Craven Harry Reid Sticks Knife in Troops, Foot in Mouth

The lead sentences in the Las Vegas ReviewJournal, which generally supports Senator Harry Reid, are amazing for their candor.

The Democratic strategy to use the ongoing violence in Iraq to their political advantage in the run-up to the 2008 elections requires some skill and nuance. But it's growing harder to believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- Nevada's own -- actually possesses those skills.

The Democratic strategy is anything but straightforward.

Sen. Reid and his colleagues know there is much political hay to be made by criticizing President Bush's planning and conduct of the post-war occupation. But they also know that while "cut our losses and pull out" plays well in Democratic caucuses, it failed in the Connecticut general election in 2006, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman and his anti-surrender stance handily defeated end-the-war candidate Ned Lamont -- even though Sen. Lieberman had to run as an independent to pull it off.

That's the kind of "poll" that really counts.

Thus, the Democrats' careful strategy requires them to appear to oppose Mr. Bush's ongoing occupation of Iraq (to please their pacifist base), without taking any concrete, "binding" actions to change the status quo.

Enter Sen. Reid, flopping around in big red shoes like Bozo the Clown. (Emphasis added)

First, with friends like that...


But then, what kind of friends would one expect Craven Harry to have? The man is duplicitous as all get out. He is, in a word, craven—so lacking in courage as to be worthy of contempt.

The man voted to send troops to Iraq. He said before last fall's election that he would oppose a pullout. After the election, he spoke in terms of a withdrawal. Now, he wants to declare defeat and get out, all the while licking his chops that the war will be good for his political fortunes and saying so in public.

Of course—point out the painfully obvious—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political strategy is true only if his country loses the war. In years to come our children, if studying history in English and not in Arabic, will learn the name Reid in the same lesson plan as they learn of Chamberlain, Petain and Quisling.

Investors Business Daily has called for Reid to resign:

Reid has instead given moral support to the terrorists. His "leadership" has been to try to cut off our forces' war funding. Now he has told the Islamofascists that victory is theirs if they can just keep blowing up U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens a little while longer.

In aiding and comforting the enemy in wartime, Reid has betrayed the office he holds, shamed the Nevadans he represents and made the Democratic Party he leads synonymous with surrender. There is one way he can repair the damage he's done to the nation: step down.

Mark Levin has done so, too, describing Reid actions as

…actively undermining our fighting men and women in Iraq. His legislative efforts to starve our armed forces in the middle of a war are as contemptible as anything I’ve witnessed in my 25 years in Washington. And yesterday he made a statement that was so disgraceful and brazen that it could have been uttered by Tokyo Rose during World War II or Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War. The difference, of course, is that Reid is the highest ranking Democrat in the United States Senate.

Mr. Reid's politics are beyond political. He is deliberately increasing the risk of harm to our troops in harm's way. He needs to go.

Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit called the ReviewJournal Reid's hometown paper. Maybe once that was so, but in recent years Senator Harry Reid has been a full-time resident of the Ritz Carlton Hotel and only a visitor to his roots in Searchlight, Nevada, the values of which he has so obviously left far behind.