thedrifter
01-16-07, 08:06 AM
No term limits in debate over Iraq
January 16, 2007
BY JOHN O SULLIVAN
Well, what is it -- a "surge" or an "escalation?" President Bush and his GOP supporters have been very careful to describe his sending an additional 22,000 American troops to Iraq as a "surge," while Democrats and their media allies have generally preferred the term "escalation."
They both seem to think that "escalation" will remind the voters of Vietnam--allegedly an "unwinnable" war. This is possible, of course, but it suggests a higher degree of historical attentiveness in the voters than they usually show.
And voters might even notice that escalation was the policy of the Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson. It was Richard Nixon who "de-escalated" and began a policy called "Vietnamization."
That is very similar to the argument advanced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in his televised response to the president that the United States should withdraw from Iraq to persuade Iraqis to settle their differences peacefully.
But Nixon never imagined that American withdrawal would increase U.S. influence or persuade Vietnamese factions to compromise. On the contrary, in return for de-escalation and Vietnamization, he extracted promises from both Democrats and dove-ish Republicans that they would continue military aid to South Vietnam against invasion by Hanoi.
When the inevitable happened in April 1975, however, Congress reneged on its explicit promises of support, cut off spare parts and ammunition supplies and helped North Vietnam to invade, defeat, occupy and oppress America's South Vietnamese allies. There were even notes of relief and triumph in the bipartisan liberal establishment of those days at the result. What most people actually got under the new regimes, however, was genocide, "re-education camps," forced migration in small boats across hostile oceans and more deaths than had occurred in the long wars.
Over the protests of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the post-Watergate Congress dominated by Democrats and Republican doves switched sides. America backed the winners of the "unwinnable" war in its final days. It then turned its eyes away from the consequences of its betrayal.
Oceans of ink have been spilled by anti-war historians to justify or obscure what happened in 1975. But the controversy looms as an ominous background over the debate on Iraq.
That is why the Democrats have been wriggling uncomfortably in their response to Bush's new approach. My colleague Rich Lowry on the National Review asks: "Why don't the Democrats have the intellectual honesty to say that they think the war is lost and that we should get out of Iraq?"
As Lowry points out, it is also what most of their grass-roots supporters, now more influential because of the blogosphere, want them to say. They have been given cover by Republican doves such as Sen. Chuck Hagel who have had the intellectual honesty to say what they think. The establishment media express similar views. And opinion polls suggest that the American people lean slightly in their direction.
So what holds them back? There are four reasons for their caution--three of which represent hangovers from Vietnam:
First, they fear being blamed for the consequences that might flow from a U.S. withdrawal. These could include massacres of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, ethnic cleansing, refugees flooding into Jordan and Saudi Arabia or Iran, the overthrow of friendly regimes in the region, a wider war, and so on. After Vietnam we forgot about the region for two decades. That helped the doves of both parties to avoid responsibility for the Cambodian genocide and the Vietnamese boat people. The Middle East is too important to be neglected in this way. Similar disasters would be widely debated -- and maybe laid at their door.
Second, Bush's new policy might succeed and make the Democrats' defeatism look foolish and unpatriotic. Admittedly, this is unlikely -- the odds are now against the president -- but it is not impossible. If it were to happen, Bush might be hailed in the Middle East as a liberator.
Third, Democrats could seem to be weak on national security even if the public agrees with them on withdrawal. Most Americans were against continued U.S. participation in the Vietnam War by 1970, but they wanted neither an American defeat nor a North Vietnamese victory. By cutting off all support to the South Vietnamese, the Democrats gave the impression of not really caring about the U.S. defeat and even welcoming it as a punishment for American arrogance. Under President Jimmy Carter, they went further and embraced the post-Vietnam Syndrome of reluctance to get involved abroad. When this led to the worldwide depiction of the U.S. as a "pitiful, helpless giant," Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets and American diplomats were held hostage in Tehran. It has taken 15 years for the Democrats to shake off the reputation as weak on national security that they then gained. They won't risk regaining it over Iraq.
Finally, the Democrats are rationally nervous of being too closely identified with their grass-roots extremists and the "politics of anger" they embody. In an important new book, A Bee in the Mouth, (Encounter Books, N.Y.), Peter Wood points out that the expression of self-righteous anger has become mainstream on the Internet and that some of its harshest practitioners, such as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Web site Daily Kos, have become influential inside the Democratic establishment and with figures such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The latter believe they are tapping into a reservoir of public anti-Bush anger via these intermediaries. But Zuniga has expressed such harsh sentiments as "I feel nothing. . . . Screw them" about the four American contractors who were lynched in Iraq. If the Democrats hew too closely to the "angry left" today, they risk suffering the same taint of extremism marked their association with the anti-war movement in the 1970s.
