House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who seems to be calling the Democratic policy shots on Iraq, is threatening to abort President Bush's new plan for Iraq - to be announced tomorrow night - by cutting congressional funding.
Bush reportedly plans to announce the dispatch of 20,000 added troops to Iraq, and to ask Congress for $100 billion in supplementary spending.
But Pelosi says her party is unlikely to fund a new infusion of soldiers: "The burden is on the president to justify any additional resources for a mission."
True enough. But how open is Pelosi's mind?
Is history to repeat on the Democrats' watch? And how typical of the party to threaten to cut the legs out from under the U.S. military effort.
It's what it did in Vietnam more than 30 years ago:
* First, the Democratic-controlled Congress voted to end all U.S. military activities there by a set deadline.
* Then it cut off all military funding to South Vietnam.
Emboldened by these moves, North Vietnam invaded the South; President Gerald Ford pleaded for an emergency infusion of military and humanitarian aid, but Democrats voted it down.
Weeks later, Saigon fell, the agony of the Boat People began - and Cambodia's Pol Pot, waiting in the wings, made his move.
Now Pelosi & Co. are flirting with a repeat of that kind of disaster. They maintain that the only avenue open to the United States in Iraq is a political solution - once that's reached, they claim, internal security will follow.
In fact, the truth is just the opposite. As Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) notes, "security is the precondition for political progress and economic development."
Will that guarantee peace? No. But as Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) added: "Our troops believe they can win, and that's important."
The Democrats are so busy running away from a war they initially approved that they're willing - even eager, perhaps - to facilitate an American defeat.
But a defeat in Iraq - whether via a funding cutoff or a precipitous withdrawal - would prove even more disastrous than the U.S. loss in Vietnam. It would embolden and strengthen the terrorists who are working so hard to force America out of Iraq, leaving a power vacuum for them to fill.
And that, warns Lieberman, "will lead to Iranian expansionism and, more significantly, the intimidation of the moderate forces in the region and a drop in confidence in the credibility and strength of the United States, not just in the Middle East, but throughout the world."
It took years for America to recover from its post-Vietnam syndrome. And the Democrats have had no national-security credibility since then, either.
Do they really want to go there again?
