Say Anything Blog

So proclaims James Taranto in today’s Wall Street Journal:

V-AP Day
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
By JAMES TARANTO
July 28, 2008

It is often said that the Vietnam War’s pivotal event was Walter Cronkite’s Feb. 27, 1968, editorial declaring after the Tet Offensive that America was “mired in stalemate” and “that the only rational way out . . . will be to negotiate, not as victors.” President Johnson is supposed to have told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

In the ensuing years America did indeed negotiate peace. After all U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, the Democrat-controlled Congress cut off all aid to the South Vietnamese government, making it easy for the communists to conquer that beleaguered land.

Forty years later, history is not repeating itself.

In a February 2006 article for The American Spectator (adapted from a November 2005 lecture to the Hudson Institute), we argued that journalists were following Cronkite’s Vietnam-era antiwar script. But, we noted, times had changed since 1968:

The ability of the partisan media to shape events is self-limiting. In the 1960s and ‘70s, journalists had a reputation, built up over decades, for objectivity and fairness—a reputation they have, to a significant degree, squandered. When Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War, it had an impact because he was known as “the most trusted man in America.” Is there any journalist today who comes anywhere close to wearing that mantle?

Just over 40 years after the Cronkite moment, this past Saturday might have seen its inverse. The Associated Press—which of late has been explicitly moving away from the old-style model of objective, impartial journalism in favor of an adversarial style called “accountability journalism”—delivered a surprising verdict on the war:

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace—a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

The dispatch from Baghdad includes both reasonable caveats (“That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq”) and the obligatory sneer (“The premature declaration by the Bush administration of ‘Mission Accomplished’ in May 2003 . . .”). But the overall message is unmistakable. And as for those who either crave defeat or think it inevitable—well, if they’ve lost the AP, they’ve probably lost Middle America.

More delicious schadenfreude after the fold.

The day after the AP transmitted that dispatch, the New York Times published a report concentrating on a specific success:

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struck another blow this spring, when he led a military operation against it in Baghdad and in several southern cities.

The shift, if it holds, would solidify a transfer of power from Mr. Sadr, who had lorded his once broad political support over the government, to Mr. Maliki, who is increasingly seen as a true national leader.

What does all this mean for America’s presidential election, now just 99 days away? Back in 2005-06, we argued:

With the mainstream media facing a skeptical public and competition from those with other viewpoints, it seems unlikely that Iraq will turn out to be another Vietnam—a war lost in large part because of the media’s opposition. Certainly President Bush is determined to stay the course. And it’s quite possible that if U.S. troops are still in Iraq in large numbers by 2008, the presidential nominees for both major parties will promise to bring them home—and the winner, once in office, will find he cannot do so.

In the event, John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s views have been converging, but toward a more moderate position than we anticipated. Even Obama now advocates less-than-total withdrawal. The contrast between the two candidates’ past positions, however, is striking. Whereas McCain was ahead even of President Bush in advocating an increase in troop strength, Obama opposed the “surge” and favored a policy that would have led to American defeat.

The Times, in its story on the progress against the Mahdi Army, credits McCain for his prescience but glosses over Obama’s lack of same:

It is part of a general decline in violence that is resonating in American as well as Iraqi politics: Senator John McCain argues that the advances in Iraq would have been impossible without the increase in American troops known as the surge, while Senator Barack Obama, who opposed the increase, says the security improvements should allow a faster withdrawal of combat troops.

In an interview with Katie Couric last week, Obama acknowledged that “U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq,” but repeatedly refused to say that this meant the surge had worked. Commentary blogress Jennifer Rubin notes a hilarious Obama comment from the Los Angeles Times:

“Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged today that he had failed to understand how much violence would decrease this year in Iraq, but he contended that President Bush and Sen. John McCain, the Republicans’ presumptive presidential candidate, had made the same mistake.” Well, the difference would be that the surge was even more successful than McCain anticipated. Not really the “same mistake” as trying to do everything to prevent implementation and completion of a successful strategy.

Obama seems to lack the humility and wisdom to admit that he has been wrong. Some would argue that this makes him ill-suited for the presidency, but it isn’t clear that the voters will agree. They may be persuaded that the surge’s success has reduced the risk of an Obama presidency, and they may be right.

There is something to be said for the idea that a presidential campaign should be about the future, not the past. The notion that Obama deserves to be the next president because he was “right” in opposing the war in 2002—a stand that required no political courage whatever in his ultraliberal Chicago state Senate district—always was ludicrous.

On the other hand, it is to McCain’s credit that he backed the surge at a time when public opinion across the country had turned against the war effort. “I would rather lose an election than lose a war,” McCain has said. He may get his wish.

It’s a truly sad day when a triumph of American Arms is a defeat for a significant minority of the American Public.