How Rank Partisanship Has Ruined Debate Over The Iraq War
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.
