Say Anything Blog

On March 20th of 2003 - three years, six months and 11 days ago today - we invaded Iraq.  There was no small amount of debate over whether or not we should invade prior to that date, but authority for ultimately invasion passed Congress with a fair amount of bi-partisan support (296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate).  Unfortunately, even after said three years, six months and 11 days have passed, some in this country are still in pre-invasion mode in that they’re still talking about the reasons we went to war.  They’re still questioning, still asking if invading was the right decision.

These people are, by-and-large, Democrats.

Now don’t get me wrong, from a historical standpoint a certain amount of introspection is a healthy thing.  That’s why we study history.  To find out what we did in the past and determine what worked and what didn’t.  But for those of us trying to live in the here and now all this rehashing of the past isn’t very productive.  The people doing it - again, Democrats - just can’t seem to realize that for better or worse we are in Iraq now and cannot make ourselves feel better simply by pulling our troops out and pretending as though it never happened.

Yet that is exactly what Democrats want us to believe.  They want the American public to buy into the idea that we can cut-and-run redeploy our troops from Iraq immediately and return America to a pre-9/11 mentality when we weren’t at war and Islamic terrorism was just something you saw in second-rate action movies.  Unfortunately for Democrats, that just isn’t true.  The leader of the terrorists we’re fighting in Iraq (though more spiritual than actual) has pointed to America’s policy of cutting-and-running from military operations in the past when things got tough for us as support for his theory that America could be defeated because it is unwilling to get its hands dirty in a sustained war.  This is a statement that is, interestingly enough, supported by the summary findings from the recently leaked/declassified National Intelligence Estimate.  That report stated: “Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.”  Which implies that the opposite is true as well.  If jihadists leave Iraq feeling, and appearing, as though they have won (or even simply not lost) against the west’s greatest power then more Muslims will be inspired to join the jihad.

While some Democrats may now question the wisdom of invading Iraq, and may well have opposed the war before we even invaded, they simply have to understand that retreating from Iraq on any grounds other than a complete victory is absolute folly in terms of the larger war on terror.  Whether these Democrats like it or not, we are in Iraq and failure to win there will hand the terrorists a massive victory that will only embolden them to carry on their jihad against the west.

I know that Democrats get this (I can’t imagine an intelligent person not getting it), so why is it that whenever they talk about Iraq the topics they seem most interested in are our reasons for invasion?  Why do their only policy suggestions for Iraq focus on premature withdrawal of our troops? 

My personal feeling is that, for Democrats, their position on the war is not so much about sound foreign policy as it is about political opportunity.  They know we live in a fast-food, “what have you done for me lately” society.  Americans are impatient, and the realities of a long and complex foreign conflict are difficult for the average citizen to swallow especially when that citizen’s primary source for information about the conflict is more interested in sensational headlines and short, shallow, easily-digestible reporting than objective journalism.  So they’re capitalizing on that.  They’re playing on the average citizen’s impatience and cynicism by portraying the war as not worth fighting, and offering an “easy out” short-term solution for it.  “Let’s just withdraw our troops,” they tell us.  “Then everything will be better.”

In the short term maybe things would be better, but in the long term withdrawal from Iraq would certainly make our enemies more bold in the war/jihad they’re waging against us.  And emboldening our enemies only serves to make us less safe.

What this country should be having is a serious national debate about how we’re going to win in Iraq.  How we’re going to honor the commitment we made to that nation’s citizens by completing our mission and supporting their fledgling democracy.  And we could be having that debate, except that Democrats aren’t interested in it.  They’re not interested in winning in Iraq, they’re interested in making Iraq look like a mistake and a failure so they can sell the American people on the “easy out” solution.

The way President Bush has waged the war in Iraq hasn’t been perfect.  Mistakes have been made, strategies have been formulated and then abandoned, but one thing you cannot say about Bush or the majority Republicans supporting him is that they are unserious about waging the war in Iraq and leaving that country victorious.

That is something you can say about Democrats, though.