‘Cut And Run’ Redux
One more item on this debate we’ve been having over the semantics of withdrawal – I don’t believe it’s correct to, as Karl Rove recently did, claim ‘cutting and running’ is a Democratic trait. As H.D.S. Greenway notes in the Boston Globe, Lyndon Johnson and FDR certainly didn’t ‘cut and run’. It’s true, also, that stated the way Rove did, it implies cowardice as a personality trait of the opposition, and that’s unfair.
While I’m trying to be fair, I’ll note that Greenway attempts to put a framework on withdrawal that will avoid the offending appelation:
There is a legitimate debate to be had over when it is wise to stay the course, and when it is wise to withdraw, regardless of which political party is in power or in opposition. There may be a few true believers left in the Bush administration who still think that the adventure to implant democracy in the heart of the Arab world by force of arms was worth the blood and treasure. I believe that most are coming around to the view that some semblance of order, security, and representational politics is the best that can be propped up until American troops can withdraw. The dream of a light unto nations that could transform the region may never have been realizable, but it certainly died in the ineptitude of the invading forces.
President Bush assured Iraqis that when America makes a commitment it sticks to it. But that is not something a politician in a democracy can guarantee. The reality is that when Americans are sufficiently sick of the war, the war will be voted out, no matter what resolutions Congress decides to make.
When Bush made his bold trip to Baghdad last week, I believe the most important thing he told Iraqis was “seize the moment.” For with the arduous, arm-twisting task of finding an acceptable prime minister and forming a Cabinet now completed, this is surely the moment, as Bush said, to “develop a government of, by, and for the people.” It may be impossible, but this is the now-or-never moment to try.
This is also the time for Bush to seize the moment and announce an organized withdrawal and cut the umbilical cord of dependency. For there are no more transitional elections to prepare for. Iraq now has a government, and there are no more rabbits to be pulled out of hats. The Iraq war is unsustainable in America in the long run, and Iraqis will not make the necessary compromises they need to make as long as we are in occupation.
Well, maybe so – ‘organized withdrawal’ is certainly preferable to ‘immediate withdrawal’. I think, however, that we are a ways yet from substantial withdrawal of forces. At the very minimum, we need to make another good stab or two at pacification of the bad guys – we owe it to the Iraqis to not leave them in an untenable position re: the insurgency…
Rove has been saying for months that the gop would run on ‘strong national defense’.
Enter NK and Iran. While they are completely seperate situations, it is political suicide to endorse a plan that will be perceived as ‘cutting and running’ by a majority of the American people.
The polls show that the American people are willing to give more time, but also that their patience is not infinite. It seems to be the perception of the people that there is a threshold that will be reached within the next year, that will allow for troops to come home.
The democrats appear irelevant, unless they can appear to have had a hand in the decision to leave, but their vote is NOT the threshold the public care for. This war will be decided on the ground, not in congress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901237.html
The Iraqi national security adviser speaks of a ‘phased withdrawal’.
Less than 100,000 by years end, all out in 08.
This is our ally, to speak of withdrawal without discussing the Iraqi’s wishes, is silly.
Surrender is surrender, no matter how you dress it up. Remember what happened in Viet Nam. It’s about to happen again.
“When the Iraqi forces stand up, we will stand down.”
Oh Don please tell us what happened in Vietnam! Then tell us how the world would be different if we had just stayed the course.
