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.
On Wednesday morning right after the election while the losses were still being counted?? The timing of the resignation/firing screamed defeat and worse. What could Bush have been thinking - We are all Spanish now?
bttt
Ouch!, when you consider his oratory skills to begin with. I didn't see or hear his news conferences this week but my brother was saying the same thing you did when I talked to him by phone yesterday.
W doesn't have the faking ability like the Cigar King does. If he doesn't believe in it, he can't sell it. The notable exceptions were on the mound of ruble in NY and his speech before the joint session of congress in September 01. He believed everything he was saying then.
"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
I was baffled, too. It didn't seem that there would be any good in having Rummy leave when he did; I was wondering too if it was some sort of misguided offer by Rumsfeld himself to fall on his sword, thinking that would take the heat off. All the act did was make it look like an acknowledgement of error and a moment of bungling, particularly with Bush's confused response.
I didn't get the feeling it was part of a long-thought out plan, overall.
Aside from that, I agree 100% with Steyn. That said, I think Rumsfeld would probably have prosecuted the war differently if it had not been from the constant harrassment from the media and the Dems. He and Bush should have ignored them, but instead they allowed themselves to follow a strategy of "almost" and "we could if we wanted to - but we don't."
Agreed. No matter what Pres. Bush says, the anti-war, intellectuals will attack it.
He could tweak his rhetoric and alter his phrasing, but it would make NO difference whatsoever as that would be the new phrase du jour to parse and spin.
Pres. Bush should continue with his approach. It's been extremely effective so far IMO, despite what the propogandists say.
Also agree with you about Rumsfeld. The thought of Rummy being tied up for months in Dem congressional hearings with Carl Levin and Conyers overseeing the inquisition is odious. The stepping down was a good decision IMO.
Where I worked, a similar thing happened. There was a power struggle between two different sales groups, and it did not work out for my two bosses.
They read the writing on the wall. They gave it about four months, but in the end they left. It was the best for the company and for them. It happens. Even offices are political.
Defeat is an orphan. That has been reinforced here on FR since Tuesday.
I couldn't read any further. This is too painful.
Best time IMO. The big story was the elections. It actually diluted the impact.
Any other time and the media would have gone on for weeks about it.
And to the Arabs, it will only confirm what they suspects about us. Something Steyn said so brilliantly. "A civilization that will not stand for anything, is dead already."
I have to mix with Liberals everyday. The trumpets have been sounding retreat since 9/12/01.
I thought that up until a week or two ago. Now I believe that a non-stop media propaganda campaign will fix the blame on Bush, in the public imagination.
Yup... it was a mini-TET for al Qaeda as well.
I am probably in the minority here on FR, but I happen to think that the President is very eloquent and very persuasive. I do not cringe (as many do) when he speaks. I do not care that he mangle his syntax. I do too. He doesn't have to be word perfect for me to understand him. I can follow him easily.
I was on another thread where someone was stating to me that America is anti-war. At first I took the stance that we are reluctantly pro-war. Then I began to think to myself of all the wars and conflicts (public and secret) that America has been involved in from the Revolutionary War up to present day Iraq/Afghanistan. Now I've come to the conclusion that we are actually quite pro-war.
However, maybe it is possible that beginning with the 90's, after our large military build up and the end of the Cold War, that Dems and MSM have successfully made us feel ashamed of our conflict ridden past. While secretly deep within the American mind we still desire the victory. That would explain the 'resurgance' in patriotism after 9/11 and our desire to eradicate the enemy which liberals quickly even within the month tried to make us feel guilty for.
I've quite decided that we are not a peaceful nation that avoids conflict. Our history as a nation just doesn't lend credence to that notion. We just need to not let Dems try to shame us for it. XD
I guess I'm a member of your minority. I would much rather hear Pres. Bush speak than a slick orator.
President Bush may speak ungrammically at times. I don't care a whit. He speaks flawlessly at other times.
Hollywood has influenced too many, including conservatives. I like a plain speaker, especially when I know he means what he says and is a good man. I thank God we have Pres. Bush as our leader rather those slick talking heads I see on TV every day.
They are going on about it and calling it a firing.
Of course they are. But they are also going on about the elections and the new Dem agenda.
Their attention is divided. Good time for the Rummy move IMO.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I can dress a pig up and call it a debutante, but its still a pig.
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