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January 08, 2007
Crossroads? Apogee? Or just politics?
The sands are shifting in the debate over withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The primary argument no longer seems to be along the lines of whether troops should be withdrawn, but when. I agree with Jules Crittenden (via Glenn Reynolds) that withdrawal would be very dispiriting for this country, and would lead to America sitting around and awaiting a "dark age: ...in which brutal second-rate powers such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea do what they choose to whom they choose without restraint. An age of modern warlords, with no over-arching, feared power to keep them in check. We can watch the sick man that is Europe slowly succumb. We can watch small free nations try to fend for themselves. We can await the inevitable nuclear crisis.I'd rather prevent it than wait for it, and I'm old enough to remember how the Vietnam malaise led directly to the U.S. sitting around passively watching horrors like the Khmer Rouge, and the emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. I think we're still suffering from the fallout, and I think it could get worse. Crittenden thinks we are at a crossroads, between fighting on the one hand and defeat and surrender on the other: The Democratic Congress, so eager to abandon Iraq, is fortunate. The world that seems to revile us no matter what we do is also fortunate. Because it will not be their decision.Parenthetically, I don't think it's the wisest idea to order U.S. troops to flee when confronted by armed invaders either. It makes the country look lame. In a lecture in Philadelphia last month, Charles Krauthammer made a very articulate argument that the United States had reached it's apogee in the post-9/11 period: Sept. 11 ushered in the second era of this unipolar era, which I would call the era of assertion, where the power that had been latent in America shows itself. I would date this era from 9/11 to the March 14, 2005, a date probably unfamiliar to you and not particularly renowned in our history today, but a date that I think will be remembered by historians as the apogee of American power, the peak of the arc of the unipolar era.Note the ominous use of the past tense. What worries me is the stubborn need for denial that we are at war. It's as if 9/11 can be forgotten now, and we can all get back to the "real" business of the country. Such as? I don't know; fill in the blanks. Global Warming, perhaps? Higher taxes? Illegal aliens? Health care? How about the "war on drugs"? Anything but the war we're in. Political analyst Dick Polman sees the war in terms of politics, and argues that many Republicans are running away from Bush: ....politically speaking, there is a growing desire to cut and run from Bush. The first order of business is to make it clear that rank-and-file Republicans don't share the president's urge to "surge." Sen. Susan Collins of Maine doesn't like it. Neither does Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who says: "I think it would create more targets. I think it would put more life at risk." When Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the departing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked last weekend whether he backed a troop surge, he offered this stellar endorsement: "I don't know whether I do or not."While there's no way to stop it from happening, I'm sorry to see the war being conflated into the Bush presidency by means of the constant application of the "Bush's War" meme, because that makes people forget that it is the country that is in this war, not Bush. To say or imply that thousands of American troops died "for Bush" dishonors their sacrifice, which was for all of us. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when war strategy is reduced to "the surge idea" by finger-to-the-wind politicians worrying about percentage points in the polls. I suppose it's naive to talk about such things as statesmanship, but I think we could use some right now. I see a few signs of it, but it's mostly limited to the blogosphere. It's almost comical that someone as cynical as I am would advocate such a thing as statesmanship. Seriously, in the normal context of politics, the word makes me laugh. (But it's harder and harder to laugh at things that aren't funny.) posted by Eric on 01.08.07 at 09:38 AM
Comments
More dispiriting to the country would be watching the military break b/c of the Iraq war. It is better to withdraw/redeploy now than watch another 10,000 soldiers be killed or seriously wounded in the next 18 months. By mid-2008, if the U.S. is still in Iraq, the military will be in shambles and a draft will be re-instituted. That is what will be dispiriting to the country. PoliticalCritic · January 8, 2007 12:01 PM Honestly, we need a Davey Crockett in today's Congress, if only to tell them to all go to Hell while he went to the battlefield. Men of that calibur leading our nation are sorely missed at such a moment as this. CTDeLude · January 10, 2007 05:02 PM |
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What is needed is not so much statesmanship, but some one at the head of government who understands the problem and can articulate it.
I think Bush has some understanding; he fails on articulation.