What happened in Viet Nam, per no less an expert than Gen Vo Nguyen Giap, Ike to Unlce Ho’s FDR, is that a hostile and partisan press won the war for the Communist north by portraying a conflict in which the US never suffered a battlefield defeat as, um, well, a quagmire, an unwinnable enterprise, an empirialistic and hubristic, amoral exercise of witless might hey! this stuff writes itself! Not to mention the lies of the anti-warriors, most prominently John Kerry. So a significant fraction of this country threw the fight not least because they thought they saw something noble and worthy in Communism. Of course this is only part of the story. The mere withdrawal of US troops was not enough for the pro-Communist powers in this country. They also demanded a complete and utter suspension of all military and financial aid to the South. The collapse was swift and complete. Ensuing was the mass imprisonment of anyone who had worked with us there and much of their extended network of family, friends and especially business associates. The killing fields also ensued from the momentum the Communists enjoyed from their victory in VN. To this day of course, SE Asia reels from this, a true stain on our national honor, this abandonment, this betrayal. So, in many ways the Murthettes have a point. Iraq is not Viet Nam, not yet. But the Dems are doing all they can to make it one. Luckily, all they can do ain’t much.
Stay the course’ has always meant to me that an Iraqi government willing to address their security issues had to be establisehd and that they would provide a guidline for withdrawal.
Congressional mandated timetables seem to an issue that completely ignores what the Iraqi govt wishes. Thier recent establishment of a timetable BY THE IRAQIS is as big a success as any election, or killing of terrorists. Wish the media saw it that way.
“Then tell us how the world would be different if we had just stayed the course.”
North Vietnam, south Vietnam. Same as Korea. When the Kmer Rouge came to power, a massive influx (and survival of the massacred.)
This is the strange dichotomy between left and right…the left cares little about saving lives abroad, but believes all inhabitants of the world are equal.
The right seems to believe that it is ‘special’-nobler, kinder, wiser than the rest of the world, and that saving lives(by a utilitarian argument) is just, even at the expense of our own.
lol ronald mcdonald. you get the laugh of the afternoon award
Its interesting that Mr. Greenway cites two democratic presidents from over forty years ago as proof that democrats have the fortitude to hang tough when the going gets tough. And then he uses Bosnia, a war that was fought almost exclusively from the sky with almost no U.S. casualties, as a current example of not cutting and running because we still have troops there ten years later and democrats are not asking for their withdrawal.
Very convincing argument by Mr. Greenway. The problem is, he convinced me that the current democratic party, excluding a few such as Senator Lieberman, cannot be trusted to make and stick by hard decisions required to ensure the safety of our country.
Only if you equate “hanging tough” and making the “hard decisions required to ensure the safety of our country” with the indefinite commitment of military resources.
The fact is that some wars are wrong in conception, strategy, and execution. If “hanging tough” means refusing to change direction when it is abundantly clear that you are on the wrong course, then I’m all for wimpiness. Part of leadership is the ability to recognize mistakes and adapt to change on the ground. These are two qualities notably missing from the current administration.
“some wars are wrong in conception, strategy, and execution.”
Of course that is so. But the presumption, forever declared but never defined, that THIS is one of those is the axis on which all else turns. When we who have supported the war try to get a historical or other standard from the anti-warriors that undergirds the “worst ______ ever!” all we ever get is a froth of insults and air. As always peter you make simplistic declarations and demand their integrity with NO foundation. Has the Iraq war been bad on a historical standard? Has the level of casualties been on the high side of historic norms? Have the political goals of this war been less fully realized than those of other, worthy, American wars? I’m holding my breath over here but before you begin, remember blank assertion is meaningless except for those we have elected to make judgement calls, subject to referendum by the electorate so what gets said here is of little moment to the world. It might help you define what it is that is bugging you about current controversies though. Frankly all you ever demonstrate is ignorance and bile. No way to go through life, son.
Oh, Hokie, your new buddy, ably demonstrates the vacuous nature of the anti-war mindset. Hokie, just what is so funny about Don’s post? Just what is so funny about millions immiserated, thousand imprisoned, tens of thousands driven from their homes and the whole damn thing about to be perpetrated AGAIN by the same gaggle of jackasses? It’s a laugh riot to you, maybe if I understood I could enjoy the plight of the world more, then I wouldn’t care about murdered and tortured and enslaved multitudes either. Must be nice.
If we leave under the appearance of retreating (I don’t think the world, and especially the Arab world will allow for semantical defenses) then every future conflict will have a number on it.
