The Time For Grace and Humility Has Long Since Passed

Flopping Aces ^ | 08/31/07 | Scott Malensek

[Starman417]

I have the greatest respect and admiration for Peggy Noonan. In my opinion she is one of the greatest political writers of the 20th Century. However, her latest piece in the Wall Street Journal is not an idea, but a plea. It’s not a call for grace, but a call for further acquiescence and submission to the desires for political power sought on the left at the nation’s expense.
 
It's nice to believe that if President Bush bowed to his opponents and showed them grace or made it clear that it's not unpatriotic to oppose, but contrary to Ms Noonan's piece, there is nothing to be gained. The leaders of the left cannot lose sight of their objective: political gain at America's expense. As she pointed out so well, entire careers are invested in America's defeat in Iraq, and those political leaders who seek the deliberate division of the nation for their own political careers are not going to switch gears and respond in kind to overtures of unity from the President. He's tried it since the 11/06 elections, and instead of unity the war's opponents barraged with a laundry list of non-binding legislation designed to openly, freely, and with great conviction declare that the war is lost rather than move towards a center and see hope.

• This deliberate division isn't lost on the American people.
• 54% disagree with the Democrats that the war is not lost.
• Approval of the Democrats' Congress has plummeted to 18% (which Sen. Reid blames on the President-huh?), and
• Only 3% of Americans approve of the Democrats' Congress' handling of the Iraq War.

Yet it continues. Why? Because as Ms Noonan points out, careers are invested in seeing the President fail regardless of the effect on the nation

Sorry Ms. Noonan, but you said it yourself,

Not only hearts and minds are invested in a particular stand. Careers are, too. Candidates are invested in a position they took; people are dug in, caught. Every member of Congress is constrained by campaign promises: "We'll fight" or "We'll leave." The same for every opinion spouter--every pundit, columnist, talk show host, editorialist--all of whom have a base, all of whom pay a price for deviating from the party line, whatever the party, and whatever the line. All this freezes things. It makes immobile what should be fluid. It keeps people from thinking.

Your typical American doesn’t have the time or desire to invest themselves in the details of the war in Iraq or the war on terror in general. They want to be led. They need to be led. It’s just easier than thinking. And so it is that political opposition to “Bush’s War” continues. It’s not just apathy or disdain for a President, but it’s a matter of average lives. This war is simply not a part of every American’s every day life. They see the bodies on the news, hear the political choice between “just keep enduring the awful news” vs. “We can just leave and everything will be ok because it’s all this bad President’s fault,” and they say, gosh, that second sounds better, and I don’t really understand XYZ about the war, so I might as well oppose it. After all, everyone dislikes war. Everyone should oppose war unless there’s a good reason for it, and that reasoning is lost to the hatred from the political left’s leaders who have nothing to offer as an alternative to the inescapable path we now see in Iraq.

The grace and unity that Ms. Noonan hopes would be forthcoming from Presidential grace and humility. Yet, that has never been the case. When the President reaffirmed time and again that there was no intelligence connecting Saddam to the 911 attacks, his opponents still claimed he was misleading and connecting the two unjustly. When the President repeatedly said that the expected vast stockpiles of WMD were not found, his opponents chose to continue their “Bush Lied” rantings rather than reply with similar “grace and humility.”

There’s no doubt that national unity is needed, but the problem is not the President’s rhetoric. The problem is the deliberate division of the nation from people who lead the calls for retreat not after hearing military or intelligence briefings, but after meeting with MoveOn.org and Code Pink leaders. For those “leaders” who oppose the strongest and the loudest are people who have no leadership to offer. They are empty hats who are still fighting the 2000 and 2004 elections. The Democratic Party needs opposition to the war as a wedge issue, according to months-worth of polling from multiple sources, they're losing that wedge issue, and yet they still oppose the war. If they don't oppose in the face of all evidence and logic, then they lose the most emotional issue their party has, the weak glue that binds the DNC coalition together would be torn, and the years of deliberately misleading their constituents and base would be seen (it’s been shown, but not seen).
Can you imagine the horror for those who so strongly oppose the war;not the horror of genocide in Iraq, or the nightmare of a regional war with global effects, and certainly not the abyss that is an Al Queda victory in Iraq? No, can you imagine the horror of someone like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his KOSsacks seeing America succeed at anything during a Republican Presidency? The core of the opposition to the war is opposition to the President. It’s just that simple.

Make no mistake about it, the surge will end soon. It’s a temporary rise in the number of troops in Iraq. The number of troops will decline, and troops will come home. Also make no mistake about it, whether the Democratic Party nominates Senator: Clinton, Obama, or Edwards, tens of thousands of American troops will remain in Iraq. That nominee will continue the war if elected, and all of a sudden the exact same arguments to continue the war that the left rails against when they come from anyone with an R next to their title will be the exact same arguments that a Democratic President will be making in 2009, and a Senate Majority leader Reid will all of a sudden declare that the war is no longer lost because someone with a D is now in charge.

They don’t care one iota about the nation or what happens in Iraq as long as they have political power, and if Ms. Noonan or others believe that the path to national unity rests with more grace and humility expressed to the war’s opponents, they are wrong.

The path to unity is either through:

• putting Democrats in power so they too have to publicly support the war, or
• expose the selfish, deliberate political division of the nation for what it is, and watch the American people cease their support for the left’s lies and misleading (which is what’s happening).

By making success as clear as it has been this year, the US military is doing what is impossible for President Bush to do-expose the defeatists’ selfish political motivations, and degrade opposition to the war. It’s working. In Iraq, there’ve been huge, clear military accomplishments. The Iraqi government has a lot more to accomplish, but it’s perfectly clear to all Americans that the Iraqi Parliament is more efficient and has accomplished more than the Democrats’ Congress, and the contrast between success in Iraq and the claims from Democratic Party leaders that all is lost has lead to a massive destruction of popular American support for those leaders as well as their vain opposition to Bush’s War.

The American people are seeing the war in Iraq for what it is and what it is not. By seeing that it is not just Bush’s War, they are recognizing that those misleading leaders who tried to take a struggle of Americans in combat, are too often partisan hacks seeking power and not dissenting patriots defending our nation, our interests, or the inalienable human rights defined in our Declaration of Independence. Being more humble or graceful to the people who portray the war as “Bush’s War” has not garnered more support for the war, it has not brought more unity in the past, and it will not now.

[penelopesire]

Great Piece!!