Class Versus Ass

Class:

The Choice on Iraq
"I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next."

BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
Opinion Journal
Monday, February 26, 2007

...the fact is that we are in a different place in Iraq today from even just a month ago--with a new strategy, a new commander, and more troops on the ground. We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.

Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.
...
Gen. Petraeus says he will be able to see whether progress is occurring by the end of the summer, so let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until then. Let us come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security: authorizing an increase in the size of the Army and Marines, funding the equipment and protection our troops need, monitoring progress on the ground in Iraq with oversight hearings, investigating contract procedures, and guaranteeing Iraq war veterans the first-class treatment and care they deserve when they come home.
We are at a critical moment in Iraq--at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.

Ass:

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)
Meet the PressFebruary 25, 2007

SEN. LEVIN: ...Most of us do not want to cut funding for our troops ....because that resolution would lose, the president would then use the defeat of a cut-the-funding resolution as a way of supporting his policy. So we would be playing right into the hands of the president and his policy makers by having a losing vote on funding. So it’s the wrong thing to do, and it also would strengthen the president’s hand when we don’t want to do that. We want to change the president’s course. He is on a course that is leading to defeat. The president’s course is getting us in deeper and deeper militarily. It is not working. We want to change that course. We don’t, don’t want to do anything which would strengthen that course.
...
MR. RUSSERT: Aren’t you tying the hands of the commander in chief?

SEN. LEVIN: ... But, of course, we’re trying to tie the hands of the president and his policy. We’re trying to change the policy. And if someone wants to call that tying the hands instead of changing the policy, yeah,

Levin insists that the President's policy will lead us to a "defeat." Are we back to defining the meaning of words like "is" or "defeat?" Can he really believe the American people would be so stupid as to see a chaotic withdrawal forced by Democrats as anything other than a defeat?

What an ASS!