The US will leave after ‘x’ number are killed. x will come to be the number that ‘progressive’ democrats will seek to( and successfully) pin on Bush. It will become the yardstick to measure US resolve in all future conflicts.
All future conflicts will be shaped by how this one ends. I wish there was a formula where a loss in the world’s perception of US power and resolve, the inspirational success that terrorists might feel, the threat in future conflicts that our enemies will use this number, x, as a goal…
weighed against 500 more soldiers waiting to die and 3000 more maimed.
I still believe that the intangible product of completing the mission makes the effort worth it.
Peter-
You want to argue the semantics of defining a premature departure, let me argue against your use of ‘indefinite’.
I can define the maximum length of time we will be there in force, January 2008.
Actually the American people still have some faith.
I’m going to hit you with some Pew numbers from this week.
Bush’s approval rating on Iraq? 35%, but in 10/04 he was at…37%-there has been no erosion of support.
Iraq:Right decision, wrong decision? 49%yes 44%no. Same as 10/04.
Keep troops there, or ‘leave as soon as POSSIBLE’?
50-45. (Put me in that 45-the other 50 seem like gluttens)
(In 10/04 this number was 57-36…some erosion)
Timetable?(this is my gift) 52 yes, 42 no, but it has been static over the past year)
Do you think we will be a successful in establishing a democratic govt? 55% definite/probable.
The perception that Bush’s poll number have been affected by Iraq seems minor relative to what immigration has cost him.
I’d better cite:
http://pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Worth a glance if you want to cherry pick the other side.
You guys are putting words into my mouth (or keyboard, or whatever).
The point I was trying (however feebly) to make in post 11 is that sometimes the best thing to do is cut and run, or not hang tough, or whatever you call it when you decide that a John Wayne foreign policy isn’t always the best way to go.
I think VietNam is such an instance. I also think Iraq is such a case, but I didn’t want to get drawn into writing a magum opus to answer the sorts of questions in post 12.
As for “all future conflicts will be shaped by how this one ends:” I don’t think so. Americans will tolerate enormous losses to fight a country which attacked us or, as in World War II and Korea, our allies. The war in Afghanistan was in response to 9/11. Iraq wasn’t.
But now that you mention it: as to whether “the Iraq war been bad on a historical standard,” I don’t pretend to know where it should stand among VietNam, the Spanish American War, the Albigensian Crusade, or any of the other great military blunders of history (or, more precisely, political blunders, if you accept the notion that “war is politics by other means”).
What does distinguish Iraq from all other conflicts in modern times is the fact that it was a pre-emptive war launched on an incorrect pretext of WMD. Never before has a war been launched against a country which has not attacked us as a pre-emptive measure based on false assumptions. While the Bush apologists want to say “my bad” and move on, to me this is a Really Big Deal.
So how the death toll, or the collateral damage, or the diplomatic cost, or whatever metric you choose compares against VietNam or other wars: I don’t know. Other wars were fought to protect an invaded country (Kuwait), prevent the “domino effect” (VietNam), or end genocide (Bosnia). Whatever history may decide about those who sent soldiers to die, at least the motives were defensible. Invading a country based on questionable intelligence which was distorted into a cassus belli is indefensible.
“The war in Afghanistan was in response to 9/11.”
There is no war in Afghanistan. There are 20,000 special ops troops there, that’s it. A war is represented by large investment and we are keeping it to a minimum there. If we were fighting a war in Afghanistan, I’d be screaming to get out. Fighters will come and go there for the next 50 years. All your criticism of Iraq, I would be venting at any serious effort in Afghanstan.
We were attacked by Al-Queda, and that they live in Afghanistan, but were from various homelands across the ME. That would have been vietnam-no resolution. gvie a great deal of credit to rumsfeld for recognizing what a quagmire it would have been.
Iraq ‘policy’ is a result of 9/11. The threshold for what the US would tolerate changed.
