Rangel's Intent

The most telling thing about Democrats in the upcoming election is that Charlie Rangel is back at the defunding game. If Democrats take control in November, the first thing on his agenda is to defund the military effort in Iraq - forget cut and run, how about gut and filet.

The Manhattan Democrat is in line to take over as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which drafts the government's general spending outlines - and says he'd use that position to cut off funding for the war.

"You've got to be able to pay for the war, don't you?" Rangel told the The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.

So, considering that most of the country does not support a cut and walk, cut and run, or other immediate redeployment from Iraq, Rangel wants to defund the war effort in Iraq.

Even if you don't agree that the Iraq invasion was the right thing to do, the Iraq theater of operations is crucial to the terrorists operating there. A US redeployment from the region would be a huge victory for them, and showcases an unwillingness of the US to stay the course against an extremist ideology that seeks to force all nonbelieves to submit to its own version of Islam.

I've long argued that the Iraq campaign was crucial on many different levels, and the NIE does little to change that view. Islamic terrorists have been fighting against the US for decades and now that we're fighting back on their home turf, they've got even more reason to be angry. They are losing everywhere that we're fighting them. Changing the political dynamics in Iraq will have long lasting and far reaching repercussions politically, economically, and theologically. And the elimination of Saddam's state sponsoring of terrorism is a good part of that.

That, and it puts US forces on both sides of another country whose state sponsorship of terrorism is well established - Iran. And they're not shy about sending their proxy armies - Hizbullah and various jihadis into Iraq or against Israel to further their own agenda.

However, if Rangel has his way, the US would not be able to carry on the fight in Iraq, and we'd have fewer options to fight around the world as our current and future potential allies would see that we simply don't have the staying power to carry out a long conflict against an intractible foe.