No wonder the Democrats are being combative and shifty at the same time.
Ellie
January 16, 2007
BY JOHN O SULLIVAN
Well, what is it -- a "surge" or an "escalation?" President Bush and his GOP supporters have been very careful to describe his sending an additional 22,000 American troops to Iraq as a "surge," while Democrats and their media allies have generally preferred the term "escalation."
They both seem to think that "escalation" will remind the voters of Vietnam--allegedly an "unwinnable" war. This is possible, of course, but it suggests a higher degree of historical attentiveness in the voters than they usually show.
And voters might even notice that escalation was the policy of the Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson. It was Richard Nixon who "de-escalated" and began a policy called "Vietnamization."
That is very similar to the argument advanced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in his televised response to the president that the United States should withdraw from Iraq to persuade Iraqis to settle their differences peacefully.
But Nixon never imagined that American withdrawal would increase U.S. influence or persuade Vietnamese factions to compromise. On the contrary, in return for de-escalation and Vietnamization, he extracted promises from both Democrats and dove-ish Republicans that they would continue military aid to South Vietnam against invasion by Hanoi.
When the inevitable happened in April 1975, however, Congress reneged on its explicit promises of support, cut off spare parts and ammunition supplies and helped North Vietnam to invade, defeat, occupy and oppress America's South Vietnamese allies. There were even notes of relief and triumph in the bipartisan liberal establishment of those days at the result. What most people actually got under the new regimes, however, was genocide, "re-education camps," forced migration in small boats across hostile oceans and more deaths than had occurred in the long wars.
Over the protests of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the post-Watergate Congress dominated by Democrats and Republican doves switched sides. America backed the winners of the "unwinnable" war in its final days. It then turned its eyes away from the consequences of its betrayal.
Oceans of ink have been spilled by anti-war historians to justify or obscure what happened in 1975. But the controversy looms as an ominous background over the debate on Iraq.
That is why the Democrats have been wriggling uncomfortably in their response to Bush's new approach. My colleague Rich Lowry on the National Review asks: "Why don't the Democrats have the intellectual honesty to say that they think the war is lost and that we should get out of Iraq?"
As Lowry points out, it is also what most of their grass-roots supporters, now more influential because of the blogosphere, want them to say. They have been given cover by Republican doves such as Sen. Chuck Hagel who have had the intellectual honesty to say what they think. The establishment media express similar views. And opinion polls suggest that the American people lean slightly in their direction.
So what holds them back? There are four reasons for their caution--three of which represent hangovers from Vietnam:
First, they fear being blamed for the consequences that might flow from a U.S. withdrawal. These could include massacres of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, ethnic cleansing, refugees flooding into Jordan and Saudi Arabia or Iran, the overthrow of friendly regimes in the region, a wider war, and so on. After Vietnam we forgot about the region for two decades. That helped the doves of both parties to avoid responsibility for the Cambodian genocide and the Vietnamese boat people. The Middle East is too important to be neglected in this way. Similar disasters would be widely debated -- and maybe laid at their door.
Second, Bush's new policy might succeed and make the Democrats' defeatism look foolish and unpatriotic. Admittedly, this is unlikely -- the odds are now against the president -- but it is not impossible. If it were to happen, Bush might be hailed in the Middle East as a liberator.
Third, Democrats could seem to be weak on national security even if the public agrees with them on withdrawal. Most Americans were against continued U.S. participation in the Vietnam War by 1970, but they wanted neither an American defeat nor a North Vietnamese victory. By cutting off all support to the South Vietnamese, the Democrats gave the impression of not really caring about the U.S. defeat and even welcoming it as a punishment for American arrogance. Under President Jimmy Carter, they went further and embraced the post-Vietnam Syndrome of reluctance to get involved abroad. When this led to the worldwide depiction of the U.S. as a "pitiful, helpless giant," Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets and American diplomats were held hostage in Tehran. It has taken 15 years for the Democrats to shake off the reputation as weak on national security that they then gained. They won't risk regaining it over Iraq.
Finally, the Democrats are rationally nervous of being too closely identified with their grass-roots extremists and the "politics of anger" they embody. In an important new book, A Bee in the Mouth, (Encounter Books, N.Y.), Peter Wood points out that the expression of self-righteous anger has become mainstream on the Internet and that some of its harshest practitioners, such as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Web site Daily Kos, have become influential inside the Democratic establishment and with figures such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The latter believe they are tapping into a reservoir of public anti-Bush anger via these intermediaries. But Zuniga has expressed such harsh sentiments as "I feel nothing. . . . Screw them" about the four American contractors who were lynched in Iraq. If the Democrats hew too closely to the "angry left" today, they risk suffering the same taint of extremism marked their association with the anti-war movement in the 1970s.
No wonder the Democrats are being combative and shifty at the same time.
Ellie