Mark Steyn: U.S. Must Prove Its Staying Power (Iraq Test Of US Seriousness Alert Mark Steyn Classic)

Chicago Sun Times ^ | November 12, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[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.

[PerConPat]

btt

[finnigan2]

"Also, Finnigan2 is wrong, he will still have to face these lynch mob committees even as a retiree."

- Oh, I'm sure that his enemies will try to drag him before their hearings if only to try and belittle, smear and lecture him with sarcasm and accusations so as to delight their left wing base. But maybe, as a civilian, Rumsfeld won't have one hand tied behind his back by having to be careful not to violate administration solidarity and not create waves.
I think that Rumsfeld unleashed to express his own views will be quite a handful, especially for a small minded bigot like "Nostrils" Waxman.

[claudiustg]

---Bad days ahead.---

Dumping Rummy out the door the day after elections and the President's comments on immigration reform were worse than the actual electoral loses. War on two fronts. Very bad days ahead.

[Tax-chick]

bttt
\

[voletti]

Nope.
Thats recisely the jihadist strategy.

Thats why this planned madness with wanton killings and bombings and bloodletting. Everyday. Ceaselessly. Droip drip drip.

All picture opportunities of blood and gore for the news cycle with no tactical or strategic value in pure military terms.

[kuma]

I believe that if they had the ability they would do alot more than drip, drip, drip. I do not think they would purposefully hold off larger attacks.

Certainly they have wanted to do much larger attacks and not just in the Middle East. They just haven't been successful because we have caught them in their planning stages.

Mark Steyn is trying to assert in this article that they are purposefully not doing large attacks on American soil as part of their strategy but the recent large scale attempt that was thwarted in London, which was headed for America, disproves his thinking.

They would, if they could.

[neverdem]

On April 29, 1975, hundreds of Americans and South Vietnamese were evacuated from Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, by helicopter. The following day the city was captured by the North Vietnamese, signaling the end of the Vietnam War.
UPI/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

While working as a journalist in Vietnam, Nayan Chanda took this photo of a Communist tank entering the presidential palace in Saigon on April 30, 1975. Chanda, now editor of YaleGlobal Online, will speak about his experiences there at a panel marking the 30th anniversary of the event.

AP
An anti-American demonstration in Tehran after Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in November 1979.

AP
The scorched wreckage of an American C-130 Cargo aircraft involved in the failed August 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages.

AP
Blindfolded and with his hands bound, an American hostage is led by young militants to a mob in front of the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran in November 1979.

Vietnam started the precedent.

[Cyropaedia]

My take is Americans would STILL be solidly behind Iraq if the President was going to do whatever it takes to win. But I beg to differ with Mark here: if all we're going to be doing is engage in a long drawn out colonial policing operation, then the Democrats are right: its time to leave. If the President won't put enough boots on the ground to win, its time to pull up stakes and go home. America is not suited to be an imperial overlord and we don't want the thankless role of one.

Amen to that. As of now were locked into holding pattern waiting for the Iraqis to become competent enough and dedicated enough to to do the heavy lifting themselves. God only knows how long that will actually take.

[Bonaparte]

" The terrorists have every intent of attacking America again they just haven't been able to pull it off."

Just as soon as the democrats get their way, the terrorists will be able to pull it off. Then the electorate will go back to electing Republicans with the demand for stronger national defense. After a few years of stronger national defense, the electorate will once again complain that miraculous instant results were not achieved and will go back to voting democrat. Then the cycle will repeat itself over and over again. The terrorists are well aware of this and will exploit this idiocy, patiently taking us down piece by piece.

[Cincinna]

Mort Kondracke stated this weekend on Beltway Boys that America is going to need a "second Pearl Harbor" before it wakes up to the real threat we are under in Iraq, and at home. Sad and tragic, but true.

[Running On Empty]

Marking

[ModelBreaker]

they are going to get the blame.

Not if W does the bipartisan crap. That gives the dems political cover for forcing surrender. If we surrender, W needs to make them make us in public.

[Rightfootforward]

BTTT

[bygolly]

"Mort Kondracke stated this weekend on Beltway Boys that America is going to need a "second Pearl Harbor" before it wakes up to the real threat we are under in Iraq, and at home. Sad and tragic, but true."

He's simply stating the obvious, but no matter how obvious, some must learn the hard way, the deadlier way...and all of us will pay a price...

[sonic109]

The United States is declining on an accelerating trend towards ineffectual Euro-Socialism..
Good quote yourself there buddy .
I give the US 10 years tops.

[sonic109]

Good on e bro..

[liberty_lvr]

I think you have made an outstanding point that seems to be lost in all the noise these days, both here on FR and of course in the clown-car media.

The President and his administration have clearly laid out all along the very 5 points you listed as conditions for victory and withdrawal. But nobody seems to be listening or even cares.

Personally I agree with you 100%: we are winning, progress has been nothing short of amazing considering the opposition, and I'm astounded anybody thinks this should have all been accomplished in barely 4 years. Thanks for your candor and standing up for what we all know is the truth but have been afraid to articulate ourselves.

[Rummyfan]

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.

Unfortunately for many voters, the minimum wage and PBA legality and homo marriage are over-riding concerns. They'll get a nasty shock next time we are attacked.

[Eagles6]

I have become aware that many citizens of this great country hate America and/or are only interested in what the country will do for them. They are represented by the democrats.

Keeping them safe from barbarians who want to saw their heads off is too esoteric. When homocide bombers start blowing themselves up in malls, they will be the ones screaming 'How could this happen?".