Frist’s Reckless Statements Not Helping the War on Terror

Yesterday on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made the reckless and reprehensible claim that Democrats “want to surrender to the terrorists.” Sen. Frist should be ashamed of himself.

Such inflammatory rhetoric is particularly galling coming from Sen. Frist, who recently stated that the only way to salvage Afghanistan is to “assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government.” Sen. Frist may want to embrace the Taliban in Afghanistan but Democrats do not. Indeed, one of the main reasons that I and so many Democrats opposed the launch of the Iraq War is because it was a diversion from the real War on Terror, the central front of which was in Afghanistan.

The United States was winning that war against al Qaeda and the Taliban until President Bush lost his resolve to capture Osama bin Laden and instead cut and ran to Iraq, where he launched a misguided and disastrous preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to the United States. Because of these historic blunders, the Taliban is now resurgent in Afghanistan and weapons of mass destruction have now been discovered in North Korea, which may be soon followed by Iran. America cannot afford two more years of a “Rubber Stamp” Republican Congress that refuses to hold the Administration accountable or conduct effective oversight. It is time for a new direction.