The Redhunter

If you're going to win anything, be it a war or a football game, you aren't going to win it playing defense. This holds true in politics as well. Maybe especially true in politics.

And let us not doubt that in order to win this war on terror we need to win it on the political front as well as the battlefield. Those who talk about "keeping politics out of military decision-making" simply do not know what they are talking about.

I'm not going to make the full presentation about war and politics here, for I've done that before and interested readers can go here.

Suffice it to say here that you can win on the battlefield, yet if you lose the political battle you lose the war. Anyone who doubts this need only consider the Tet Offensive.

In 1968 the Viet Cong staged a series of attacks on US and ARVN forces during the Vietnamese holiday of Tet. Although we were taken by surprise, and suffered some early setbacks, in the end we virtually annihilated them as a fighting force. However the battle was portrayed as a defeat back home in the press. It would have been understandable had the press simply criticized the administration and military for having had assured the public that such an attack was not even possible. However, the press (I of course speak in general terms) went farther, and presented it as a US defeat. US public opinion turned started to turn against the war at this point. Thus, the Tet Offensive is generally considered the turning point of the war.

The Political Offensive

The reason why it is important to stay on the offensive is that the person or group who is on the offensive gets to determine the agenda. They determine what gets discussed and what does not.

For example, right now we are in a position of defending our treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This is fine up to an extent, but what we ought to do is flip it around and demand of our oppenents answers on how they would fight the war.

So how exactly would you go about getting information from these prisoners? How, indeed, would you get information at all? Where would you keep them, and what of the difficulties at all alternatives to Gitmo?

Rich Lowry gets it exactly right:

The administration should defend the facility there unabashedly. It should force Democrats to argue that the 9/11 hijackers shouldn’t have women stand too close to them and that rice pilaf isn’t good enough fare. It should make Democrats explain how to fight a war on terror without detaining enemy fighters, and work to stem the panic, rather than surrendering to it.

Bill Clinton won in 1992 because he stayed on the offensive. His staff set up their famous "war room" and countered every Republican attack immediately, then turned it around and went on the attack themselves. It worked brilliantly and put him in the white house. We should take a page from that book and do the same.