Political Delusions

Grandpa "Okinawa" Murtha speaks again- and it seems that either his grip on reality is slipping badly or he's just plain lying. I really can't see any other explanation for comments like this-

"The minute we're gone, they'll [Iraqis] take care of Al Qaeda themselves."

Wow. Not only does he blame the presence of US troops in Iraq for AQ recruitment but he seems to believe that the only thing holding Iraq back from eradicating the terrorists in their midst are the US- who are in the process of training Iraq military and police forces. In Grandpa's magical fantasy world, AQ will be swiftly wiped out by Iraqis who seem to be hamstrung by the massive security force that the Americans and allies currently have in place to help them. He seems to be arguing that all that high-tech, highly professional military presence does is stop the Iraqis from fighting back themselves! Indeed, in Murtha's world AQ will "rue the day" that America pulls out of Iraq.

And all that time we'd been worrying about the wholesale slaughter of innocent people by bloodthirsty murderers with no compunctions about butchering women and children en masse.

And not only does Murtha present a thoroughly skewed vision of reality, he goes on to utterly demean the contribution of Australia to the war on terror. Unsurprisingly, the Australian PM is not amused by Barak Obama's suggestion that the US pull out all of its forces from Iraq in March 2008- making the entire war so far pointless. Murtha has this to say about Howard's condemnation of the "plan"-

"We appreciate the help of the Australians but they haven't done anything compared to US forces."

No, it doesn't matter that Australia has stood by the United States in the war on terror, fighting alongside them in Iraq and Afghanistan, because they haven't done "enough". Seems like the chickenhawk argument has been extended now- doesn't matter if you are in the fight, you now also have to fight enough for your opinion to count. And we all know that for certain Democrats, it will never be enough to satisfy them- if you disagree with them that is.

These delusions might make Murtha feel better about his surrender and appeasement of a gang of murderers, but they're certainly no basis for policy.