Brits to begin Iraq pullout
Tony Blair will reportedly announce in Commons tomorrow that
his government will withdraw about half the British force in Iraq by Christmas. Then, no doubt, the Shia militias will turn on each other in the British-patrolled south. Anyway, there goes the alliance. America is on its own. Time for us to start bringing our men and women home too, in stages.
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I don't agree with Sean Hannity on much, but on this issue I think he's right. If this war is lost, it will be, like Vietnam, lost on the home front. The Democrats, on the whole, care more about getting the White House in '08 than they do about what happens in the Mid-East. This is why they are doing everything possible to undermine the war effort short of stopping the funding; they know the latter would be a political disaster, and they don't have the courage of their convictions to ignore the potential political fallout (hence these fatuous non-binding resolutions -- gives the Congressional cowards the chance to eat their cake and have it too). Of course, the mainstream media are in bed with them on this, same as in Vietnam (remember how the Tet offensive, which was a disaster for the Viet-Cong, was portrayed as a victory in the U.S. press?) This war may have been a bad idea, but it was winnable (maybe not anymore). There is, however, no doubt that a pullout, redeployment, or whatever you may want to call it will embolden the Jihadists. We as a nation are becoming the gutless wonder that a lot of them already think we are.
I disagree, Rob. For that to be true, you have to believe that winning or losing the war is not a matter of material reality, but of will. I simply don't see how anything short of massive and overwhelming force, of the sort that we wouldn't deploy even if we had it to deploy, which we don't, will keep the natural forces of ethnic and religious hatred from expressing themselves in civil war. In short, I don't think this war is winnable anymore. It might have been, in 2003, but I think it's gone beyond our ability to control. And that's not because the American people lacked the will to fight. It's because the American people lacked good leadership -- and because this was a war we were very unlikely to win, given the strategic and social realities on the ground in Iraq. The Hannity view, though, will insulate pro-war Republicans from criticism, if it's believed. They'll be able to say that we lost not because the war was ill-conceived or terribly managed, but because the media and the left sapped our fighting spirit.
Rod -- I agree that the war may have been ill-conceived and was definitely terribly managed, but that doesn't take away from some (not all) responsibility on the part of the Left and the media. I'm far from a GOP/neo-con apologist, but I think Hannity et al. are partially right here. Their error is in not admitting the mismanagement.
Joel is the one with his facts wrong. Lets take the vote first, as its the most concrete. When I say left side of the aisle was against I don't mean it was ALL against, only that MOST of those considered on the left in US were against. Nor do I mean by "left" Democrats. Lloyd Bensen is not the "left" in my book. Ted Kennedy is, John Kerry is, Tip O'Neil was. Yes President Bush got a majority of the Congress to approve the first Gulf WAr -- by getting virtually all Republicans to join a minority of conservative Democrats. As for Grenada and Central America, the key votes went the same way. And major standard bearers of the left, notably Ted Kennedy opposed all the first three military actions I mentioned. So did Senator Kerry (who called the Grenada invasion the action of a "bully"). They're pretty mainstream in the American left I think. Now if you want to attack what I said, a much smarter tack than to deny that all of them were cause celebres of American imperialism to the left (I remember, I was there on college campuses at the time) would be to point out the horrific human cost of defeating the Communist insurgencies in Central America. That was real. But leftist support for actually defeating such insurgencies (in part of course because of the real criminal acts committed while fighting Communism there) -- that's not real, that's a fantasy Democrats made up after the fact.
CPA -- you nailed it. Same is true about the Soviet Union. If the Democrats would have had their way in the 80s (they mostly opposed Reagan at every turn) the Berlin wall would still be standing.
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