Past and Present
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, History, The War On TerrorismThe Democratic leaders demand George W. Bush must never mention “9/11″ when he speaks about the War in Iraq. This is said to reflect their concern that the president will shelter an “unjust and illegal war” in the star-spangled mantle of the broadly popular Great War on Islamist Terror.
But at the same time the Demos must know this is a tactic that can pay. If they can prise Iraq away from 9/11 in the American mind, they can have a field day tearing up the management of the war, past and present, and pretend this does no real damage to America.
So how do you decide whether the Iraq experiment is a campaign in this fluid new type of cross-cultural war America finds itself in — the equivalent, perhaps, of the 1942 North Africa invasion or Sherman’s March — or some entirely unrelated and fatal distraction — the equivalent of Athens’ Sicilian expedition or Napoleon’s march on Moscow?
I think history makes that call. I’m willing to work to make Iraq succeed now, and leave the heckling of every planning detail and decision to the future. If Bush goes down in history as a leader with insight and the will to accomplish what the nation didn’t see it needed, so be it. If Iraq succeeds and Bush goes down as a mediocrity or worse, that’s no loss to me. I voted once against Bush and once against “Anyone but Bush.” Call it a wash.
It is possible that many feel as I do, who would have been capable of backing a Democratic candidate in 2004 if one had come forth who clearly and consistently said, “I am more intent on making the best of our position in Iraq today than in wasting my time and the nation’s spirit in recrimination against the architects of the invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, may he rot in Hell. Whether we thought that was wise then, whether the passage of time has changed what we knew, is less important than that we are there now, and there is opportunity for all America to finish the job our military men and women have splendidly begun: protecting and helping the Iraqi people as they build a free, prosperous, and democratic state that will be the envy and beacon of the Arab-Islamic world. Then coming home to let them enjoy it.”
People know the Churchill speech that concludes in the ringing crescendo of
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ”
But they sometimes forget that it was made after the disaster of Dunkirk, when the British and French military leaders made multiple errors, when the poor pre-war planning was exposed, and when tens of thousands of men were lost and almost all the equipment that had been sent across the Channel.
Some people at home in Britain were calling for the heads of the people who had led the country into this mess. And many of those people were Churchill’s enemies. But he devoted the opening of his speech to keeping the British people focused on the task at hand:
I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That I judge to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle instead of only three.
Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, when they have time, will select their documents to tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments–and of Parliaments, for they are in it, too–during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine.
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, History, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 18th, 2005 at 1:45 am
The task at hand IS the most important objective and I hope all of us remember that. We can whine and debate, but what is done is done and nobody can change that. Of course, some think the best objective is bringing our soldiers home and some thing it’s making sure we win the war.
But whatever outcome you want, I believe that the spread of democracy (a truly evolutionary approach to fairness, responsibility and tolerance) is worth fighting for.
Great post!
July 18th, 2005 at 7:21 am
Exactly. As a pre-war Colin Powell man, I had reached the reluctant conclusion that Bush 41’s decision not to invade was correct becaase 1) too much civil war potential due to religious conflicts and 2) the fear of an eventual alliance between Tehran & Baghdad if the Sunnis lost power. However, once the decision to invade Iraq was made, it became in our collective interest to win the war. Second-guessing the Administration’s original decision is counterproductive and out of focus. A very wise analysis, Callimachus- no surprise there.
July 18th, 2005 at 7:50 am
The punishable fault of the Bush administration is certainly not that they made the decision to go in, and not that there were mistakes made in carrying it out. The really, really horrible fault of the Bush administration is that there was no Churchill to make that speech, which meant that Americans lose their resolve and their attention span.
Years and years of a murky, long, drawn-out war, with an enemy we don’t understand, for reasons we don’t understand? That’s a hard sell.
The administration is cold to the media and treats it as the enemy, practically Nixon-style. McClelland is weak. Bush himself has not really had a finger on it since Karen Hughes left. His communication skills appear to be on the decline. And the administration seems content, at this point, to only want to convince 51% of the population, and to hell with the rest.
Imagine this war with Reagan’s communication abilities. Or even Clinton’s ability to translate things into emotion. How much better it would be. I think even Kerry would have been better, despite his tendency to dawdle on and on. He became much, much sharper over the course of the campaign which suggested that he could be coaxed out of Boring Senator mode and into Great Communicator mode.
July 18th, 2005 at 8:37 am
Very well put, Undertoad. I have personally been waiting and waiting for some domestic leadership to emerge from the WH - for some weekly outlines of the good that is being performed over there by an amazing military force. So far we’ve seen next to squat. And if nothing else, the silence is doing our fighting forces an enormous disservice.
Meanwhile, the moonbats frame the national discourse with petty squabbles and unanswered accusations that are repeated endlessly in the MSM with no tangible response. It would be one thing if there were nothing with which to respond, but as even a casual scan of the blogosphere clearly shows - the Truth is Out There.
