Posted on January 16, 2008

by

Daniel Clark

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has decided to postpone the construction of an American missile defense base in his country, a move that news reports have attributed to his being less pro-American than his predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Tusk's reason for this change in policy, however, does not indicate an erosion of the Poles' loyalty to their American allies. Rather, it is based on their concerns about America's wavering dedication to its own missile defense project.

Tusk wants to delay the deployment of the missile shield until after this year's U.S. presidential election, and it's hard to argue with his judgment. Everybody knows that if the Democrats win the presidency, they will mothball our missile defense plan, just as Bill Clinton did for the entire eight years of his administration. Russia, the powerful and cantankerous neighbor to Poland's east, has protested the U.S. missile shield from the outset. If Tusk proceeds with the project, only to see it abandoned by our next president, he'll have antagonized the Kremlin for no good reason.

It's not as if the Poles would have a hard time believing that the Democrats would hang them out to dry. That's because Poland has been among our most trusted allies in Iraq -- you know, the ones that John Kerry slandered as "the coalition of the bribed and coerced." Those allies can't help but be leery of Kerry's party, members of which have threatened to cut off funding for the war, demanded a "redeployment" to Okinawa, and refused to accept the delivery of good news from General Petraeus. With the prospect of a Democrat victory in November, Poland risks angering not only Russia, but also a newly elected, Democrat-controlled government here in the U.S.

The real story out of Poland, then, is that the Democrats have succeeded in deterring an ally from helping the United States. This is important not only insofar as their obstruction of our missile defenses are concerned, but also in serving as a parallel to their effect on another important American ally -- the people of Iraq.

A key component of Petraeus' success has been the emergence of the Iraq Awakening movement among that nation's Sunni population. However, it's not as if those people literally woke up one day in 2007 and decided, all of a sudden, that they didn't like al-Qaeda. Obviously, they'd considered themselves to be enemies of the terrorists for quite some time, but had been intimidated by the specter of a politically-driven American retreat. It was only after President Bush surprised the Western media by announcing an increase in America's commitment to Iraq that the Sunnis were encouraged to take a stand.

According to the Democrats' "redeployment" plans, the opposite should have happened. It was supposed to have been our swift and complete withdrawal that caused the Iraqis to become self-reliant enough to stand up and fight for their country. That's what we were told, at least, by the party that had nominated Sen. Kerry, who thinks there was no bloodbath after the U.S. left Vietnam, and that the Communist reeducation camps were generally beneficial.

Now that the president's plan is succeeding, you'd think his detractors would be apologizing for their lack of support. Then again, you'd also think they'd be eating some crow over the progress of a missile defense plan they'd once dismissed as impossible. If you really believed they'd had our nation's best interests at heart in the first place, that is.

For much of this war, the Democrats have criticized President Bush for not bringing "our allies" on board, but instead pursuing a "go-it-alone foreign policy." In reality, it is they who have alienated our true allies, and repelled potential others, through their defeatism, and their desire for America to give up its leadership role in search of consensus.

In hindsight, it's clear that the Democrats did not want us to have any allies on board, and that they were trying to alienate the ones we had. What else might they have expected to be the effect of their constant naysaying, their drumbeat of demands for resignations, and their daily predictions of doom? Exactly what would they have said to try to convince "our allies" to join us, "Come on in, the quagmire's fine"?

So, in the end, the media are correct that the delay in implementing our missile shield is due to the obstruction of a country whose government is becoming less pro-American. Their mistake is in identifying that country as Poland.

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