Posted on 11/12/2006 2:42:23 AM PST by goldstategop
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad. I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
I have to agree with you on that. If you had a conversation one on one with the average American about Al Sadr then asked that person "If you were Commander in Chief what would you do about him?", I'm inclined to think they would want him captured or dead.
Yet no one at the top including the President seems serious about dealing with Sadr. Rather than allow the troops to be bled by that nutbag day after day, if we're not gonna do anything about the problem, then why are we sticking around? That is the general attitude at this time.
That doesn't make me think we should leave Iraq. They are our ally on the WOT. That is the purpose of why we took out an unfriendly regime there. It would be a waste of the sacrifice that was made by US troops. That's what makes me think if the GOP starts building up the new leadership for 2008 now, we can turn this all around.
The WOT isn't gonna go away, so we need this ally that sits in the center of the Middle East. New Republican leadership needs to help the American People understand that and let them know we will address any threat seriously including nutbags like Sadr.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
As I was reading down, J.E.B.S., I was going to say, I'm not sure but what it was Rumsfeld who told the Prez and the Veep when he was going to leave. My earlier predictions had been (if it was certain the dems would take the House) that he would leave a number of weeks before or after the election. This was a brilliant move and he will be a whipping boy for a while, but only for a short while. By January the American people will be saying, "no, let's move on" and Rummy will be tending his ranch in AZ or NM or where ever it is.
Thanks for the ping.
I read a lot on FR that the President does not do a good enough in defining our criteria for winning. I just happen to believe that is not true. He has defined it over and over again.
TO say that there has been little in the way of progress seems to be selling what is really happening in Iraq short. There has been tremendous progress. It has not been swift, but it has been steady, yet it has been opposed. But that is war isn't it...active opposition to your stated objectives.
What? Did we honestly think that we would go into Iraq and not be opposed?
It says we are gutless, but not to worry, as the self-righteous and ever-irritating Sean Vanity would say, "let not your heart be troubled."
As Mort Kondracke would say, "The shotgun wedding........... the Republican President and Democrat Congress" will take care of everything. (sarcasm off)
Sure...the propoganda shown by the US media.
Truth is...the violence is a necessary process through which the Iraqi people must move in order to achieve a stable government; a pacifistic approach could be advanced, but the violent instigators who believe in totalitarian government would then achieve their goal of having a strong voice in the new government.
Despite what the media tells you, progress is significant. The goal of pushing hard for a democratic wave in the Mid-East is a noble and necessary one and Pres. Bush and his guys have performed their part admirably.
A good read.
That's what Iraq is all about. We always knew the elements we removed from power after our invasion and Al Qaeda would oppose our objectives of making Iraq a free and democratic country that would be a model for the rest of the region and not pose a threat to its neighbors. That ought to be the minimum we should settle for as a victory criterion and its in keeping with America's deepest ideals. In short, the security of a friendly people is an investment in our own security as well. I don't think the President has tried to get across to the American people why the Bush Doctrine would both enhance our national security and help to free a violence-prone region of the world run by murderous despots. Its both conservative and Wilsonian. I haven't changed my mind about the Iraq War. I believed then and I believe now it was absolutely the right thing to do. Now we need to win.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Ultimately we will win, but we will have to show those assholes what a REAL IED is.
Unfortunately we know the ability of G.W. to speak and persuade. And personally I think he's getting worse at speaking of late. It's been painful to watch him try to make a point. (And of course the old media would try to distort anything he says.)
Our problem is is that we have few excellent and forceful speakers to make the needed points. Tony Snow is very good and makes a good impression.
Actually....... I say give Mark Steyn a three hour talk show five (or six) days a week like the sometimes helpful sometimes hurtful Rush Limbaugh, and the world would be a better place!
"I do not think the President fired Rumsfeld. I think Rumsfeld insisted on going in the face of what was coming now that the dems had been elected."
I think you are right although Rumsfeld and the President had to know this was coming. It looks like they had no clue or maybe the wanted the dems to win? Let them take some heat for whatever happens after they cut off funds etc?
I am really baffled by all of this!
Hopefully.
I wish Rummy peace in the future. I cannot pretend to be anything of an insider who knows what has really happened, but Rummy deserves his peace to me.
American will can be summed up in one word "Metrosexual"...we have become a nation obsessed with how we look and feel instead of a nation with a steel backbone. We shall see where it takes us...
lol
Well said.
Wishful thinking.
Dems never take blame for anything; then only give it. The MSM sees to that.
Everything is "Bush's fault." It is naive to expect that the MSM will allow the American people to see the Dems as they really are.
Where you and I disagree is whether the President has gotten across why the Bush doctrine is important. I think he has. I think he has told us over and over again what he is doing, why it must be done, and what is at stake, why we must stay, and why we cannot leave.
There is not going to be a Hollywood moment where he will speak and the people as one will embrace what he says. He has been stating the Bush Doctrine since 9/11...he keeps repeating it... I don't think it is his fault that we are not listening.
And we still may have a pro-war majority in the Senate. Liebermann is a hawk. I'm guessing the Dem from Montana might be one too.
Truer words have never been said.
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The socialist/Marxist/liberal media is the most destructive, relentless, and ruthless enemy of this Republic.
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Happy Birthday, Gerald Ford
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