HispanicVista Columnists

A boxer's sucker punch
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Part of Democrat U.S. Senator Harry Reid’s background is that he was an amateur boxer. In his current job as Senate Majority Leader, he manifests abundant evidence that he took too many punches to the head in his boxing career.

Senator Reid proclaimed recently that the war in Iraq was "lost"; that the war in Iraq is a civil war; and, that the United States must withdraw immediately.

Following Reid’s lead, the Senate voted 51 to 46 to withdraw from Iraq in a vote following the House’s razor thin margin of 218 to 208 vote demanding the same withdrawal. A switch of six votes in the House and three in the Senate would have doomed the effort to failure.

Going back to the alleged boxing career of Senator Reid, we can project the following philosophy of life that Reid manifested with his we "lost" the war routine.

I presume that his mindset would have made him predict that he would lose a fight if he fought beyond a middle-round. In other words, midway through the match, Reid would declare that he had already lost and not answer the bell for the next round even though he had carried each round by points.

Reid and his House counterpart – General Nancy Pelosi – would declare that it is immaterial that he was only slightly hurt…3500 or so dead in Iraq over four years out of hundreds of thousands serving there. The 3500 are about what we lost in 6 weeks in Vietnam under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, or 48 hours at the Battle of Bulge in Belgium, 1944, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his greatest intelligence failure in American history.

Also immaterial is that he has won most of the rounds so far fought (almost every province of Iraq is quiet and uninvolved in daily bombings and terrorism), the only material "fact" is that he thinks he lost and must quit.

The only Reid material "fact" is that Harry states we have "lost" and uses that declaration to attack the President of the United States.

What proof does he present to make a case we have lost? None! He calls the war a civil war despite there being no evidence such is the case. There is sectarian violence, yes, but civil war, no. Where are the daily protest marches against the U.S.? One demonstration recently is not proof of civil war. Roadside bombings aimed at Iraqis is not civil war--they are terrorist acts but not civil war.

Where are the political and ideological leaders required by a state of civil war? Where is their Jefferson Davis? One religious leader name Sadr does not make a civil war.

Senator Reid can’t list for us the leaders of a civil war because there aren’t any. Senator Reid cannot name any Dien Bien Phus (the historic defeat of French colonial forces and the French Empire in 1954 in Vietnam) suffered by our troops because there aren’t any. There is no Pearl Harbor knockout punch against American forces. There is no surrender of a city.

There is peace and law and order in the Kurdish areas and in most of Southern Iraq. Only the Sunni Muslims and their Al Qaeda terrorist allies are fighting and they don’t number much. If they did, we would have 50-100 bombings a day. But we don’t.

Our media exaggerates the bombings every day without factually pointing out that there really aren’t many.

We see psuedo-comedic commentators like Bill Maher joining Senator Reid in proclaiming the war lost and falsely declaring that we are not publishing the pictures of our dead as they die. Maher, of course, is an idiot. He apparently doesn’t watch PBS the nightly news and comment program that features photos of our dead. Why, I’ve even seen such pictures on ABC nightly news.

Senator Harry Reid brings his vast experience as a U.S. Senator, Nevada state politician, city attorney and Capitol Police officer in Washington, D.C. while attending law school to the questions of war and peace.

Noticeably absent from his web site biography is military experience. He has none. Neither does Maher. There are some who would quibble with those facts and their impact on public policy, but when men and women are fighting and dying, why would anyone listen to wimps without any military service, especially from ones who were young men during wars like Vietnam (Reid), or the Gulf War(Maher).

Thus, we declare United States Senator Harry Reid to be a vacuous politician with a big mouth and tiny intellect. That declaration has far more validity than his declaring an ongoing war lost when, in fact, the opposite is true. Ask Sadaam Hussein.

Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? and, A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/