From today’s WSJ online (subs req) entitled “Awaiting the Dishonor Roll”

Congress has rarely been distinguished by its moral courage. But even grading on a curve, we can only describe this week’s House debate on a vote of no-confidence in the mission in Iraq as one of the most shameful moments in the institution’s history.

On present course, the Members will vote on Friday to approve a resolution that does nothing to remove American troops from harm’s way in Iraq but that will do substantial damage to their morale and that of their Iraqi allies while emboldening the enemy.

What else needs to be said about the real intentions of this once respectable Democrat Party?

the next time you hear Reid, Biden, Kerry, Clinton, or Kennedy claim that Bush and the GOP are “politicizing the war” think about their pathetic “non binding resolution.”

The motion at issue is plainly dishonest, in that exquisitely Congressional way of trying to have it both ways. (We reprint the text nearby.) The resolution purports to “support” the troops even as it disapproves of their mission. It praises their “bravery,” while opposing the additional forces that both President Bush and General David Petreaus, the new commanding general in Iraq, say are vital to accomplishing that mission. And it claims to want to “protect” the troops even as its practical impact will be to encourage Iraqi insurgents to believe that every roadside bomb brings them closer to their goal.

So they can talk all day and night on the House and Senate Floor as they have been doing for the past few days about “supporting the troops” etc. But what do the “troops” think?

As for how “the troops” themselves feel, we refer readers to Richard Engel’s recent story on NBC News quoting Specialist Tyler Johnson in Iraq: “People are dying here. You know what I’m saying . . . You may [say] ‘oh we support the troops.’ So you’re not supporting what they do. What they’s [sic] here to sweat for, what we bleed for and we die for.” Added another soldier: “If they don’t think we’re doing a good job, everything we’ve done here is all in vain.” In other words, the troops themselves realize that the first part of the resolution is empty posturing, while the second is deeply immoral.

John Kerry Redux:

We aren’t prone to quoting the young John Kerry, but this week’s vote reminds us of the comment the antiwar veteran told another cut-and-run Congress in the early 1970s: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” The difference this time is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha expect men and women to keep dying for something they say is a mistake but also don’t have the political courage to help end.

If this “non binding resolution” does not qualify as being overtly treacherous, traitorous, and treasonous behavior I don’t know what does.

A newly confirmed commander is about to lead 20,000 American soldiers on a dangerous and difficult mission to secure Baghdad, risking their lives for their country. And the message their elected Representatives will send them off to battle with is a vote declaring their inevitable defeat.

And that is why we call them the Defeaticrats…