Harry Reid has declared that “the war is lost” and that the U.S. “surge” in Iraq is no different from Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War. He adds that he’s sure that Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates share his opinion; about President Bush he isn’t so confident.
Later in the day, he tried to make his defeatism more nuanced, saying, “And as long as we follow the president’s path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course – and we must change course.”
Change course to what? Well, the Senator is still willing to fight “diplomatically, politically and economically”, but only so long as American troops cease being in a position to apply force inside Iraq. It would be fascinating to hear how negotiations, speech making and economic pressure are expected to influence men whose modus operandi is mass murder. And one also wonders why an enemy that had defeated the world’s great superpower on the battlefield would have any interest in negotiating anything but Danegeld.
But the foremost question is why Senator Reid, not at all uniquely among Democrats and liberals, seemed so blasé about his country’s having been, as he avers, defeated, and defeated by a particularly vicious, inhumane enemy. He sounds very little like Winston Churchill.
Earlier this year, the Democratic leadership had a golden opportunity to put itself into a win/win posture on the Iraqi campaign. The President had just appointed a new commander and announced the reversal of the “light footprint” policy of the past. Many Democrats had been complaining about inadequate numbers of troops in the field. Now they could applaud the “surge”, without political risk. If it went well, they could crow that they had finally forced the adoption of their own “smarter” way of war. If there was no progress, well, that would be the fault of the Administration’s incompetence; withdrawal could then be presented as a course of action reluctantly adopted faute de mieux.
Moreover, the Democrats’ support for the “surge” would have heightened the chances of success, enabling them to do good for their country as well as themselves. There’s no reason to doubt that one of the key factors that keeps the terrorists going in Iraq is their conviction that the U.S. is on the verge of running away. The sight of Americans on both sides of the political aisle drawing together to beat them would be profoundly demoralizing. Alas, it isn’t a sight that any mufsidun has yet seen.
As we all know, the Democrats found their opportunity easy to turn down, reacting to General Petraeus by voting to pull the plug on his soldiers’ efforts. The only rational explanation is that principle trumped cynical politics. The Dems shunned an easily grasped advantage, because they did not want to compromise their fundamental beliefs.
Unfortunately, the fundamental, uncompromisable belief appears to be that the war in Iraq must be lost. After that humiliation, there is a prospect that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack (“outsourcing is violence”) Obama, John Edwards et al. might be willing to take a stand somewhere. Just where we don’t know. Even less do we know why they would find a conflict in Afghanistan or Somalia or Jordan or Egypt or Saudi-controlled Arabia more endurable.
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