The Redhunter

We can't expect the American people to support the war forever. It was one thing to keep troops deployed in Europe after WWII because they weren't actually fighting. Convention wisdom says that elections are about getting the broad middle on your side, and in this case the CW is right. The left will always be against military operations unless they are strictly humanitarian with no national security goals and where noone gets hurt, and the right will always be for them. I don't have any polls in front of me, but you don't have to be a genius to see that the middle is lost or on the way there.

Last night, outside Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, several of us were speaking with a young soldier (actually he might have been a Marine, I didn't ask). Someone asked him about the situation over there, and he said that we've done just about all we can do for him. One soldiers' perspective, but at this point hardly surprising.

Background: Every Friday night we hold a pro-troops rally outside the hospital and then go inside to meet troops and bring them things. More here.

Dr Sanity, one of my favorite bloggers and a staunch conservative, makes the same point in a post here. She cites a post over at Sigmung, Carl, and Alfred, which says in part

By their actions- or lack thereof- Iraqis will in the end, clearly define themselves and the kind of nation they want for themselves. If they will not act in their own best interests, we cannot force democracy where it is clearly not valued.

If democracy is of little value to the Iraqis, we need to leave. That will result in tragedy and great suffering, of course, but the blood of Americans and coalition forces cannot continue to be used to purchase democracy for Iraq.

The people of Eastern Europe did not need to be convinced of the merits of free societies over tyrannies. We must be prepared to face the reality that much of the Arab world will remain backward for a very long time, incapable of understanding how free governments are always better than oppressive ones. While there is nothing we can do about that, we can hope that the next generation, or the one after that, will see more clearly.

The tragedy is that yet another generation of Arabs will be lost to dysfunction and neglect. The greater tragedy is that most of them don’t even know it. That said, we must always remind them that America and the free world will be there for them when they call.

Some will say that Islam and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. I suspect that an observer might have said that about Christianity 1000 years ago. It's probably more the case that the process is just going to take a long time, and Western politics thinks in months or years, not decades and centuries.

Indeed, I suspect that someone transported back to just about anywhere in the United States not even 100 years ago would despair that Jim Crow would ever be conquered. However our expedition in Iraq works out, I think that at some point Islam will reform and that part of the world will see some sort of liberty and freedom.

No Hurried Withdrawal

Be all this as it may, it seems to me that we're closer to the end of our deployment in Iraq than we are at it's beginning. Second, either the Iraqis will make something of their country or they'll let it degenerate into more and more ethnic violence.

The Democrats were surely wrong when they demanded a date certain by which we would bring our troops out of Iraq. All this would do is telegraph a message to all of the terrorists and militias that if they just laid low until that date certain, they could light up the sky once we were gone. Rather, our policy should probably be to make it clear to the Iraqis that we won't be there forever and that they need to get their act together.

Whether any of us like this situation or not is not particulary relevant. It seems to me that it is being or will soon be forced on us by political conditions here at home.

Put Them On Notice

I certainly hope that the Bush Administration has privately notified senior members of the Iraqi government that they can't expect us to stay there for much longer. As I said earlier, we can probably keep large numbers of troops in Iraq for another 2 years, but if the situation doesn't improve the politics will demand a withdrawal. It would be a mistake to establish or publish a timetable, but we have to get the concept through to them that we won't be around forever.

Update

Via Powerline, RightWingNutHouse is talking about an article in the New York Sun in which James Baker, Secretary of State under Bush 41 and now a sometime adviser to Bush 43, is allegedly planning to recommend pretty much what Senator Aiken did 35 years ago. From the Sun

A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.

As Rick Moran of RightWingNutHosue notes, it looks like "the Baker Commission, as it is coming to be called, was set up for the sole and exclusive purpose of giving both Republican and Democratic politicians cover for our retreat from Iraq." This commission, like so many others, has noone with real military experience on it. Here's the list. With the sole exception of William Perry, President Clinton's Secretary of Defense, not a one of them is qualified to advise on military matters (neither am I, but I'm a hack blogger, not sitting on a highbrow commission).

Perhaps so. It must also be stressed that like so many others the Sun story is based on unnamed "sources", which makes its accuracy hard to judge.

The "Baker Commission" will not release its report until after the November elections.

Moran also accurately notes that if this is accurate, then Baker's plan "is a recipe for defeat and retreat. No amount of spin will change the fact that once we leave Iraq, the entire world will see that our enemies in Iran and Syria as well as al-Qaeda were successful in inflicting enough pain on the American people to cause our precipitous withdrawal."

Exactly. The President, however, may have other ideas. From the Sun

The president also said he was not averse to changing tactics. But he repeated that the strategic goal in Iraq is to build "a country which can defend itself, sustain itself, and govern itself." He added, "The strategic goal is to help this young democracy succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate."

But the president's strategic goal is at odds with the opinion of Mr. Baker's expert working groups, which dismiss the notion of victory in Iraq. The "Stability First" paper says, "The United States should aim for stability particularly in Baghdad and political accommodation in Iraq rather than victory."

If the Sun story is accurate, let's hope that the President has the strength not to take his advice. He's going to need it, because the Democrats, probably crowing from a November victory, are going to demand a withdrawal. As Powerline correctly observed the other day, "Not since the middle of the Civil War has either major political party been as intellectually and morally bankrupt as today's Democrats." For all of our troubles in Iraq, we can't let them, or James Baker, seize control of events.