I can only guess that this is a timing ploy of some sort - that the revelations of the Good News, the proof of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection and the Winston Churchill speeches will be timed to open the campaign for 2008. If so, IMHO, that’s too long a time to wait and psychological damage is being done in the meantime. If enough people become confused, let alone disheartened due to lack of domestic leadership, if we hear nothing from the administration in response to the incessant hyperbole and outright fallacy being broadcast 24/7 on all wavelengths, we will be faced with the possibility another media-driven failure like Viet Nam.
July 18th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Udertoad, you got it right. I’ve been blessed not to have a TV, so I don’t ever get to hear the administration speak in defense of its own good deeds. The few times I’ve heard it, passing a TV set in a bar or a friend’s house, I’ve felt like Homer Simpson watching Garrison Keillor. I want to smack the side of the set and say, “be eloquent!”
July 18th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
You wrote:
“It is possible that many feel as I do, who would have been capable of backing a Democratic candidate in 2004 if one had come forth who clearly and consistently said, “I am more intent on making the best of our position in Iraq today than in wasting my time and the nation’s spirit in recrimination against the architects of the invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, may he rot in Hell. Whether we thought that was wise then, whether the passage of time has changed what we knew, is less important than that we are there now, and there is opportunity for all America to finish the job our military men and women have splendidly begun: protecting and helping the Iraqi people as they build a free, prosperous, and democratic state that will be the envy and beacon of the Arab-Islamic world. Then coming home to let them enjoy it.â€Â?
Um, the Democrat candidate in 2004 DID say essentially that. Kerry said over and over that he would correct the mistakes made by the Bush administration and finish the job. His outlook WAS to complete the job successfully - something he thought Bush wasn’t trying to do. What campaign were you watching?
July 18th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
“he would correct the mistakes made by the Bush administration”
Um, I think that’s pretty much a recrimination against the architects.
Anyway, how could he possibly have had the cojones to finish the job when he couldn’t even drum up the intestinal fortitude to sign a 180 and come clean on whatever skeletons were or were not lurking in his military records? Just asking.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:30 am
First time to even read this blog, but I couldn’t pass up replying to entry and the comment about Kerry’s recrimination and lacking cojones. I suppose in the Bush post 9-11 world saying that the President has made mistakes that you would correct if you were President amounts to recrimination, but to me that’s pretty ridiculous on its face and a sign of how far we have fallen. But that is the dynamic of this administration–allow no criticism and demand no accountability–and it’s a sad state of affairs that has led and continues to lead us down a hole. You can complain all you want about lack of leadership, but precisely because of executive ineptitude and political posturing our possibilities for being led to a good outcome in Iraq get slighter by the day. That has been true almost from the day Baghdad fell and we’re a couple of years in, so it is no wonder politicians aren’t lining up with leadership plans for Iraq.
At this point, there’s no clear path to a good outcome there. But a good place to start would be to stop making huge screw ups, and when you do screw up, fix it and take someone to account for it. GWB has shown no inclination to either of these ideas that I can tell. There are any number of politicians on both sides of the aisle who could and would do a much better job of leading us in Iraq simply by being honest, but even that would not guarantee a successful outcome at this point. By now the bar for success has been lowered to “Avoid civil war”.
If you believe the Democratic leadership just wants us to fail in Iraq, you have drunk too much of the administration’s polarizing Kool-Aid. We’re stuck in Iraq and we all want a good outcome–there’s nothing else to hope for. We just want the incredible screw-ups to stop, so we at least have a chance to leave the place better than we found it.
As far as Kerry’s cojones, whatever that really has to do with any of this, for whatever his reasons were (mistaken, IMHO) it took more courage for him not to submit to the demands that he turn over his military record than it did if he had turned it over. His record has now been released and is clean, not that it would have stopped the ridiculous attacks on him.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:50 am
“it took more courage for him not to submit to the demands that he turn over his military record than it did if he had turned it over.”
Really? How’s that? Are you saying that he was standing on principle? If so, which principle? If his record was so clean, all he had to do was release it and “move on”. Not doing so cost him the election as much as anything else. Of course demonstrating that Bush was a superior student was hardly a major issue, but it certainly wouldn’t have helped Kerry - perhaps that was his fear? I’d go into detail on how his career in the military - starting with his initial enlistment in the unactive reserve - was one long series of opportunism, culminating in an early out to pursue a political position, but it’s moot at this point. Nobody really cares about Kerry anymore.
“His record has now been released and is clean,”
According to whom? Glen Johnson of the Associated Press? Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe? Stephen Braun of the Los Angeles Times? Hmmm… you’ll have to pardon my skepticism regarding those biased sources, especially in light of the fact that questions remain on whether even they saw the full record.