I couldn’t agree more with Orson Scott Card when he says that some Democrats (and most of the Democratic Underground crowd) are behaving not just critically, not just badly—but unpatriotically: The Campaign of Hate and Fear. (Hat tip: Darleen.)

Am I saying that critics of the war aren’t patriotic?

Not at all—I’m a critic of some aspects of the war. What I’m saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party’s political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they “support our troops” all they like—but it doesn’t change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Think what it will mean if we elect a Democratic candidate who has committed himself to an antiwar posture in order to get his party’s nomination.

Our enemies will be certain that they are winning the war on the battleground that matters—American public opinion. So they will continue to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can, because it works.

Our soldiers will lose heart, because they will know that their commander in chief is a man who is not committed to winning the war they have risked death in order to fight. When the commander in chief is willing to call victory defeat in order to win an election, his soldiers can only assume that their lives will be thrown away for nothing. That’s when an army, filled with despair, becomes beatable even by inferior forces.

Read it all. Card is right on the money.