By Paul Beston on 6.22.06 @ 12:10AM
Two American warriors butchered by jihadi goons -- silence from the White House.
As if it were needed, the barbaric killings of two American
soldiers in Iraq, who were captured last Friday and found,
apparently beheaded, is another reminder of who we are fighting and
why we cannot leave, though by now most of us wish we could. Pfc.
Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25,
of Madras, Oregon, were butchered by jihadist followers of the
unlamented Abu Musab Zarqawi, their bodies left behind like common
dogs. Their killers gloated on websites: "We give the good news ...
to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by
slaughtering the two captured crusaders."
Meanwhile in Washington, the Democrats are determined to leave
Iraq and are preparing a resolution to do so. It's an
understandable impulse. Iraq is hard and bloody, requiring excesses
of courage far beyond the children's courage of the Democrats: up
for it if it's easy, the hell with it if it's not. Men like
Menchaca and Tucker had to call on excess courage every day to keep
themselves together. It's courage that few civilian Americans know
anything about, thanks to our all volunteer military that has
effectively created a new class structure in our country: the
warrior class, the working class, and the coffee/Internet cafe
class (wireless access, please).
The Democrats are not interested in abstract principles like
national honor and have never been willing to absorb the lessons of
appeasement taught in the years prior to World War II and during
various stages of the Cold War. Their last presidential candidate,
John Kerry, advocated recently that we pull out of Iraq by the end
of 2006. Then he said that maybe we could pull out by summer 2007.
It's anyone's guess whether the butchery of two more of our
soldiers and the desecration of their bodies will move his
capitulation schedule forward or back.
Then you have the Republicans, led by our silent President.
Though they have gotten plenty things wrong, including fighting the
war with too few troops, they have gotten one big thing right:
leaving too soon means defeat. For this, if not for other things,
the President deserves credit. Resisting the chorus of doomsayers
-- and the very much alive Vietnam syndrome -- over the last three
years has required extraordinary political will.
Yet even with that hardiness, Bush makes conservatives miss
Ronald Reagan much more often than he reminds them of him. The
killing of Menchaca and Tucker is a case in point. The President
was at a U.S.-E.U. meeting in Vienna and did not deign to comment
on the kidnapping and butchering of the two soldiers, both rare
events in this conflict that are chock-full of propaganda value for
the enemy, especially when their boasts are left unanswered. It is
impossible to imagine Reagan falling silent at such a time. On the
contrary, it is easy to imagine what Reagan might say, and easier
still to conjure the tone and manner in which he would say it.
No one, at this late date, expects President Bush to duplicate
Reagan's oratory, but his silence so far is another example of his
failure to recognize important symbolic moments until after they
have passed. Presidents do a lot of things through back channel
means that we never know about, but they also have a public role,
especially in a time of war. On the whole, over nearly six years,
Bush has been dreadful at this important part of the job.
A few weeks back, he was shamefully mealy-mouthed about the
allegations against the Marines in Haditha. All he could manage was
a pledge to punish the guilty, and he said nothing in support of
the Marine Corps in general, which should have been the thrust of
his comments. Instead, he seemed more concerned with demonstrating
to the enemy, and the media, what a sensitive war he is
running.
All of this makes me wonder whether we have enough outrage -- at
least in Washington -- to prevail in this struggle. The enemy has
plenty, of course, and not much else. We have rationalism and
pluralism and a whole lot of other things that make us proud, and
they're part of what we're fighting for, and fighting with. But
wars aren't won on rationalism alone, though they can surely be
lost that way.
Paul Beston is a writer in New York.
topics:
Islam, Military, Iraq
