Let's stay, fight on foreign soil

To the editor:Democrats continue to delay funding for our deployed troops through a sad display of political showmanship.

Last month, not a single Democrat bothered attending the troop-surge brief by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, senior commander in Iraq. This month, Democrats were pressured into attending Petraeus' April 26 brief as he traveled from Iraq to brief lawmakers on the troop-surge progress. It was nice to see a few Democrats attended, at least offering the impression they cared about what's happening on the ground in Iraq. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't attend the briefing -- again, presumably, too busy.

However, Democrats weren't going to be swayed from their political objectives. On his way into Petraeus' brief, Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer said the bill that aimed to bring U.S. combat troops out of Iraq early next year "will pass" -- a nice way of saying "Thanks for traveling 8,000 miles, but I don't care what you have to say." Even the reports that al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden was orchestrating operations in Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't sway the Democrats from their obedience to liberal defeatists.

We are fighting al-Qaida members in Iraq, and there is no intelligent disagreement to that fact. There's also an insurgency, but it is a fact that we are fighting al-Qaida on a grand scale. We have a battlefield full of an enemy responsible for the attacks of 9-11. Let us stay there and fight them on foreign soil in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CHAD CRAFT, Jackson