Ed Koch Says Stay the Course

I'm glad I'm not the only Democrat remaining who thinks that the war in Iraq is necessary, and that the wavering will of the US is dangerous for many reasons.

Ed Koch, who is the wise and witty former mayor of New York City, has always been on my most-admired list. I wish he were president. His comments on RealClearPolitics have provided a little respite from that feeling of doom you get when you realize that your team is wavering. He is asking Democrats to put the nation before the Party.

… [S]eeking as some do to make our involvement in Iraq a partisan issue and characterizing the President's efforts to protect the homeland from terrorists in an adversarial manner is endangering the country at a moment in time when we are facing an existential threat to our very survival as a nation.

Of course, the President, Vice President and Secretaries of Defense and State have made monumental mistakes in the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Great mistakes in handling the war against terror were also committed by prior administrations. Now is the time for everyone to acknowledge the enormity of the danger we face and for reasonable people in both parties to join together to formulate a unified approach …

What a concept. Band together and give the Administration room to govern. He's a little old, I guess. He got his political education before Tom Delay and the advent of Fight Club politics. It seems to me that the terrorists would know what to do with people like him. RINOs and DINOs would be tortured and beheaded, while the rest would just lose their heads.

When Koch was just a Democrat, the Left thought he was a pretty smart guy. People should be wondering why a smart guy sees this as an "existential threat".

9/18/2006 12:03 AM