On the Democrats, Republicans, and the waging of the war.

I've made no secret of the fact that I was very uncomfortable with invading Iraq. I wasn't blogging *before* the actual event, so there is no googleable record to support that contention, but I've always been uncomfortable with the conduct of what appear to be optional wars. At the same time, as a career soldier, I also know that it isn't my responsibility to choose those wars, that decision is left to the President and Congress.

I never fooled myself by thinking we were going to see a nice, tidy, democracy-in-our-style government in the region. I've long made the point that we've taken 400 years to get where we are in our style of governance, and that was building on a tradition brought from England which had it's own hundreds of years of evolution. A democracy-as-we-know-it wasn't going to spring fully-formed from the forehead of this beast.

I do believe in finishing what you started, and accepting responsibility for the outcomes, to include the unintended consequences - hence I have supported doing what we can to wrap things up as best we can - and disagree with those who would just have us leave, yesterday. And that includes putting pressure on the Iraqi government to do what it needs to do to be a "big boy" government. But one reason I wasn't keen on starting is that I had, and still have, doubts that "We the People" had the gumption to sustain the effort at the level of pain it was going to take to do a make-over of this magnitude. Even if, in comparison, the pain in terms of dead, wounded, and psychologically scarred is really rather low compared to other historical endeavors. Oh, we can suck up things like Bosnia and Kosovo, because there wasn't a steady trickle of fatalities, trumpeted by the press.

And we can stand the casualties, don't fool yourself. The services suffer an attrition due to on and off-duty accidents in the region of 2K per year - and nobody gave a flying flip. The press would report it when it happened, certainly, but no one, other than the families of the casualties, or when there was some newsworthy element such as malfeasance, really got exercised about it. But now we find people who before could give a rat's ass rending their garments and tearing their hair in their distress.

To be sure, many are genuinely and appropriately concerned about the casualty count among the Iraqi people. But in some respects, rather than see the threat that represents (an enemy who does that putatively to his own people) they just want to go away. Some for good reasons - the logic that says *we* are the spark, if we depart, things will calm down (certainly possible, at least to an extent). But the ones who really chap my butt are the ones who just want it all to end badly, because, well, they hate Bush. Or the Republicans. Or Conservatives. Or, fill-in-the-blank. Anything to damage their internal political enemy. They, and their fellow-travelers, the "This is just Vietnam all over again" crowd, some of whom seem to just be trying to relive the heady days of college in the late 60's.

Which is one reason why this passage is so refreshing, from Dan Gordon, over at The American Thinker (warning for the excessively PC-bound - an appropriate use of the N-word follows}:

"No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

That was the battle cry of my generation, or rather it was the retreat from battle cry of my generation. The great Mohamad Ali said it, and like so many other things he said, he was of course right about this one. No Viet Cong ever did use the N word against him and truth be told no Viet Cong ever did a bad thing to me. That is because the Viet Cong stayed in Vietnam and once we left they didn't follow us.

That perhaps is why it is so frightening to see the ghosts of the Vietnam War protest movement haunting the current war in Iraq. Bring the troops home. End the war. Stop the carnage. Throw the Republican bastards out. I embraced it the first time around. To do so this time, however, I believe is suicide.

Hmmmm. This is a critique from the left.

I know you don't like Bush. I don't like Bush. Nobody likes Bush. Fair enough. He lied to you. He mangles the language. You can't trust him. He's in hock to Halliburton. He has some weird daddy complex. Whatever you want to believe about him, believe it. Fair enough. You win. No arguments.

And you don't like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listened to Chalabi. They shouldn't have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld's a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I'll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that's a lie too.

Ooops.

What do you mean, oops?

Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.

What part?

The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.

You've got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al—Qaeda!

Maybe not, but there is now.

Well, who's fault is that?

Doesn't matter.

What do you mean it doesn't matter?

I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how we got there. It doesn't matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn't matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al—Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al—Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

Read Mr. Gordon's whole thing here. As always, I commend you to click through the link and make your own judgements.

I would note that you may think it's appropriate to fire Bush and the Republicans for having stirred up this nest at this time. You may be right. Oddly enough, President Bush knew this going in. When he was delivering the Dole Leadership Lecture last month, General (R) Myers told us about those first, dark days after 9/11. And he quoted Bush at a National Security Council meeting being held in the seldom-used White House bunker (and this is a paraphrase from memory - I'm confident of the meaning, but not the exact words) "We're going to have to do some things in the next couple of years that may make us a one-term administration. So be it."

Some of you who clicked through will read all the way down to the end and note that Dan Gordon is probably jewish, as he is a Captain in the reserves of the Israeli Army. Therefore his objectivity on the subject of Islamo-facism is suspect, right? Even though, gosh, Israelis have the most significant on-going contact with that particular component of the human family.

Okay. How about former Senator Bob Kerrey? Also coming from the left, and a Purple Heart Medal of Honor holder who understands the costs of combat. No chickenhawk here either. (Though I'm always amused by the trolls who insist if you are for the war but not *currently* serving - regardless of past service, you're a chickenhawk. Yes, such tortured brains exist.)

In today's Opinion-Journal he gets to the heart of many of my objections to many segments of the "Hurt Bush/End the War" camp.

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

Update: Forgot the link! Click here.

Intriguingly, if you take out the word incompetent from the first paragraph of that quote, it is very similar to something that General Myers said in his lecture. I find those parallels interesting.

In a sense, this lays out my problem with the next election. The Republicans are a wounded beast, and no one is exciting me as a Presidential candidate. But the Democrats scare me, in a metaphorical sense. Not because they're going to raise my taxes and diminish my personal wealth, I just expect that from them, and am doing what planning I can now to try and minimize that impact. If they'd tell me they were going to impose those taxes to pay for the war - oddly enough, I'm okay with that - except I expect them to tell me that, but do something completely different.

But more, the whole thing just depresses me (which will excite Howard Dean, because he can hope it will keep me away from the polls) as it reminds me of the state of the Greek city states prior to the battle of Chaeroneia. The time in Greek history when there was such a dearth of public spirit, such a malaise of self-interested factionalism, that Demosthenes couldn't rally the Greeks to unite in the face of the common enemy, as the factions were more interested in scoring points on each other seemingly for the purpose of scoring points.

The result? Phillip of Macedon defeated the Greeks, really putting the screws to Thebes. And gave us Alexander. The Greeks self-destructed. While I don't think it's quite that dire in our case, I'd hate to see our internal political squabbles giving rise to a new Xerxes or Saladin, either.