Amateur Megalomania

John Murtha has lost his mind.

American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

…

“[The United States] became the target when Abu Ghraib came along,” Murtha said.

Was Murtha paying attention prior to April, 2004 when the Abu Graib story broke? It certainly wasn’t all cute and cuddly over there prior to then. But even beyond that, hasn’t it been pretty obvious to everyone that America has been the target of radical Islam for a long time now?

But not to John Murtha. What would John do?

MR. RUSSERT: You expect a significant American troop withdrawal by the midterm elections?

REP. MURTHA: I expect a significant troop withdrawal. They’re trying to find a way to do this. The trouble is it keeps getting worse and they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. You just have—at some point you got to reassess it like Reagan did in, in Beirut, like, like Clinton did in Somalia, you just have to say, “OK, it’s time to change direction.”

Good idea, Mr. Murtha! Let’s do Somalia all over again. It had a profound impact on Osama Bin Laden.

“After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians,” bin Laden said. “The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda … about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.”

Yeah, that will show the Islamic world that we are prepared to fight them. Murtha goes on to respond to a Karl Rove assertion that ‘cutting and running’ would not exactly inspire other Middle Eastern countries to accept a US presence.

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.

Why is anyone taking this man seriously? Can the anti-war left summon a coherent argument against the War on Terror? Between Kerry, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan and now John Murtha, I’m not hearing much that would inspire much confidence in a Democratically led war.

Come on people, your bench has to be deeper than this.

Filed under: The War