Posted on 04/28/2007 12:37:33 AM PDT by B-Chan
Regarding the Iraq withdrawal measures in Congress, there is no way to avoid stating the obvious, but let me allow Mark Steyn's favorite Anglosphere head of government do it for me:
The US Congress' vote to push for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was wrong and will bring comfort to Al-Qaeda insurgents, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Friday. ..."I think it is wrong, and I don't think it is doing anything other than giving great comfort and encouragement to Al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq," Howard said....If there is a perception of an America defeat in Iraq, that will leave the whole of the Middle East in great turmoil and will be an enormous victory for terrorism."The term "War on Terrorism" may have been coined as a slogan, but it has turned out to be precisely apposite. The war really is a war against a specific terrorist technique, the suicide bombing, which was introduced into the Middle East in the 1980s and has been under successful development ever since. To everyone's surprise, this tactic in Iraq proved capable of producing sustained casualties comparable to anti-population aerial bombardment, but of course the most spectacular attacks of that kind to date occurred in the United States on 911. The withdrawal measures just passed by Congress are, in effect, declarations that 911 succeeded. The mystery is why anyone would expect those declarations to reduce the number of suicide bombings. If they work, there will be more of them. You could write an algorithm.
In reality, the situation in Iraq shows no sign of unraveling: rather the opposite, if you consider developments in Anbar Province. An American withdrawal is more likely to begin than to end next year. The argument in next year's presidential election will probably be about whether the shaky stabilization of Iraq was worth the cost, not whether the war is winnable. Or maybe not: Congress could get what it wished for.
Let me remark that I do not regard as illegitimate the withdrawal measures that were included in the military funding bills for Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress was given the power to appropriate funds for precisely this kind of situation. Yes, Congress does have the ultimate authority to tell the Commander-in-Chief what to do, and even how to do it. The spotless legality of these measures, however, in no way diminishes the fact they are literally suicidal. They are the gateway to a future, and not a distant one, in which cable news is showing the smoldering, slightly radioactive ruins of where the Capitol building used to be, and then cutting away to a room deep under Cheyenne Mountain, where some relatively junior cabinet officer is taking the oath of office as the new president.
After 911, Congress failed to pass legislation that would make assembling a new Congress easier in the event of a successful decapitation attack. That is a great pity.
* * *
And who is to blame for these morose reflections? Well, Mark Steyn is half right:
What these guys, the enemy understand more clearly than the Democrats do, is that America loses wars on the home front. You canít beat them with the tanks and the planes and the battleships, but you can beat them on the TV networks and in Congress, and in demoralizing the home front.Actually, the Democratic Party these days is not so much a political force as an opportunistic infection. The people responsible for this sorry state of things are in the Bush Administration. They misplayed a strong hand with a thoroughness that approaches genius. Any government can undersupply a war; the Bush Administration managed not to mention for months at a time the war it was undersupplying. Instead ... the Administration compulsively pursued its domestic obsessions without regard to the environment. Even Small Government Conservative Mark Steyn is starting to get a glimmer of the real problem:
But frankly, I think the idea that part of the Republican base essentially wants just to talk about small government and low tax cuts and all the rest of it, yeah, Iím all for those things. But you canít have those things if you have no credibility around the world as a superpower, and youíre being picked off on all kinds of strategic fronts.The Weekly Standard promoted the term "National Greatness" to describe the magazine's favored synthesis of a forward US strategic posture abroad, combined with a a Reaganite, "get the government off my back" philosophy at home. National Greatness was supposed to marry Cold War conservatism to small-government, quasi-libertarian conservatism for the post-Cold War era. Candidate George Bush in 2000 was not much taken with National Greatness: his interest in foreign affairs was perfunctory. John McCain, rather, was the candidate of the Weekly Standard. After 911, when foreign engagement was no longer optional, President Bush perforce came around to the National Greatness way of thinking, and tried to govern with the political coalition that National Greatness commended.
In the event, National Greatness turned out not to be a marriage, but a deal with the devil. The defense against the Jihad became dependent on political activists who rejected the possibility of effective government and had even less interest in geopolitics than George Bush had had. Predictably, the domestic side of the deal reneged. The objectionable thing about Mephistopheles is not that he takes you to Hell, but that his checks bounce.
We are in deep trouble.
I find it odd that around here we are constantly (and properly) complaining about liberal school policies, liberal media, and the coarsening of our culture, but when someone states the obvious, such as the fact that we are winning the war on the ground but are dying of self-inflicted wounds on the home front, people freak out.
It's time we face facts. The Democrats are a loathsome bunch and the American people don't seem to LIKE them, but the attitude of the huge majority of Americans, educated in liberal schools and "informed" by liberal media and cajolled by liberal opinionmakers, is that they don't care about right, wrong, or who dies, just get us OUT of Iraq, and then we can just hunker down in our homes in front of or TV sets and then the world will leave us alone.
And the Dems are perfectly poised to take the White House in 2008, which will only speed up our descent into ignorant shirking from fierce engagment with the world, to be replaced by a sheepish, appeasing America that doesn't care about our principles as codified in the Constitution, as long as we can pretend the adherents of the "religion of peace" LIKE us.
Fear not. Things will work itself out over time (micro- economics).
Joseph Goebbels attempted the same technique...In our current state of affairs, it just takes more time, that’s all.
We are losing this and the price for failure will be high indeed. I guess the dems and others who don’t understand the nature of the enemy will have to learn it the hard way. Despite many who think this is and insist on claiming this is Vietnam all over again will find out how different this war is when the jihadists bring it to our schools, malls, and stadiums. But even then I think they’ll just turn around and say it’s Bush’s fault as it’s the only mantra they understand. Their pollyanna psyche can’t handle the idea of real evil so they’d rather stick their heads in the sand. Well I say to hell with them. As for me and mine we’ll be preparing for what will be a long bloody conflict on American soil.
Only if you believe the media and people like Harry Reid.
The Korean War was similar to the Iraq War because it was fought
While Democrat Harry Truman was president,
Correspondents
BTW, 30,000 Americans died in Korea in the 30 months that Truman was still president.
Talk about your major blunders, if the Truman administration hadn't first removed our troops from South Korea, we would not have needed to go back to free the South Koreans from the invading troops of Kim il-Sung.
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