Iraq, Surrender, Consequences, and the National Conversation
Be warned: Screedy, partisan comments follow. Something here will probably offend you. If you don’t like that sort of thing, there’s plenty more to read here.
* Finally, some talks with a senior Iranian leader I can support without reservation.
* Insurgents have killed two soldiers and captured four others … Iranian Revolutionary Guards, actually. You will remember that I previously mentioned another Iranian insurgent attack, and I’ve read about others since. It doesn’t look like this is a one-off. Let’s hope this has staying power and proves a serious drain on the mullahs’ thug squads.
* Because history tends to remember wars as chronologies of dramatic events, we tend to forget that they have always been long, grueling, bloody things punctuated by a few moments of drama, mostly insignificant, and more significant events that were harder to recognize at the time. It’s exasperating that we forget — because some choose to omit it from our national conversation — that our primary enemy in Iraq is al-Qaeda, and that its avowed goal is to bring its war back to our own country. And if the news that we captured its political leader in Iraq is true, that will be one of several encouraging signs we’ve seen recently. I’ve foresworn strong emotional ups and downs, because in this war, victory will go to the patient, not the lucky, and we’ll measure progress toward it by how little we hear about it. Of course, the terrorists replace each dead or captured leader with a new one, but new leaders are drawn from the back benches — those with less charisma, fewer ties to other terrorist leaders, less experience, and less skill. It’s just a part of the gradual wearing down of an enemy that can’t be pacified, forgotten, or escaped.
* I am still waiting to hear the advocates of withdrawal explain away the predictable result of what they advocate: a wave of genocide and terror unlike anything the world has seen since 1975. No honest person can fail to foresee that, no compassionate human being can want that to happen, and no statesman can believe that this will make us more secure.
* I was hoping for a narrow Democratic victory in the mid-terms because, for the country’s greater good, I wanted the Democrats to catch the fire truck they’ve been chasing. I wanted them put in a position where they would have to advance an actual policy for Iraq and start a national conversation on the consequences of defeat. My belief was that this would focus national attention on the lack of a clear Democratic alternative, and just how catastrophic the option of a sudden withdrawal would be. It’s March, and I still see no coherent policy, and if you wonder why not, just watch Rep. David Obey, who voted against the war, confronted by the surrender lobby in the halls of Congress (“Man: Filibuster his supplemental request. Obey: There is no filibuster in the House!“). This is a fairly vivid illustration of the aftermath of unsatisfying intercourse, when two participants in an intoxicated tryst start to wonder just what brought them together in the first place. Whether Obey’s proposal will do any better than John Murtha’s, or Nancy Pelosi’s non-binding resolution, is anyone’s guess. But the problem for Obey isn’t just that the votes aren’t there in Congress. The problem, as Obey knows, is something else about the voters who elected the Congress.
* The most hopeful sign is that the American people are even less excited about surrender than they are about the war. Obey is smart enough to read all of the polls, including those given very little media play. Here’s one of them, as summed up by Powerline:
According to the survey, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, 57 percent of Americans say “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism. 57 percent also “support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.”
Moreover, 56 percent believe that “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war. And 53 percent believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.
In the same poll, 60 percent predict that Iraq probably will never be a stable democracy and 60 percent disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Yet, unlike most Democrats, they are willing and able to distinguish between these issues and the matter of what we should do going forward in Iraq.
More here. I still don’t know if we will have the national conversation we need to have, but this is a good sign as we enter a presidential election campaign.
* John Murtha is Congress’s foremost advocate of surrender at any price, and his stillborn plan to “undermine” the war effort was to be, in essence, an Iraq strategy that strategically converges with al-Qaeda’s. That doesn’t make Murtha an ally of al-Qaeda any more than it makes Muqtada al-Sadr an ally of al-Qaeda … so don’t question his patriotism. Instead, you can question his judgment and his understanding of the facts, as the Washington Post did:
His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to “stop the surge.” So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill — an action Congress is clearly empowered to take — rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. “What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with,” he said.
Mr. Murtha’s cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq “would be more stable with us out of there,” in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce “massive civilian casualties.” He says he wants to force the administration to “bulldoze” the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to “get our troops out of the Green Zone” because “they are living in Saddam Hussein’s palace”; could he be unaware that the zone’s primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?
The Post then chides Nancy Pelosi for her supportive comments about the Murtha plan, although it’s not clear if even Pelosi represents her own party’s center of gravity.