You are kind to call it ‘preemptive’, I prefer elective.
We are fighting based on a ‘domino effect’ theory, only instead of keeping them up, we need to knock them down. So far it has worked on syria in Lebanon, Lybia, and to an extent the Ukraine.
I’ll give you the Wolfowitz side of the argument.
Every country in the ME is an oligarchy.
By having a society without many tiers of social success, there is no thought of any form about ‘relativism’. If there is no social relativism, there will never be any cultural relativism, and the ME will continue terrorism.
Establishing a successful middle class in Iraq is the primary goal. The effects will be dramatic and ripple forth for the next fifty years. If not, (as it was a gamble), then terrorism will continue, an the means of conducting terrorism will become more deadly.
There was no other means of addressing terrorism out there, except trying to keep knocking the ball out of our court, with no room for error.
IT would be fair say that the effort would be ‘indefinite’.
I don’t get the point in post 18. We didn’t fight a war in Afghanistan?
As to whether 9/11 changed “the threshold for what the US would tolerate:” who exactly gave us the right to determine which countries are tolerable and which are not?
As for post 19: we’re fighting a war whose “primary goal” is to “establish a middle class?” We are?
As for “other means of addressing terrorism:” you fight terrorism by attacking those who attacked you, by tightening homeland security, and by providing an example to the rest of the world why a democratic society is worth striving for. Not by attacking a Muslim country which had nothing to do with the attack on us.
Oh, no, we’re back to justifying the war, are we?…Well, I’d just refer to the search function in the upper left – we’ve had this debate so many times now, and I don’t have the stomach to keep hashing over the same old ground. A good place to start on why the war was both necessary and morally justifiable would be the works of Christopher Hitchens…but then, your mind is made up already and I believe you’re just trying to provoke a reaction, as you yourself have said you often do…
I’m sympathetic to Peter’s argument, but not convinced.
Nor is he crazy, I have a lot of friends who feel the same way.
While it is a very grey area now, history will clear it up.
Mark, this is admittedly off topic, but I couldn’t find any place else to put it:
http://htfdidthishappen.blogspot.com/2006/06/time-for-john-murtha-to-moveon.html
It’s a post in support of Diana Irey, who is running against John Murtha in PA-12. She may not have a chance, but then a lot of people (myself included) thought the same thing about Ned Lamont. (No snark intended.)
Mark: I’m not trying to beat a dead horse or provoke a reaction — just responding to posts 12-15 — I’m not looking to start a fight, but I won’t wimp out of one either –
Re Comment 3:
“Surrender” is saying “Hey, look you win, you get the country and we will do whatever it is you want because you beat us”. Is the redeployment of our troops to other areas where Al Qaeda is actually operating surrendering? Seriously. How can redeployment be viewed as surrendering to the terrorists? Furthermore, how can redeployment to other areas be viewed as “cut and run”? There are a number of politicans that want to leave and not even redeploy. That is cutting and running, but putting the troops somewhere else to bring more terrorists to justice is not cutting and running. It’s going on the pursuit. To me, this is much more aggressive than sitting tight and waiting for more terrorists to come to Iraq.
Re Comment 6:
Yeah, we lost because of the press and because of the pinko commies. Had nothing to do with terrible leadership and a president who was more paranoid than Hunter S. Thompson…
Re Timetables:
What the hell ever happened to goal-setting anyhow? Is forethought too much to expect from this administration? Set a time-table. Make a fault tree diagram (for me, it’s “failure mode effect analysis [FMEA]). If things are going to plan leave, if something comes up, extend the deadline, adjust accordingly. How hard is this? This is rudimentary project management here folks. Rudimentary. I think this is my biggest beef with the administration’s handling of this war. There seems to be very little forethought.
peter, I hear you – hey, I’m a little prickly sometimes, no offense meant…
well, as long as I don’t sound like a five year old (“but Mom, he did it first”)