Mehlman: Republicans will make history
In this Wall Street Journal OpEd RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman says Republicans will hold their majorities in Congress and win their fourth election in a row.
Why and how? One issue: national security:
This war began long before September 11, 2001. For a generation, the terrorists have attacked free nations, from the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich to the 444 days that American hostages were held in Iran; from the 1983 Beirut attacks to the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, Riyadh in 1995 and Khobar Towers in 1996; from the embassy attacks in 1998 to bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Too often, free nations responded weakly, or not at all, so the enemy grew emboldened. The result was 9/11.
Now we understand that we face a radical global movement of Islamic fascists, held together by a totalitarian ideology as deadly as the ones we faced in World War II or the Cold War. This movement ebbs and flows. Its adherents meet in cyberspace instead of buildings. They gather on blogs instead of barracks. A terrorist in Syria can recruit allies in the heart of Europe and a cell leader in Asia can activate an attack in the U.S., all without leaving their homes. That makes this enemy difficult to defeat. They constantly adapt — so we must as well.
That is why the choice we face on Nov. 7 is so critical. Democratic leaders are saying Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror, that we should be more focused on defending the homeland. But again and again, the Democrats have proposed weakening our defenses.
Like Senator David Vitter did yesterday in a conference call with bloggers, Mehlman rattles off the national security measures Democrats have consistently opposed: the Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, CIA interrogation techniques, terrorist finance tracking programs and then the big one — Iraq:
Even more dangerous is that Democrats truly seem to believe that Iraq is completely separate from the greater war on terror. Al Qaeda’s leaders are not confused about the importance of Iraq to their goal of global jihad. Osama bin Laden’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has said his plan is to use Iraq as a base to launch further attacks, with the goal of creating a new caliphate in the Middle East. He wants to turn Iraq into another Taliban-era Afghanistan, except one strategically located between Syria and Iran, and sitting on one of the world’s largest supplies of oil. Osama bin Laden himself said that the American withdrawal from Somalia emboldened his movement before 9/11. Imagine the victory celebrations among the terrorists if we were to retreat from Iraq. Yet this is exactly what Howard Dean and a majority of Democrats would have us do. In 46 days, we must ask ourselves, would surrendering Iraq to the enemy make us safer — or less safe?
Mehlman’s case is compelling, so compelling it almost makes this conservative forget how much taxpayer money this Republican congress has spent. There is no doubt that the Republican record on the GWOT is far and away better than the Democrat record (do they even have one? “No” is not a record). I just hope Republicans don’t skate by in the fall on this issue and then continue to ignore the fiscal conservatives in their ranks who have been trying to cut back the size and scope of the rapidly expanding federal government.