* So many have tried so hard to help us forget that invading Iraq was a national, bipartisan decision, despite the fact that most representatives of one party who voted to send soldiers into battle have now abandoned that decision. (The soldiers’ expression at such a moment is, “Sorry ’bout that.”) That’s why it’s so edifying to review the video of just how hawkish Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, John Edwards, and Harry Reid sounded before the war became unpopular. Either they expected a cakewalk, they exercised poor judgment, they can’t assess intelligence, or they were trying to advance those false pretenses about weapons of mass destruction (which Saddam had used before, but which of course he’d never have used again, right?). None of those things says very good things about their qualifications to make, and see through, grave decisions while occupying higher office. And that was before we were in a ground war against al-Qaeda, which would love nothing more than to send its victory-buoyed jihadis on to Afghanistan, and to America itself. Surrender in Iraq won’t end the war; it will intensify it dramatically.
* A brief, strictly political diversion: You have to love this story by a hack named Mike Baker, who writes for the Associated Press. It starts off like this: “Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.” The story then proceeds to run down a list of most of the Republican candidates and say tawdry things about each of them. It’s just about the most transparently biased detour through the gutter you could dream up; notably absent are new sexual harrassment accusations against Bill Richardson by his Lieutenant Governor, and Baker doesn’t jiggle the handle on that ossuary of a closet Hillary Clinton keeps. I remember a time when plenty of people wanted us to move on from that conversation, too. It’s odd, then, that this same anti-war MoveOn herd, which now demands that Hillary Clinton apologize for voting for the war, is giving those old scandals new life.
* Gov. Richardson, by the way, is the great American who recently suggested that Democrats should not attack each other’s positions on Iraq, but should attack only Bush’s.
“The worst we can do is tear each other down,” said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who called on his Democratic rivals to sign a pledge to avoid negative campaigning and concentrate their energy on taking the White House away from the Republicans next year. [AP]
In other words, Richardson proposes that the candidates collude to cheat voters of a debate on what each of them will actually do about the most important issue our country faces today. If these were corporate CEO’s, any who signed that pledge would be prosecuted for violating the Antitrust Act. It is often said, correctly, that dissent — though perhaps not all forms of it — is patriotic. That is because constructive debate about how to solve our nation’s problems is patriotic. What does that say for what Richardson is proposing?
Let the flamewar begin!
I found your remarks quite reasonable. The discouragement (for want of a better word) about the war reminds me of a realization that came to me soon after getting out of college: education prepares people for a gymnastics performance on the parallel bars, in front of judges, but life turns out to be more like a march through a swamp at night without a compass.
And I liked the line “and Baker doesn’t jiggle the handle on that ossuary of a closet Hillary Clinton keeps.”
Even in the Cold War era, I never understood the “don’t make them a marytre” and “the evil we know is better than the one we can’t envision” ideas. We should have forced the Iraqi government to take care of Sadre right away or done it ourself.
I’ve been pleading for this since right after 9/11 – a national conversation on a lot of topics about our society and its place in the world. I thought 9/11 might bring it, but it didn’t.
Now, I’m hoping for Iraq and a Hillary vs Gingrich election cycle…
It will be ugly, but necessary.
So you want Hillary Clinton elected president?
I think Gingrich could hold his own. The media suceeded in killing him off in the 1990s with a thousand cuts made by constant bombardment in the press. They despise him. But, Hillary has produced dedicated enemies as well.
Both of them are intelligent people. The two of them in a head-to-head race would bring pundits crawling out of the woodwork, and the media would not be able to contain itself in going after Gingrich, which, since this is a presidential election, would generate much more attention by average people —– and they’d see how the media freaks out into Spanish Inquisition mode whenever they face a conservative with a brain —- and that means I think Gingrich would have a better chance of surviving this time.
Those are the two factors I think will work:
1. Hillary being an opposing lightenrod.
2. The resulting frenzy around him (and her) would make people scrutinize the attacks on Gingrich more this go around.
The result would be – I think – much more engagement in fighting for the definition of the US – and much more active engagement in countering the media bias – by pummelling the press when the bloodletting gets too much to watch…
USinKorea wrote:
“Now, I’m hoping for Iraq and a Hillary vs Gingrich election cycle…
“
Newt versus Hilary? I pray fervently that does not happen. Neither candidate was voteworthy in the last two presidential elections. I’d like to feel good about exercising my right to vote in 2008. Hilary is intelligent, but she doesn’t know how to govern through consensus. Newt is much too far to the right, and unlike GW, he’s not even a likeable guy. I actually think Bush is decent person. I just oppose nearly everything he’s done as president.
