Politics & Power Quote by Al D'Amato

The line is doing the kind of political jujitsu Washington perfected after 9/11: take an argument about strategy and reframe it as a test of nerve. D'Amato isn’t offering a granular case for staying the course so much as building a moral perimeter around it. Once “terrorists throughout the world” are positioned as attentive spectators, any domestic dissent becomes potential fuel for the enemy. That’s the intent: collapse a complex policy debate into a simple binary of resolve versus surrender.

The subtext is equally telling. “Opportunity to defeat the United States” shifts the stakes from a particular war to national identity itself, as if withdrawal equals civilizational loss. The phrase “we have to be” trails off into inevitability; it suggests duty without specifying obligations, a rhetorical move that lets the listener supply the hard-edged conclusion. Then comes the bipartisan seal: “every Democratic candidate… now say…” It’s a classic tactic for isolating critics by claiming even the opposition has conceded the frame. Whether that consensus is real matters less than the performance of it.

“Cut and run” is the payload. It’s not analysis; it’s branding. The phrase paints withdrawal as cowardice and irresponsibility, preemptively shaming alternatives like redeployment, diplomacy, or conditional timelines. Contextually, it sits inside the post-invasion Iraq argument where leaders needed language that made persistence feel patriotic and exit feel humiliating. D’Amato’s sentence works because it recruits fear, pride, and social pressure in one breath, turning strategy into a loyalty test.