Senator Kennedy Resignation

At some point, we will have to muster the courage to face the facts about Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-Ma). Since the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was made, his criticisms of the President have become more shrill and accusatory. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of speech that we all have, within certain limits. (For instance, one cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded building if there isn't one.) However, Ted Kennedy has crossed those limits in his excessively vitriolic attacks on the President and his decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.

President Bush, having been granted the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq by Congress, decided to use that authorised force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Whether the liberation of Iraq was justified as part of the War on Terror became merely an argument for historians at that point, in a certain respect. The fact is that the United States was and remains at war, like it or not.

Though our Taliban enemies and Saddam Hussein were swiftly defeated, the larger war against terrorism and the States that support it has not ended. At the moment, it is concentrated in that same Iraq that was once a prime supporter of terrorists under Saddam, including the open payment of $25,000 to the family of at least one Hamas suicide bomber, and $10,000 to other Palestinian militants. Our enemies now are the terrorists that have poured into Iraq to prevent that country from becoming an open and democratic nation.

We do have enemies, and our enemies have chosen this war and this battleground. We cannot retreat from it. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree on how we got there or not, we are at war with them in Iraq now. The recent horrific beheading of Nick Berg shows us exactly what kind of people those enemies are, and what they want. We must rid the Middle East of these terrorists -- that's what the War on Terror is all about. And Ted Kennedy has repeatedly given aid and comfort to the enemy in various ways in the course of this war.

He has sought to undermine the credibility of the commander-in-chief by accusing him of manufacturing the case for war in Iraq for his own personal and political ends. "This was made up in Texas, announced in January [2003] to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud," Kennedy said in September 2003. The resolution authorising the war became law by Congressional vote in October 2002, three months earlier. In October 2003 Kennedy said, "The trumped up reasons for going to war have collapsed," and "the President's war has been revealed as mindless, needless, senseless, and reckless." These accusations can only have a detrimental effect on the morale of our armed forces fighting "the President's war" and American credibility in the world.

He has sought to decrease the effectiveness of America's ability to wage war by demanding that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld be fired in the middle of a war. "I think we need a new beginning," Kennedy said after Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate regarding the mistreatment of some prisoners in Iraq. By all accounts the abuse seems to have been performed by guards exceeding their orders, on their own initiative. When the abuse was reported, it was immediately investigated. The report from Major General Taguba found, as he told the Senate, that there were no actual orders given to the guards or policy set to mistreat the prisoners, though it was "suggested" that they set the "conditions for the successful exploitation of internees." There is no evidence whatsoever that Rumsfeld had anything to do with it, yet this situation is being used to demand his replacement. Removing the Secretary of Defense on such a flimsy pretext in the middle of an ongoing conflict would cause a serious disruption of our military's coherence and efficacy.

He has sought to damage the morale of US troops in the field of combat by comparing them to Saddam Hussein's torture squads, speaking of the same prisoner mistreatment. "On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?'" said Kennedy. "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management." Saddam Hussein's torture methodology included eye gouging, the piercing of hands with an electric drill, suspension until ligaments were torn, acid baths and feeding the victim feet-first into a plastic shredder. It is infamous and outrageous when our enemies compare the US military to Saddam's State-sanctioned torturers. How much more so when a sitting US Senator does it?

Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115, Section 2381 of the United States Legal Code defines "treason" in the following way: "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason." Senator Kennedy's accusations have given comfort to our enemies, who must surely think that they can force us to back down from them when they hear his vitriolic attacks. His words have aided the enemy by sapping the morale of American troops facing them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the successful prosecution of the fight against terrorism, our enemies must see that while we may argue amongst ourselves, we are united against them. For the good of the country, Senator Kennedy must step down from the Senate.