Newt is unelectable. The media couldn’t airbrush his arrogance and pomposity even if it wanted to. Some of Newt’s ideas are so brilliant, they’re just plain Wile E. Coyote wacky. The first mid-term election of his administration — as if — would be the greatest slaughter since Pickett’s Charge. He is not a candidate, and should not be.
Hillary is barely electable despite the fact that she’s history’s most universally despised front-runner, because the media will try to airbrush out her Stalinesque, unprincipled lust for power and control. Her rule would either be a very robust nanny state, or a slightly kinder, gentler variation on Kim Il Sung’s purges of the early 60’s.
Both are smart people. Either would be a lousy president.
I’m pulling for McCain but he won’t kiss up to the king makers in the Republican Party. He would probably have an easier time winning a general election against Hillary then he would trying to win his Republcan primary against Guiliani and Romney.
McCain is probably the only Republican I’d consider voting for. He co-sponsored campaign reform, didn’t he? For that alone, he’d get my vote. Our elected leaders would do a much better job representing the people who elected them if their re-election chances didn’t depend on who has the bigger war chest.
Funny you bring up campaign finance reform. I’ll admit that I’m leaning McCain, though I also like Rudy. Oddly, I think McCain-Feingold is the real sleeper issue that lost McCain the GOP base, which puzzles me, maybe because I really don’t know that much about McCain-Feingold.
Does anyone still remember the post-2004 “What’s the Matter With Kansas” meme? You know, when the Democrats decided they needed more religion? The idea is that Republican voters are animatronic servants of a gay-bashing, misogynist social agenda. Personally, I think that’s self-serving garbage. Bush won in 2004 because we had two generally unappealing candidates, with Kerry being the less appealing, the more hated of the two. I wouldn’t piss on John Kerry if he was burning to a writhing crisp at my feet, and that’s what got my happy ass to the polls.
Still, consider: conservative voters, who are supposedly pursuing this single-minded Christer social agenda, might actually choose an “evolving” pro-choicer (Romney) or a bon vivant (Giuliani) over McCain, who has consistently held conservative views on social issues. But my views on social issues are so odd — abolitionist on abortion, agnotic-to-deist, libertarian on guns and gay marriage, suspicious of government social engineering, and liberal on church-state issues — that there’s really no focus group for people me.
Then again, if it’s true that for the conservative rank and file, it’s all about the war, then maybe there is. I admit that social issues just seem a lot less important to me this year. I think McCain has a greater capacity to unite and inspire the country than the others, his stand has been consistent, and he’s held it even when it’s been unpopular. That last point is no small thing for a man whose race this had been to lose. Agree or not — and he could still lose my vote — you have to admire his guts.
I suspect a McCain vs. Clinton contest would present Sonagi with a fairly difficult choice, and that most swing voters would break for either McCain or Guiliani over her. Since I don’t hold the Democrats’ offerings in very high regard, that matters to me.
I think “unelectable” will be the red herring of this election.
I used to wonder why some of the people who announced their candadicy – people not remotely on the national radar. Then I saw enough elections…
Jimmy Cater and Clinton should have looked “unelectable.” It all depends on the person, the time, the press, the issues, the mood, the weather, color schemes…..you name it……There is nothing close to a formula for even a good shot of sucess —- (well, except money…..)
I don’t think Gingrich is arrogant. I got caught up in that frenzy of attacks by the press in the early to mid-1990s, but after thinking about it and watching it, I decided it was 75% media hype. The attacks on Gingrich said more about the press (and the state of the intellectual and pseudo-intellectual elites in American society) than it did about Gingrich.
Gingrich did screw things up and made it worse. He thought the election victory and taking the House was a much bigger mandate by the people than what it was – and he got smacked down by the people for it.
I think Gingrich can learn lessons. I also like the fact that he will speak his mind – and make arguments to back it up – instead of relying on things like a change in accent when speaking in the south….
I think Hillary can also back up her positions with well-reasoned arguments — if she believes that is what it will take to get elected —- but if the republicans throw up somebody who they think will be “electable” —-
we will see an election cycle like we have seen more and more of thse last 20 years —— where the candidates in both parties go out of their way not to make specific statements on specific issues and hope they can just sail safe through waters they believe are safer the more they avoid policy discussions or rocking the boat.
