Posted on 11/12/2006 2:42:23 AM PST by goldstategop
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad. I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
Heh. I don't think he's proud exactly, I see him as rather humble. But he doesn't suffer fools gladly, and he has to know he is ten times the man any 'rat congresscritter (like Leaky Leahy or Henry Nostrilitis) will ever be.
Very, very, very true.......... I'm working seven days a week so I will try to say this to you quickly.
I think G.W. has a mental/speaking problem that have had often in my life, a life of sixty years. He has a speech problem ........... that will perhaps likely (and I say hopefully) be illuminated after his Presidency is completed.
I feel for him when this happens to him because I know it personally. There really is not a correct name for it, but I'd like to tell you more about it later. The work here at The Nursery calls.
Appreciation to you and please be well.
Tester is absolutely NOT a hawk. The Weekly Standard did a profile on him a few weeks ago and he said that war is "only a last resort" for him. Lieberman is solid and-if we can prevent any Pubbies from going soft-we can still muster a pro-war majority, but it is going to be more dificult.
After this I will stop. Let me explain. I stand by my statement that the President did not do ENOUGH to convince the electorate. If that is interpreted to mean that I blame him, then I have been inarticulate. I don't know if anyone , incuding Reagan, could have done enough given the situation.
I hear you.
We all need to read Steyn. He just says it all. Says it for us so eloquently.
Also, Finnigan2 is wrong, he will still have to face these lynch mob committees even as a retiree. The only silver lining to this is that he'll be able to rip them apart in the hearings. He so much smarter and he has nothing to lose.
Heh-heh.
We'll see.
God bless America. And let's see if he/she/God does bless America ................ and if he/she/God does, then the old media will evaporate and DIE.
I hear you .............. and you are right!
It's five o'clock somewhere!
Right. Les Aspin my favorite clintonoid appointment. Had made a reputation in the Senate for years as anti-military spending, so he becomes Sec of Defense and lo! he refuses to equip the troops. Yeah the MSM covered that story real well.
I agree. Mr. Rumsfeld can read the tea leaves.
I hope he can find peace soon. I love the man!
Totally agree....
Republicans understandably tout the lack of a major attack on America in the past 5 years. A good thing, of course. But are we missing the forest for the trees? It occurs to me the enemy has learned the "sleeping giant" lesson of Pearl and 9/11. America is not Madrid. Hit her and she hits back---hard. Radical Islamist leaders appear to have decided that indirect attacks can achieve victory without invoking an American military response.Bombs in Baghdad, ubiquitous on TV, are proving them right. Americans---who would have roared at another 9/11---looked at Baghdad and said, "At least it's not here. Can't we rest now?". The bombers will now move on to other Muslim countries, spreading the mayhem, while Americans throw their hands further in the air. With weakened American resolve, Arab leaders will have to accommodate the fanatics.
Then the same tactic will be used to enfeeble other allies. Sydney, London, Moscow, Seoul and others will be hit with ruthless attacks, ever more likely to involve chemical or nuclear weapons. Latin America will be radicalized. The "coalition of the willing" will slowly abandon us (and Israel). Every action we take in the war on terror will be seen as stirring up the hornet nest, not only abroad but by many here at home. It may take years, perhaps decades. But this is a very patient enemy. Eventually---when we are fully isolated---they will attack us at home. By then, where will we retaliate once the whole world is against us?
It is foolish and dangerous to allow American's to think all's fine as long as the explosions happen "over there". Bragging that we haven't been hit is shortsighted and may actually strengthen the enemy's hand. Someone very smart needs to devise a message that will make our countrymen understand the Big Picture, the long-term peril. Perhaps Giulliani could carry it off? It certainly needs to be part of the consideration as Republicans set their course for the future.
BTTT
They won't get the blame, but thanks for the optimism. Nixon and Ford got the blame for cutting and running in Vietnam (during the years we were not supposed to pay attention to the congress).
Anyway I always say when America's enemies bring the fight here (other than some sort of terrorist act, real war) the left and the political elites will flee America while wetting their pants.
We can disagree about it. It's okay. Just: If the electorate can't be convinced, then you can't blame a person for not being able to convince.
Well, looks can be deceiving.
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