Webloggin » Murtha – Congressman Wrapped in Illusion

Representative John Murtha dropped an egg yesterday. He appeared on “Meet the Press” to present the illusion that he has a plan when it comes to Iraq. Unfortunately for him, as democrat plans go, it is more smoke than substance. The blogosphere is lit up with various tidbits and monikers for Rep. Murtha following this exchange with Tim Russert.

RUSSERT: Let’s listen and give you again a chance to respond to the White House.

(Videotape, Monday):

MR. ROVE: Congressman Murtha said, “Let’s redeploy them immediately to another country in the Middle East. Let’s get out of Iraq and go to another country.” My question is, what country would take us? What country would say after the United States cut and run from Iraq, what country in the Middle East would say, “Yeah. Paint a big target on our back and then you’ll cut and run on us.” What country would say that? What country would accept our troops?

(End videotape)

REP. MURTHA: There’s many countries understand the importance of stability in the Middle East. This is an international problem. We, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. China’s the second largest user. All these countries understand you need stability for the energy supply that’s available in the Middle East. So there’s many, many countries.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

MR. RUSSERT: But it’d be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it—you know, they—when I say Okinawa, I, I’m saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly. And—and—when they don’t know we’re coming. There’s no question about it. And, and where those airplanes won’t—came from I can’t tell you, but, but I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take very long for them to get in with cruise missiles or with, with fighter aircraft or, or attack aircraft, it doesn’t take any time at all. So we, we have done—this one particular operation, to say that that couldn’t have done, done—it was done from the outside, for heaven’s sakes.

Many people are now calling this Murtha’s Okinawa option, others are calling it his Somalia plan. Regardless, this sounds more like the delusions of a highly partisan politician who sold out his Marines for the sake of playing politics; and now he is caught in a mad “seat of your pants” rambling that is indicative of a person without a plan.

The surprise is that Murtha, like the rest of the Democrats, have had years to think about a plan. In fact none of what Murtha is saying is new. He used the words “It’s a flawed policy wrapped in illusion” in a press conference on November 17, 2005. That is the same day he refereed to Abu Ghraib as the “revolution at Abu Ghraib” and threw out the Solmalia/Okinawa option for all to chew on.

QUESTION: My other question: What do you mean exactly by a quick reaction force in the region?

MURTHA: Well, the Marines in Okinawa — remember in Somalia, we came back from Somalia and then we went back in. It only took us a couple days to take care of the Iraqi army, and now we’re not talking about an army.

What I’m talking about is a terrorist camp that may affect our national security or the security in the region, we can go back in. But not a civil war or something like that. That’s up to the Iraqis to settle that.

So I think the Marine force could be in there momentarily, within a couple days, within 48 hours they could be in there. And if the Kuwaitis would agree and they wanted to put a force in Kuwait, that would be a good place to have them; they could go right down the road.

Fast forward 8 months later and Rep. Murtha still can’t coherently state his Okinawa option!

Let me state it for you. Pull out of Iraq, leave the country to the terrorists while we sit back and watch the country dissolve into civil war from Okinawa. We can always go back in with a limited air strike, but we won’t, because it will be a civil war. So we will leave Iraq to the terrorists and talk about it at the United Nations. If we are lucky we could take bribes from the new regime in Iraq to make sure that nothing really gets done; everybody else does.

Murtha knows that our departure at this time would only result in massive chaos. It would not be relegated to some small terrorist camp. Who is he trying to kid?

The Murtha Meet the Press rambling confirms this. He reminds me of a child caught in a lie. The child rambles incoherently, sticking to the loosely weaved story that becomes tangled in a web of ridiculous justifications. It is a defense mechanism that kicks in when a child knows that getting caught in the lie is equally as damning as the act itself. Eventually the parent triangulates to the truth and the child gets punished.

Not so with politicians. There is no punishment until Election Day. They will say the stupidest things and continue on as if they never said it. Hopefully everyone will forget and it will just fade away with time. Thus never a lesson learned. The price is steep.

Murtha’s rambling is consistent with his party plan. Their solutions are nothing more than thinly veiled platitudinous gestures to the fringe daily kossacks. Words of little meaning except when it comes to demoralizing the troops and giving the terrorists hope.

What happens if we follow Murtha’s plan and terrorists take over Iraq? We know what happened in Vietnam. It took two years for the North to work their way across the South in a killing spree. Millions died.

But there is a difference in Iraq. A terrorist victory there is a victory for terrorism across the globe because the enemy is not based in that one region. It would become a symbol of evil vigilance. Just keep killing they would say, the American have no will to stick it out. They have Democrats in Congress.

Spirited Discussion on this topic at Protein Wisdom