Clinton vs Gingrich will throw all that pretense out the window, because the press and other elements will naturally go into a frenzy.
And we might actually have some national soul searching that we need right now.
I am not hopeful it will actually happen. But before I heard Gingrich was going to get in the race, it wasn’t even much of a thought in my head — any more than what it might be like to live on the moon some day….
http://newsbusters.org/node/11329
See. I think a Hillary vs Gingrich binary will be cathartic for our nation’s soul.
I am using the 3rd definition of the word – catharsis – meaning – emptying of the bowels – from the Greek katharos = clean.
We might even get to see a leading member of one of the big news agencies (leading member at the time) interview Gingrich’s (or Hillary’s) mother and trick her into saying her child thinks the opposing cadidate is a bitch/bastard again…
All joking aside — this media moment is what I have been saying will come out of a Gingrich – Hillary show down – and I think it needs to come out. The war in Vietnam came to an end when the average American home was forced to watch the disgust of it every night on the TV.
They will see a different version of vile crap in the war for American minds everyone remotely connected to the two parties will get into if these are the two candidates.
And I hope the full exposure of all this to the masses – with the pretense dropped and absolutely every rotten angle played to the hilt —— will lead the masses to an inspiration to change things.
It will take a cathartic moment. Or, we will continue in the slow decline that will take us through the same sewers — but without hope of coming out smelling like a rose – or anything other than manure.
I really don’t think it is unrealistic or hyperbole to say —- if we don’t have a real but difficult, major, inclusive debate during this next election cycle —— Iraq will be lost regardless of which party wins in Congress and the executive branch…..
The Cold War has been over for a decade and a half, and we have finally been shown that that does not mean we are invulnerable or just don’t have to care about how we are defined.
But, we are still rudderless just drifting about as if we were in a deep fog. Running two “electable” candidates will just keep us lost.
My choice of the word “binary” was not haphazard either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star
And
Hillary vs Gingrich will lock the society into a situation where we will be forced to take a true measure of our nation and its place in the world and what it should be about.
We might not reach a conclusion or set a clear path for our evolution, but this is the best shot we probably have, and it is badly needed…
Joshua wrote:
“Bush won in 2004 because we had two generally unappealing candidates, with Kerry being the less appealing, the more hated of the two.”
I agree with the first part but not the last. I would say that many of those who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 liked Bush while most Gore and Kerry voters, including myself and many of my friends and colleagues, were actually trying to keep Bush out of office.
“I wouldn’t piss on John Kerry if he was burning to a writhing crisp at my feet, and that’s what got my happy ass to the polls. “
Wow! You’ve been listening to too many media pundits. Really.
“I suspect a McCain vs. Clinton contest would present Sonagi with a fairly difficult choice, and that most swing voters would break for either McCain or Guiliani over her. “
Actually, the only difficulty in the McCain versus Clinton contest is the party behind the two candidates. I prefer McCain as a leader, but I do not like what the Republican party has become since the 1990s. Reagan would throw bones to the religious right, but he never let them dominate the party. I would be more inclined to vote for McCain if I were assured that at least one house of Congress would be controlled by the Democrats.
I think my previous comment got caught in the spam trap. I didn’t include any links, either.
1. Rescued.
2. Actually, I’ve hated John Kerry for several decades now. I hated the man before pundits could remember his name. I’ve hated him since I was in high school. There is no single American politician of consequence I’ve disliked so much, for so long (Jimmy Carter and Chris Dodd in second and third place, McGovern is no longer “of consequence,” and Ted Kennedy occasionally does something I like).
3. We Americans love our divided government, don’t we? Absolute power does tend to corrupt our parties. My regret is seeing the “good” House Republicans get punished for their generally dismal leadership … and Mark Foley. Time will tell, but it was Republicans like Ed Royce, Chris Smith, Jim Leach, Tom Tancredo, and Dana Rohrabacher that really pushed the human rights issue with N. Korea. Sure, Lantos and Faleomavagea vote the right way, but they always seemed to put nuclear diplomacy first, because they saw the issues as separable. And of course, Henry Hyde has never seemed more indispensable. He would probably have retired no matter what, but what an enormous set of empty shoes Hyde leaves behind. What a giant he was when it came to Asia policy.