Many observers, left and right, have begun to take note of the
gap between the Democrats’ defeatist rhetoric on Iraq and the
reality on the ground. Karl Rove observed in the Wall Street
Journal last week that the Democrats’ stubborn insistence that
the surge has failed makes them look out of touch and, worse, as if
they were rooting for America’s defeat.
Rove threw in a canny piece of advice: “They’d be better off
arguing success allows America to accelerate the return of our
troops rather than appear to deny the progress those troops are
making.”
Why haven’t the Democrats declared victory in Iraq and
suggested now is the time to go home? The answer is that they have
become obsessed with fighting the last war — the last
political war against George W. Bush.
In fact, they are so obsessed with proving Bush’s malfeasance
and mendacity that they cannot accept that he was right on the
surge or that Iraq in any sense can be determined a success.
The reduction in U.S. causalities has deprived Democrats of the
most obvious objection to the war. So they have shifted to
complaining about the cost of the war. “For the cost of the war we
could…” they begin, and then fill in the blank with the social
program on which they would most have liked to have spent the
money.
Their political dilemma is further complicated by the fact that
Republicans have nominated the man who put all of his political
chips on the surge and championed the policy that is now
succeeding. Admitting “success” is a recognition of the wisdom and
tenacity of not only the current president’s policy, but also of
their current opponent in the fight for the White House.
If they declared “victory” they would be declaring “John
McCain’s victory,” and they certainly will not do that. Ever. The
Democrats are left to hope against hope, and their country’s
interests, that things worsen again in Iraq and the surge proves
not so successful after all.
BARRING THAT catastrophe, they are left to argue that the surge’s
success is really a “trap,” obligating us to continue our troop
commitment indefinitely. Thus, their obvious delight over (and
willingness to twist the meaning of) McCain’s remark about a
potential “100 year” military presence in Iraq.
But if Americans are willing to listen for a paragraph or two,
rather than a soundbite, they will understand that the “trap” is no
more a trap than any of our other military commitments, so long as
the level of violence in Iraq subsides.
As McCain has pointed out, Americans are mature enough to accept
and in fact support our many ongoing military obligations around
the world. What they were unwilling to support was a high level of
American casualties and an absence of any strategy for reducing
them.
So the Democrats have boxed themselves into rooting against
victory in a war that their arch enemy Bush began and that their
new opponent vows to win. Hillary Clinton promises to “win the war
in Afghanistan and end the one in Iraq.” The inconvenient truth is
that the reasons for prevailing in Afghanistan apply equally in
Iraq and the consequences of losing in Iraq would be just as dire
as a defeat in Afghanistan.
For now she and the other Democrats have no other position they
can advocate. To change course would mean that Bush and McCain were
right and they were wrong about the surge’s success. They therefore
continue to tell us that all is lost and nothing has changed.
They have every right do so, of course. And voters have every
right to pick a president who does not live in a political
fantasyland.
