From Thursday’s Omega Letter, a Christian subscription newsletter:

“Bread and Circuses”

The Senate followed the lead of the Congress and narrowly passed legislation that would, if it survived a presidential veto, take control of the Iraq War out of the hands of the Commander-in-Chief and give it to the Congress.

The Senate’s bill orders some troops home right away, with the goal of ending combat missions by March 31, 2008.

The Senate’s bill identifies March 2008 as a goal - giving the president leeway to ignore the deadline. The House voted 218-212 to require all combat troops out as of Aug. 31, 2008.

The provision is attached to a $122 billion bill that would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is how that works. If the White House wants the money to keep fighting the war, then the president has to accept the withdrawal conditions attached to it. It is akin to the school yard principle; “it’s my ball, so we play according to my rules.”

Like the brat with the ball, if the President doesn’t let them set the rules for withdrawal by vetoing the bill, then the WHOLE bill dies, including the funding. Think of it! The United States military defeated on the battlefield — by the United States Congress! It is the equivalent to simply picking up the ball mid-game and taking it home.

Except that the ‘ball’ in this case is the expended sacrifices of American lives for a cause that, by a majority vote in both Houses, is unworthy of the cost. How many times has the Left thundered, “It’s not worth the cost!”?

What are they really saying? If the ’cause is not worth the cost’, then those who gave their lives FOR the ’cause’ died for nothing.

Is there another way of understanding that equation that perhaps I have missed? In the course of the past four years, some two million American soldiers have served tours in Iraq, some of them several times.

(One of them, S/Sgt Tom Kurek, USMC is staying at our rental in North Carolina while we are up in the Great White North and Tommy is coincidentally home on leave after completing this THIRD combat tour in Iraq. Semper fi, Marine!)

Sgt. Kurek has seen and done things he doesn’t talk about, even with old Marines like me or his dad, (a retired Marine captain). He’s seen the horrors of war up close and personal, suffered the loss of close friends, witnessed the inhumanity of battle — as well as the humanitarian efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

A declaration that purports to ’support the troops’ — while opposing the mission they endured so much to complete — is nothing short of a Congressional declaration that all the S/Sgt. Kurek suffered in his three tours, all the humanitarian reconstruction work accomplished along the way, all that his family endured while he was in harm’s way, all that anxiety, the separation . . . it was all for NOTHING!

It means leaving behind all the good works accomplished so far and turning the whole country of Iraq over to the tender mercies of the Islamic jihad. It means leaving our friends to the mercies of our enemies and breaking faith with every promise by every GI ever made to those Iraqis that helped in the fight against the terrorists.

The partisans in the House are prepared to sacrifice Sgt. Kurek’s service to the country as a casualty of their political war against George Bush. Now, multiply Sgt. Kurek — his friends and his family — times two million GI’s.

It may be a politically astute move for the Democrats, but it is morally bankrupting the country as a whole. Who wants to die for a morally bankrupt cause?

The Roman poet Juvenal coined a phrase in the latter part of the 1st century, “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses) to describe the ongoing decline of Roman democracy.

Roman politicians of his day kept their offices by bribing their constituents, at the expense of the public purse, until it eventually morally and financially bankrupted the mightiest empire the world had ever known.

With its politicians focused on pandering to their constituency and its treasury depleted, Rome’s mighty army crumbled, its borders shrank, and its democracy collapsed.

The cause of its decline and fall was so apparent to historians though the ages that no nation dared experiment with democracy for the next sixteen hundred years.

Assessment:

The Left is operating under the principle that the threat to America will vanish when George Bush is out of office and they are in control of the Executive branch. They are throwing all their energies into defeating the Republicans at the polls, even if it means forcing a US defeat on the battlefield to ‘expose’ the need for a change in government.

Let’s suppose, for a moment, that the moral bankrupts in control of both Houses were to win what the press is describing as a coming ‘battle between the Congress and the Bush administration’? Suppose that the administration had to withdraw the troops, either for lack of funding or a veto-proof Congressional mandate?

THEN what happens? If the Left has an answer to that question, they are keeping it a closely-guarded secret. The evidence suggests that not only do they NOT know what happens next, they really don’t care, provided they win their war against the Bush administration.

The war with Iraq didn’t start the war with al-Qaeda. Neither did George Bush. If Osama bin-Laden is to be believed, the war started when Bill Clinton withdrew US forces from Somalia in the face of the enemy.

That is when bin-Laden himself said he concluded America was a ‘paper tiger’ and declared jihad against the US.

And al-Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in Afghanistan were already in Iraq when we got there, including abu Musab al Zarqawi.

The Iraq war isn’t the cause of the tensions between the US and Iran, so withdrawing from Iraq won’t help us there. (However, maintaining a US military presence on either side of Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan sure would.)

The case for staying on in Iraq is obvious. The terrorists won’t go home when we withdraw. They will follow us there. When they weren’t fighting us in Iraq, they were fighting us in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. They aren’t fighting us OVER Iraq. They are fighting us IN Iraq.

Which is the more defensible tactical situation? Trained professional US military forces, armed, equipped and prepared for battle, against armed and dedicated Islamic terrorists hiding amongst the Iraqi population?

Or ordinary American men, women and children, unarmed, unprepared for battle, against armed and dedicated Islamic terrorists hiding amongst the American population? Is this hard?

Should the Left succeed in forcing an early withdrawal from Iraq, it will leave it wide-open to Iranian infiltration, turning Iraq into another Lebanon.

If the Left is successful, it will find itself facing a nuclear Iran in control of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But that evidently isn’t as important as defeating George Bush.

This is more than mere politics. It is politics without conscience. It is politics without honor. To the Left, any risk is acceptable, provided it brings Their Guy (or Girl, or whatever) to power in 2008.

No sacrifice (except their own) is too great, whether it be the personal sacrifices of our military forces, the sacrifice of America’s sworn promise to the Iraqis, or the future sacrifices a withdrawal in the face of the enemy would inevitably invite.

The Apostle Paul, specifically addressing the Church Age, described the ‘bread and circuses’ phase of the Western Christian democracies this way:

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2nd Timothy 3:1-5)

It reads like the US Presidential Campaign Strategy Handbook for 2008.

This article admittedly takes hits at the Democrats in Congress, but there are also many Republicans who are participating in the pork game.

Read especially the part before the Assessment, where he talks of the Roman democracy being destroyed precisely due to the same things our current and former congresses have done.

How much money can they tax us before we no longer have enough money to pay for the necessities of government, let alone the pork?

Think about it.