Harry Reid: Professional Menace

Professional poll-watcher and persistent president-slanderer Harry Reid, who also moonlights as Senate Majority Leader, is proving himself to be a menace and a brutish boor.

Reid joined House Speaker and fellow president-slanderer Nancy Pelosi in sending a letter to President Bush berating him for not listening to the will of the American people on Iraq. If Reid were truly interested in deferring to the will of the American people, he would tender his resignation today — not to mention get off the amnesty bandwagon.

Luckily for Reid, we have a republic, not a pure democracy with ongoing votes of confidence, so his job will be secure until the next election, despite his well-earned 19 percent approval rating and 45 percent disapproval rating, according to Rasmussen Reports.

Unlike the unambiguous polling data demonstrating his woeful unpopularity with Americans, Reid's basis for determining the will of the American people on Iraq is, at best, dubious. Reid (with Pelosi) wrote, "Last November, the American people overwhelmingly made clear their desire to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. Yet, at the start of this year, you announced a substantial escalation of our military presence in Iraq."

There are about as many opinions as to why Republicans lost majority control as there are political commentators, some believing the unpopularity of the war was the primary factor, and others believing it was Republican abandonment of conservative principles. Others believe the elections turned more on state than federal concerns.

But one thing is clear. Voters couldn't possibly have been affirming Democratic policy on Iraq, because there was no discernible Democratic policy on Iraq, other than to undercut all aspects of the Bush policy and offer no alternatives.

Of course, almost all voters wanted and still want to "bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end." But only the administration offered a plan based on that goal. Bush has always wanted to bring the war to a responsible end, in the sense of ending American involvement as soon as Iraqi security forces are capable of stabilizing and defending the Iraqi government.

Though Democrats have advocated cutting and running from Iraq — and thereby ending American involvement there — one would be hard-pressed to call such a proposal a likely route to a "responsible" ending for the war.

How would it be responsible to precipitately withdraw from Iraq when the likely consequences would be mayhem, anarchy, a bona fide civil war, the emboldening of our terrorist enemies, a new launching pad for international terrorism backed by Iraqi oil funds and a virtual guaranty that our fallen soldiers in Iraq will have died in vain?

To this day, Reid's Democrats have never explained how a near-immediate, telegraphed withdrawal would have the remotest chance of serving America's national interests and security. They've never explained how any of their misguided policies would do so.

Maybe that's one reason why, despite the manifest unpopularity of the war, Harry Reid and his cohorts enjoy lower approval ratings than the president. Though the public is understandably unsatisfied with the mostly media-driven perception that we have made no progress and done nothing constructive in Iraq, it has to know that Reid and company offer no sane alternatives and plenty of irrational and destructive ones. It's as if Reid is on a mission to reach new depths in his approval ratings. One sure-fire way he can succeed is to continue cheerleading for our enemy.

Just this week, Reid called outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace "incompetent," though he recently voted to confirm him. And in their letter to President Bush, Reid and Pelosi declared our ongoing troop surge in Iraq a failure.

Though U.S. Commander in Iraq David Petraeus and President Bush have repeatedly said the surge would take time to yield results, Reid and Pelosi insist on wearing their partisan hats in lieu of their American ones as they refuse to give the surge time, and our commanders and soldiers the benefit of the doubt — and their support.

"As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results," wrote Reid and Pelosi.

Now that's debatable, not to mention an irresponsibly premature assessment.

But "as many had foreseen," Reid and Pelosi continue to undermine the United States of America and make Osama bin Laden proud.

To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com. And to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.