What would Democrats have done?

  -- not taken significant action on the homeland security front or military action against Afghanistan or Iraq, based on their relentless criticism of President Bush's deficit spending. It is objectively provable that Bush inherited an economy in recession, that the economy suffered dramatic losses because of the September 11 terrorist attacks, that we've had to spend enormous sums rebuilding a military that Bill Clinton had overextended and depleted, and that the actions against Afghanistan and Iraq cost billions of dollars. Bush's tax cuts, discounting dynamic scoring, will have played but a fractional part, if any, in increasing the deficit. So either they should tell us what part of the national security spending they would have foregone, which further wasteful domestic spending programs they wouldn't have thrown more money at despite their promises to do so, or how they would have jump-started the sluggish economy they bestowed upon President Bush. Tax increases, perhaps?

  -- not taken military action against Iraq for the further reasons that they could not have predicted with certainty how long it would take and how much it would cost, nor guaranteed that our troops would be immune from terrorist attacks in Iraq following the initial phase of the war, nor that a suitable democratic government would emerge free of challenges and problems. This is based on their ridiculous handwringing against Donald Rumsfeld (and others) for his refusal to predict the "unknowable" and their daily harangues that our war efforts were poorly conceived based on the casualties and difficulties that persist despite our victory.

 I could go on and on, but the point is that Democrats need to be held accountable for their criticisms. It's time for them to go beyond the character attacks and answer the question of what, specifically, they would have done differently.

 As I've attempted to show here, we already know the answer to that question, and it's damning, which is why they won't volunteer it. In short, they simply cannot be trusted with our national security, which means it is far too dangerous to give them back the reins of power. As for 2004, "bring 'em on."