I Cogitate

Kristol Redux

...Kristol participated in a washingtonpost.com Q&A yesterday and defended himself, sort of:

"Greenbelt, Md.: You have been wrong about every important prediction you have made about the outcome of this war and this presidency -- why should anyone pay attention to you now?

"William Kristol: Feel free not to!"

"...a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome..."

"Still, the high political stakes of the continuing debate over funding the war in Iraq were starkly put by Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri: "If we pass legislation that loses the war, then the people who vote to pass the legislation that ends the war are going to own it. That failure will be their (read, Democrats') failure."

"...But do not forget that when Richard Nixon — with his undisclosed plan for peace — was elected president in 1968, barely half of the 58,135 Americans who would lose their lives in the Vietnam War had already died. The war would drag on for another six and a half years under Republican leadership.

But that did not prevent Nixon from instructing his aides in a tape-recorded Oval Office conversation on Jan. 27, 1972, to attack Democrats as "the party of surrender." Who can say it didn't work then and might not work again? That's what the Washington argument is really all about — not the past, but the future, when voters will decide Who Lost Iraq."

"The highly partisan question “Who lost Iraq?” will be heard repeatedly in the coming months, historians and political scientists say, as President Bush and a Democratic Congress spar over ending an unpopular war now in its fifth year.Bush’s decision to launch military operations to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 has made the protracted Iraq war the centerpiece of his presidency. Now Democrats who took control of Congress in November are trying to force an end to the war by setting deadlines for all troops to leave Iraq.

If the war ends poorly for U.S. interests and for Iraq, Republicans will have an opening to charge that “cut-and-run” Democrats, not Bush and their party, were responsible for the defeat. And if Bush’s strategy works, the GOP can say Democrats were too quick to call for a withdrawal, the analysts say.

In previous instances over the past six decades, Republicans have repeatedly charged Democrats with dangerous weakness in the face of overseas challenges, sometimes to great political effect, and it’s a charge experts expect to hear again, perhaps soon.

“It’s worked again and again, and it could again,” said Ron Peters, University of Oklahoma political scientist..."

"...Republicans will try to shift the blame, he said, “but it will be difficult. One, the war is seen by the public as George Bush’s war, and two, the public will be relieved to see it end one way or the other.”

Four Years Later… and Counting
Billboarding the Iraq disaster
Anthony Arnove
March 19, 2007

There is a general agreement across much of the political spectrum that we can blame Iraqis for the problems they face. In a much-lauded speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Sen. Barack Obama couched his criticism of Bush administration policy in a call for "no more coddling" of the Iraqi government: The United States, he insisted, "is not going to hold together this country indefinitely." Richard Perle, one of the neoconservative architects of the invasion of Iraq, now says he "underestimated the depravity" of the Iraqis. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democratic front-runner in the 2008 presidential election, recently asked, "How much are we willing to sacrifice [for the Iraqis]?" As if the Iraqis asked us to invade their country and make their world a living hell and are now letting us down.

"...Republicans have won seven of the last 10 presidential elections in significant part because a majority of Americans saw them as tougher and more resolute on national security. Congressional Republicans have now resoundingly reaffirmed their party's national security credentials, this time on the Iraq war, leaving Democrats looking, again, mostly like the party of retreat.

However war weary many Americans are at the moment, don't bet that painting Democrats into their cut-and-run corner won't bolster GOP prospects in November for holding on to its congressional majorities..."

"...For Democrats, the timing of all this is both unfortunate and highly revealing. Just when the news from Iraq turns decidedly good - al-Zarqawi dead, al-Qaeda on the run, a tough new Iraqi government in place and a security offensive in Baghdad making notable progress - the Democrats want to declare the war lost and get out.

That won't be lost on the voters in November."

"...The next stage of the Iraq debate is fast approaching - and it's critical to understand the long-term political and strategic consequences of allowing the other side to successfully label the Democrats as "Defeatocrats." If the right convinces the general public a troop withdrawal represents the Democrats "capitulating" to the anti-war extremist netroot base, we risk becoming marginalized within our own party. Achieving all of our other goals will become more difficult.

So, how do we confront this situation? We repeat LOUDLY and OVER and OVER and OVER again the gross incompetence of how this Administration conducted this war. This may not go over well amongst this audience, but the debate over whether the war was immoral or unjustified (of course the answer is YES to both questions) is irrelevant at this point.

The Republicans LOST this war, and it is our duty to make sure the American public remembers this simple truth."

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