I would have been depressed, but I got sick first...

While I've been too bogged down with a miserable cold to be depressed, via Glenn Reynolds I see that Ann Althouse is depressed, because she sees the election as an American failure:

It's the failure of Americans to support the war. It's the folding and crumpling because things didn't go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They're going to use that information.
I think she's right to be depressed. As someone who gets depressed more often than I admit for no reason at all, I'm in no position to criticize anyone for having a good reason.

(Perhaps I should consider myself lucky that I've been too sick to be depressed. Hmmm.... Maybe there's something to the torture-cures-depression theory. Or maybe not. Because if it did, wouldn't the awful torture of the election cheer up depressed Republicans?)

But I don't think the voters saw themselves as not supporting the war. I think they were frustrated by years of denial of the high costs of the war.

The war has cost more than money; it has also (as I explained in the last post) cost the Republicans their ideology, and thus I think a good argument can be made that the war cost the Republicans the election. To the extent that they downplayed the war and failed to defend it as an election issue, Republicans lost credibility. Especially against conservative Democratic candidates with solid military records.

Quite understandably, Ann Althouse thinks the election results will be misinterpreted:

What I'm concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I'm upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country -- a country we conquered with overwhelming military power -- merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won.

Recognizing the huge cost of this war is a very depressing thing.

On the bright side, though, this election was not won by anti-war candidates.

And it has to be remembered that it is not in the interest of the Democrats for America to lose the war just as they emerge from minority to majority status.

While many of them are anti-war, that doesn't make them anti-power. Just as small government Republicans can jettison principles and get on the big government bandwagon, antiwar Democrats can take off their tie-dyes and put on military uniforms.

Hey, whatever works, right?

(The whole thing is more depressing than I want to admit, and I'm almost glad to be sick.)

UPDATE: This Reuters report makes it easy to understand why Ann Althouse is depressed:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.

Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.

"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.

"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."

The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.

You'd think Khamenei could have let the voters know in advance how he felt.

(If he had, it would have been reported, wouldn't it?)

posted by Eric on 11.10.06 at 11:54 AM





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And it has to be remembered that it is not in the interest of the Democrats for America to lose the war just as they emerge from minority to majority status.

True, but the question is - do they realise that?

Enough being mired in Vietnam analogies - the real quagmire people seem unable to escape - might lead them, disastrously for themselves and for the nation, to believe that Defeat Is Victory, and that the populace would prefer "Peace with Honor" to an actual victory.

I dearly hope the Democrat leadership knows better.

Sigivald   ·  November 10, 2006 02:19 PM

America just sent a singing telegram to the world that we're a bunch of muscle queens -- over-developed musculature camouflaging the fact that we're wimps who will run at the first sight of a fight. A majority of voting Americans will eventually faint at the sight of blood. That's not an effective strategy when we're the default policeman of the world.

Primary blame, unfortunately, rests with the corrupt, big-spending, earmark-loving Republican Congressional leadership, who couldn't sacrifice a single G.D. bridge-to-nowhere in time of war. We're in a fight for the survival of Western Civilization and effin' Ted Stevens cries like a schoolgirl who lost his Barbie whenever someone tried to take the pork-fat from his chubby paws.

The Republicans get the blame for not getting corrupt spending under control in time of war. All of them except for the gutsy Tom Coburn. Bush could've vetoed an obscene spending bill, even once. The leadership led only to the trough. The Republicans deserve the blame because they should've known better. The Dems are Dems. They're like a Downs Syndrome baby on military and defense issues -- they may mean well but they haven't got a clue.

The R's knew better and blew it. They used power entrusted to them to fight a war to, instead, earmark obscene spending to their cronies. And that's depressing.

And the only one in Washington in a position of power who understood the war we are fighting, the only one who focused like a laser on the war effort, the only one who answered questions straight and told the American people the truth, that would be the one who just got thrown under the bus by the Bush Administration and replaced with a "realist." No more Rumsfeld. That's even more depressing.

Rhodium Heart   ·  November 11, 2006 01:33 AM

On the bright side, though, this election was not won by anti-war candidates.

It was in New Jersey.

And it has to be remembered that it is not in the interest of the Democrats for America to lose the war just as they emerge from minority to majority status.

How would we lose the war? In order to lose, you must have a goal. Rumsfeld is right, I don't understand the Iraq war. Please explain what empirical goal you hope to achieve in Iraq, and why I should kill or die for it.

In your explanation, please account for the fact that Iran had a thriving pro-American democracy movement before we called them evil while invading countries on either side of them. Because from where I stand, it looks like W's impatience and self-importance has set back the cause of freedom in the Middle East for about a decade. Explain to me how you hope to achieve anything in Iraq except another Shi'ite government that forces women to wear veils, or looks the other way while mobs enforce their preferred fashion. Bin Laden may see an important difference between this and his own goals for the Middle East. I do not.

hf   ·  November 11, 2006 01:49 AM

"How would we lose the war?"

If most people, afterwards, say that we lost the war, we lost the war.

Jon Thompson   ·  November 11, 2006 04:38 AM


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