DEFEAT IN IRAQ?

The Senate passed a compromise amendment yesterday on the Iraq War that could be interpreted as the first step toward withdrawal. It is already drawing fire from proponents of the war.

Bill Kristol has one word for the compromise...pathetic.

Tony Blankley had even harsher words for the Senate action...

Monday, for the first time, the foul odor of the Vietnam War denouement wafted through the Senate chamber during the debate on Iraq. The Democrats called for "estimated dates for the phased redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq." Phased redeployment was the maneuver the French executed in June 1940 in the days preceding the German occupation of Paris. Phased redeployment is what the Vietnamese boat people did as they swam for their lives away from their homeland. The Republican Senate leadership, sensing they might lose enough Republican senators (six or more) to let the Democratic amendment pass, decided to quibble with, rather than oppose, the infamous document. So they scratched out the explicit timeline to desertion and added fine-sounding phrases, such as calling for the president to provide more information and a schedule for reaching full Iraqi sovereignty. No bureaucratic euphemism can cleanse the air of the stench of defeatism...It was 30 years ago when Congress last took the reigns of national war fighting. In August 1974, Richard Nixon had been scandalized and left office. The November 1974 election brought forth the "Watergate babies"; Congress filled with young anti-war Democrats. One of the first actions of the Watergate Congress was to vote to deny an appropriation of $800 million to pay for South Vietnamese military aid, including ammunition and spare parts. Historical records now reveal that five weeks after that vote, the North Vietnamese started planning their final offensive. The morale of the South Vietnamese was broken by that symbolic congressional act of betrayal. The actual dollar cuts forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to abandon the Central Highland in March 1975, leading to the collapse of our ally and the onset of genocide and police-state brutalities that killed more Asians than all the thousand days of the war did. Now the Watergate babies have grown old — and age has not improved them. They plan to finish their careers as they started them — in defeatism, betrayal and national dishonor. Oh, that America might see the last of these fish-eyed sacks of loathsome bile and infamy: unwholesome in their birth; repugnant and stench-forming in their decline.

Senator Joe Lieberman praised the compromise (via RealClearPolitics), but decried the partisanship that has overtaken the war effort, and warned about the consequences of defeat.

If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, there will be civil war, and there is a great probability that others in the neighborhood will come in. The Iranians will be tempted to come in on the side of the Shia Muslims in the south. The Turks will be tempted to come in against the Kurds in the north. The other Sunni nations, such as the Saudis and the Jordanians, will be sorely tempted, if not to come in at least to aggressively support the Sunni Muslim population. There will be instability in the Middle East, and the hope of creating a different model for a better life in the Middle East in this historic center of the Arab world, Iraq, will be gone. If we successfully complete our mission, we will have left a country that is self-governing with an open economy, with an opportunity for the people of Iraq to do what they clearly want to do, which is to live a better life, to get a job, to have their kids get a decent education, to live a better life. There seems to be broad consensus on that, and yet the partisanship that characterizes our time here gets in the way of realizing those broadly expressed and shared goals.

Clearly, the GOP backed down in the face of a public that is growing increasingly weary of this war. While the President still holds the cards when it comes to the issue of withdrawal, I wonder how long he will stand fast as his numbers dwindle and his weakened political position makes him incapable of addressing any of the other issues he had hoped to move on in his second term.

In my estimation, Americans do not have the stomach for a long, drawn out war if they don't see the possibility of victory. In fact, I wrote my college thesis on that issue. Public opinion in favor of the war remained high during World War II, as it was clear to all that the war would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of our power until ultimate victory was achieved. The public was able to accept much higher levels of casualties than what we are seeing today because of that fact. By contrast, public opinion in favor of war slowly deteriorated during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, with the drop off becoming more stark when battlefield events seemed to preclude the possibility of victory (the Chinese intervention in December of 1950 and the Tet Offensive in January of 1968). Today, the unrelenting negative coverage of Iraq, the steady drumbeat of U.S. casualties, the seemingly unstoppable proliferation of suicide bombers, has convinced a majority of Americans that a traditional victory is not possible. Their reaction is, logically, to turn against the war. The GOP in Washington fears that the equally logical next step is to turn against the politicians who were in favor of the war. Since they can't throw the President out of office, the obvious targets will be those Republicans standing for election in 2006.

If the lessons of history are correct, the only way to avoid a Republican defeat on this issue in 2006 is for the public to become convinced that victory can be achieved and is being achieved. This will require a reduction in the number and pace of U.S. deaths and in chaotic images from Iraq. I'm not sure that can reasonably expected within the next year. I do expect the Iraqis to successfully elect a permanent government next month. The insurgents have been unable to significantly disrupt the last two elections, in fact, they even less successful in the most recent election than they were in the first. That is a significant trend. I do expect the Iraqis to continue to build their security forces, their army, police, infrastructure and economy. But those facts cannot be shown in dramatic TV pictures and, therefore, will be invisible to the American public.

My conclusion, at this point in time, is that the GOP will suffer significant losses in November of 2006 unless our troops are clearly on their way out of Iraq during the Summer of 2006. If Karl Rove is still working in the White House at that time, he will see this as clearly (if not more so) than I do. I expect that at the very least there will be a timetable for withdrawal by then.