Soviet Playbook Re-opened for Iraq

Now here's someone who isn't afraid to call out the Left for what all of it's divisive, pseudo-pacifist Bush-hating is: aiding the enemy.

That someone has a column at the WSJ Opinion Journal today on the subject, and that someone should know what he's talking about: Romanian Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.

Commenting on last week's positive statement by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about President Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism, Pacepa says

Mr. Brown's statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush's domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania--with two death sentences on his head--in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a "liar," a "deceiver" and a "fraud."

I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.

So how does this fit in with our enemy's goals?

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels.

And how does this connect to my earlier comments about George McGovern's actions and how they undermined our country?

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook.

Remember, this isn't some Right-wing Republican Christian zealot saying this; this is a former communist officer.

Pacepa then shoves today's pseudo-pacifists noses into the stinking pile of truth they'd love to ignore:

Now we are again at war. It is not the president's war. It is America's war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don't know either. But I do know that if America's political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: "We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West."

We should never follow our leaders blindly. Such a mindset is not what gave birth to America, and it's not what brought her to greatness.

But to zealously and baselessly undermine our president in wartime for political gain, or to allow ourselves to be duped into joining such an exercise, is irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Thank God for voices of experience and understanding like Pacepa's. Those who loathe our country won't listen to it, however, and neither will those who desire political points more than the good of their country.

But will you?

HT to the World Magazine blog.