Sign This Petiton

The Republicans have really ticked me off, which is why I left the Republican Party. The Democrats, however, are doing their damnedest to make sure that I vote Republican in 2008. The supplemental appropriations bill is a prime example of this.

Yesterday, in response to President Bush's demand that Congress present him with a funding bill for the troops that doesn't make a political statement, Nancy Pelosi said, "There's new Congress in town. We accept your constitutional role. We want you to accept ours." Hey, Nancy, he accepts your constitutional role; accept his as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. If you want to end the war, exercise your constitutional role as holder of the purse-strings and end the funding.

And then there was Senate Majority Leader Reid's comment that the Senate and House bills "offer a responsible strategy that reflects what the American people asked for in November — redeploying our troops out of Iraq and refocusing our resources to more effectively fight the war on terror." Harry, I hate to break this to you, but I think that you may have a distorted impression of your "mandate" from November. Most of the Americans that I know do not want retreat and defeat in Iraq. A big part of the reason that your party is in power, and in power by a slim margin, is because many disgruntled Republicans stayed home on election day, and because many disgruntled independents voted against Republicans, not for Democrats.

The sad fact is that the Democrats are playing politics with the funding for our troops. When the House couldn't get the votes they needed, they stacked the bill with enough pork to buy those votes. The Democrats, who campaigned on bringing back fiscal responsibility, have thrown that promise right out the window so that they can appease their anti-war wing.

Republicans are fighting back a bit on this one, surprisingly enough. While I haven't been a supporter of John McCain, he has a petition up at his website that I can get behind (H/T Power Line). It states that surrender is not an option, and its main points are that:

The supplemental appropriations bill that passed the Senate on March 27, calling for a date certain withdrawal from Iraq, is nothing more than a guaranteed date of surrender.

It is a refusal to acknowledge the dire consequences of failure, in terms of the stability in the Middle East and the resulting impact on the security of all Americans, whether home or abroad.

Democrats have chosen the politically expedient position of failure rather than putting aside the small politics of the day in the interest of our nation and the values upon which this nation rests.

We the undersigned remain steadfast in our support for the war against terrorism and mindful of the consequences of failure in Iraq, even if Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid refuse to acknowledge those consequences.

We support our troops and the new strategy and believe it should be given the opportunity to succeed. American national security interests are directly at stake. Success or failure in Iraq is the transcendent issue for our foreign policy and our national security. People say they want to defeat the terrorists, but if we withdraw from Iraq prematurely, it will be the terrorists' greatest triumph.

If we leave Iraq based on an artificial timetable, al Qaeda will be free to plan, train for and conduct operations from Iraq just as they did in Afghanistan before 9/11.

I agree with it. I signed it.

You should sign it, too.

USMC 9971 OUT