Democrats vote for cut and run

A Democrat-dominated Congress has voted to cut and run from Iraq, passing "legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops to begin within 120 days, and to be completed by April 1, 2008." Just what the killers ordered: a timetable for the serious butchery to commence, just as it did when the US pulled out of Saigon.

As always there are lessons both to avoid and to emulate from history, and a lesson too from this capitulation:

• Subduing and modifying Japan and putting it on a path to peace and prosperity after WWII: Six years and the destruction of Shintoism as an ethical code.
• Reconstructing Germany and setting it on a path to peace and prosperity after WWII: Seven years, and the destruction of Nazism as an ideology.
• Reconstructing Iraq (including hunting down and killing the killers and those who supply them) and setting Iraq on a path to peace and prosperity: Too difficult.

Setting both Germany and Japan on the path to peace and prosperity -- making havens of peace and prosperity at the heart of Europe and at the door to Asia, and putting down the twin bacilli of Shinto nationalism and German national socialism -- this was selfishly important to anyone who valued a peaceful world ravaged by decades of strife and war, and was done by people who knew what they were doing. Just as selfishly important now would be a haven of secular peace in the ravaged Middle East.

Now I grant you that the knowledge of how to set up a country from the rubble has clearly been lost (just another symptom of the modern-day philosophical collapse), and German and Japanese reconstruction did not have sworn enemies in the country next door supplying arms, money and training to brainwashed killers (that this continues so brazenly is another symptom of the timidity brought to the war against Islamic totalitarianism), but surely there should be recognition that setting up a post-war country ravaged by tribal and religious conflict takes years, not months, and that making a haven in the Middle East for peace and prosperity is of selfish importance to everyone in the west.

But apparently giving your enemies a timetable so they know when to really lay into the killing is more important to Democrats.