Wednesday denouncing the plan to send more troops to Baghdad, setting up the most direct confrontation over the war since it began nearly four years ago.

Here is why conservatives question the patriotism of the anti-war crowd.

We are in a war against an enemy which cannot win on the battlefield, and knows it. They cannot win a war of attrition (that is they cannot kill so many of our people or destroy so much of our equipment that we become unable to continue fighting), and they know it. They cannot occupy any piece of territory which we desire to take from them, and they know it.

The only thing which gives them any hope of victory is the belief that they can outlast us. They believe that if they can continue the fight long enough that we will lose the will to continue. After all we lost the Vietnam war because we simply gave up. We ran from Beirut after suffering a handful of casualties. We ran from Somalia after TV news showed a few dead American soldiers. They believe that if they can just keep killing a few here and a few there that we will throw up our hands and surrender.

When the American public goes to the polls and votes in the party of surrender and defeat (whatever their true motives for doing so) they send a message to the enemy that their strategy is working. When the newly elected congress votes on resolutions which express no faith in American victory and no faith in the Commander-in-Chief the message is sent to the enemy that they are winning and only need to hold on for a little while longer.

Am I saying that any disagreement with the president or the conduct of the war is always treasonous? No. In WWII neither the German nor the Japanese conduct of the war nor their determination to hold out to the last possible minute would have been effected in the slightest way by anything that was said by any American political figure.

However in the particular situation which America finds itself in at the present the only thing keeping the enemy in the field is their faith in our lack of will. Anything which reinforces that faith on the part of the enemy gives aid and comfort to the enemy and that is, like it or not, the actual constitutional definition of treason.

It does not matter at all what the intentions of Joe Biden or Chuck Hagel are. It matters not one microscopic little bit if their motives are 100% pure and righteous and inspired by nothing but love of country and care for the troops. All that matters is that they have given the enemy the only thing that he needs to continue fighting -- HOPE.

If the Democrats and dissident Republicans genuinely want to help their nation achieve victory over its enemies and they genuinely believe that the current plan has no chance of victory and they have a better plan to defeat the enemy (not to cut and run) then they should go to the President in private and discuss it with him. I guarantee that if they come to George W Bush with a plausible plan for victory (rather than surrender) he will listen.

That they instead air their criticism in a public forum where they know full well that the enemy pays attention to and draws inspiration from indicates that their motives are not "pure" and they do not care about victory and their only motivation is to improve their domestic political situation.

What some people in congress (of both parties, but mainly Democrats) are doing today in this war is, on a moral level, EXACTLY THE SAME as if Republicans in the closing days of WWII had taken all the data from the Manhattan Project along with the actual atomic bombs and handed them over to the Japanese. Because the only thing which could have given Japan the victory in that war was overwhelmingly powerful weapons and the only thing which can give the Islamofascists victory in this war is our own irresolution.