Seeker Blog

Wretchard’s open post on “Victory in Iraq” regarding the Annapolis speech and the just-released A National Strategy for Victory in Iraq is a must-read:

Please read the comments - many are inciteful, such as this one from cosmo:

. . .Also missing is something Bush alluded to today with his reference to NATO troop preparedness: How many of the nations in which the U.S. garrisons troops (or has alliances) are capable of defending themselves without U.S. backup?

UPDATE: In the comments, Wretchard said:

Only a nation that never felt real subjection could attempt the luxurious act of deciding whether a given set of events was a ‘victory’ or a ‘defeat’. The idea that the New York Times could arbitrate the meaning of Iraq is in a way proof, in and of itself, that the armed forces have kept the nation safe for such a lunatic debate.

Real defeat, not just defeat in newspaper headlines, is a pitifully obvious thing. It means daily humiliation, fear, want and a host of other things which very few in the United States really know. I mean really, really know. The Moveon.org people are playing at defeat, like it was a game. And I wonder sometimes if they are not courting poetic justice.

which captures some of my true anger reading this 1 Dec New York Times editorial.

UPDATE: Cory Dauber has several excellent critiques of media coverage of the Bush Annapolis speech. Start here, but also at the top-of-blog. Slanted you say?

UPDATE: Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot’s White flag Democrats has more perspective on the Democratic opposition:

And the democrats wonder why they are considered weak on national security? It’s not because anyone doubts their patriotism. It’s because a lot of people doubt their judgment and toughness.

As if to prove the skeptics right, Democrats have been stepping forth to renounce their previous support for the liberation of Iraq even as Iraqis prepare to vote in a general election. Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards, John Murtha—that’s quite a list of heavyweight flip-floppers.

Clinton characteristically wants to have it both ways. He says the invasion was a “big mistake” but that we shouldn’t pull out now because “there’s a lot of evidence it can still work.” (You mean, Mr. President, that we should continue sacrificing soldiers for a mistake?) The others are more consistent. Because they now think the war is wrong, they favor a withdrawal, the only question being whether we should pull out sooner (Murtha) or slightly later (Kerry).

There are some honorable exceptions to this defeatism—Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Wesley Clark have remained stalwart supporters of the war effort—but they are clearly in the minority of a party steadily drifting toward Howard Dean-George McGovern territory.

Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the Democrats had finally kicked the post-Vietnam, peace-at-any-price syndrome. Before the invasion of Iraq, leading Democrats sounded hawkish in demanding action to deal with what Kerry called the “particularly grievous threat” posed by Saddam Hussein. But it seems that they only wanted to do something if the cost would be minuscule. Now that the war has turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated, the Democrats want to run up the white flag.

They are offering two excuses for their loss of will. First, they claim they were “misled into war” by a duplicitous administration. But it wasn’t George W. Bush who said, “I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons [of mass destruction] again.” It was Bill Clinton on Dec. 16, 1998. As this example indicates, the warnings issued by Bush were virtually identical to those of his Democratic predecessor.

The Democrats’ other excuse is that they never imagined that Bush would bollix up post-invasion planning as badly as he did. It’s true that the president blundered, but it’s not as if things usually go smoothly in the chaos of conflict. In any case, it’s doubtful that the war would have been a cakewalk even if we had been better prepared. The Baathists and their jihadist allies were planning a ruthless terrorist campaign even before U.S. troops entered Iraq. Their calculation was that if they killed enough American soldiers, the American public would demand a pullout.